History of Protestantism, vol. 3

Copyright © 2018, Ellen G. White Estate, Inc.

Table of Contents

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Book 18: History of Protestantism in the Netherlands

Chapter 1: The Netherlands and their Inhabitants

Chapter 2: Introduction of Protestantism into the Netherlands

Chapter 3: Antwerp: Its Confessors and Martyrs

Chapter 4: Abdication of Charles V. and Accession of Philip II.

Chapter 5: Philip Arranges the Government of the Netherlands, and Departs for Spain

Chapter 6: Storms in the Council, and Martyrs at the Stake

Chapter 7 : Retirement of Granvelle-Belgic Confession of Faith

Chapter 8: The Rising Storm

Chapter 9: The Confederates or “Beggars”

Chapter 10: The Field-Preachings

Chapter 11: The Image-Breakings

Chapter 12: Reaction-Submission of the Southern Netherlands

Chapter 13: The Council of Blood

Chapter 14: William Unfurls his Standard-Execution of Egmont and Horn

Chapter 15: Failure of William’s First Campaign

Chapter 16: The “Beggars of the Sea,” and Second Campaign of Orange

Chapter 17: William’s Second Campaign, and Submission of Brabant and Flanders

Chapter 18: The Siege of Haarlem

Chapter 19: Siege of Alkmaar, and Recall of Alva

Chapter 20: Third Campaign of William, and Death of Count Louis of Nassau

Chapter 21: The Siege of Leyden

Chapter 22: March of the Spanish Army Through the Sea-Sack of Antwerp

Chapter 23: The “Pacification of Ghent,” and Toleration

Chapter 24: Administration of Don John, and First Synod of Dort

Chapter 25: Abjuration of Philip, and Rise of the Seven United Provinces

Chapter 26: Assassination of William the Silent

Chapter 27: Order and Government of the Netherland Church

Chapter 28: Disorganisation of the Provinces

Chapter 29: The Synod of Dort

Chapter 30: Grandeur of the United Provinces

Book 19: Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia

Chapter 1: Rise and Spread of Protestantism in Poland

Chapter 2: John Alasco, and Reformation of East Friesland

Chapter 3: Acme of Protestantism in Poland

Chapter 4: Organisation of the Protestant Church of Poland

Chapter 5: Turning of the Tide of Protestantism in Poland

Chapter 6: The Jesuits enter Poland-Destruction of its Protestantism

Chapter 7: Bohemia-Entrance of Reformation

Chapter 8: Overthrow of Protestantism in Bohemia

Chapter 9: An Army of Martyrs

Chapter 10: Suppression of Protestantish in Bohemia

Book 20: Protestantism in Hungary and Transylvania

Chapter 1: Planting of Protestantism

Chapter 2: Protestantism Flourishes in Hungary and Transylvania

Chapter 3: Ferdinand II and the Era of Persecution

Chapter 4: Leopold I. and the Jesuits

Chapter 5: Banishment of Pastors and Desolation of the Church of Hungary

Book 21: The Thirty Years’ War

Chapter 1: Great Periods of the Thirty Years’ War

Chapter 2: The Army and the Camp

Chapter 3: The March and its Devastations

Chapter 4: Conquest of North Germany by Ferdinand II and the “Catholic League”

Chapter 5: Edict of Restitution

Chapter 6: Arrival of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany

Chapter 7: Fall of Magdeburg and Victory of Leipsic

Chapter 8: Conquest of the Rhine and Bavaria-Battle of Lutzen

Chapter 9: Death of Gustavus Adolphus

Chapter 10: The Pacification of Westphalia

Chapter 11: The Fatherland after the War

Book 22: Protestantism in France from Death of Henry IV. (1610) to the Revolution (1789)

Chapter 1: Louis XIII. and the Wars of Religion

Chapter 2: Fall of La Rochelle, and End of the Wars of Religion

Chapter 3: Industrial and Literary Eminence of the French Protestants

Chapter 4: The Dragonnades

Chapter 5: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

Chapter 6: The Prisons and the Galleys

Chapter 7: The “Church of the Desert”

Book 23: Protestantism in England from the Times of Henry VIII.

Chapter 1: The King and the Scholars

Chapter 2: Cardinal Wolsey and the New Testament of Erasmus

Chapter 3: William Tyndale and the English New Testament

Chapter 4: Tyndale’s New Testament Arrives in England

Chapter 5: The Bible and the Cellar at Oxford-Anne Boleyn

Chapter 6: The Divorce-Thomas Bilney, the Martyr

Chapter 7: The Divorce, and Wolsey’s Fall

Chapter 8: Cranmer-Cromwell-The Papal Supremacy Abolished

Chapter 9: The King Declared Head of the Church of England

Chapter 10: Scaffolds-Death of Henry VIII

Chapter 11: The Church of England as Reformed by Cranmer

Chapter 12: Deaths of Protector Somerset and Edward VI

Chapter 13: Restoration of the Pope’s Authority in England

Chapter 14: The Burnings under Mary

Chapter 15: Elizabeth; Restoration of the Protestant Church

Chapter 16: Excommunication of Elizabeth, and Plots of the Jesuits

Chapter 17: The Armada; its Building

Chapter 18: The Armada Arrives off England

Chapter 19: Destruction of the Armada

Chapter 20: Greatness of Protestant England

Book 24: Protestantism in Scotland

Chapter 1: The Darkness and the Daybreak

Chapter 2: Scotland’s First Preacher and Martyr, Patrick Hamilton

Chapter 3: Wishart is Burned, and Knox Comes Forward

Chapter 4: Knox’s Call to the Ministry and First Sermon

Chapter 5: Knox’s Final Return to Scotland

Chapter 6: Establishment of the Reformation in Scotland

Chapter 7: Constitution of the “Kirk“: Arrival of Mary Stuart

Chapter 8: Knox’s Interview with Queen Mary

Chapter 9: Trial of Knox for Treason

Chapter 10: The Last Days of Queen Mary and John Knox

Chapter 11: Andrew Melville; the Tulchan Bishops

Chapter 12: Battles for Presbyterianism and Liberty

Chapter 13: James in England—The Gunpowder Plot

Chapter 14: Death of James VI, and Spiritual Awakening in Scotland

Chapter 15: Charles I and Archbishop Laud; Religious Innovations

Chapter 16: The National Covenant and Assembly of 1638

Chapter 17: Civil War—Solemn League—Westminster Assembly

Chapter 18: Parliament Triumphs, and the King is Betrayed

Chapter 19: Restoration of Charles II, and St. Bartholomew Day, 1662

Chapter 20: Scotland—Middleton’s Tyranny—Act Recissory

Chapter 21: Establishment of Prelacy in Scotland

Chapter 22: Four Hundred Ministers Ejected

Chapter 23: Breach of the “Triple League” and War with Holland

Chapter 24: The Popish Plot, and Death of Charles II

Chapter 25: The First Rising of the Scottish Presbyterians

Chapter 26: The Field-Preaching or “Conventicle”

Chapter 27: Drumclog—Bothwell bridge—The “Killing Times”

Chapter 28: James II—Projects to Restore Popery

Chapter 29: A Great Crisis in England and Christendom

Chapter 30: Protestantism Mounts the Throne of Great Britain

Chronology

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Book 18: History of Protestantism in the Netherlands

Chapter 1: The Netherlands and their Inhabitants

Batavia—Formed by Joint Action of the Rhine and the Sea—Dismal Territory—The First Inhabitants—Belgium—Holland—Their First Struggles with the Ocean—Their Second with theRoman Power—They Pass under Charlemagne—Rise and Greatness of their Commerce—Civic Rights and Liberties—These Threatened by the Austro-Burgundian Emperors—A Divine Principle comes to their aid

Picture: View of a Canal in Holland

Descending from the summits of the Alps, and rolling its floods along the vast plain which extends from the Ural Mountains to the shores of the German Ocean, the Rhine, before finally falling into the sea, is parted into two streams which enclose between them an island of goodly dimensions. This island is the heart of the Low Countries. Its soil spongy, its air humid, it had no attractions [2] to induce man to make it his dwelling, save indeed that nature had strongly fortified it by enclosing it on two of its sides with the broad arms of the disparted river, and on the third and remaining one with the waves of the North Sea. Its earliest inhabitants, it is believed, were Celts. About a century before our era it was left uninhabited; its first settlers being carried away, partly in the rush southward of the first horde of warriors that set out to assail the Roman Empire, and partly by a tremendous inundation of the ocean, which submerged many of the huts which dotted its forlorn surface, and drowned many of its miserable inhabitants. Finding it empty, a German tribe from the Hercynian forest took possession of it, and called it Betauw, that is, the “Good Meadow,” a name that has descended to our day in the appellative Batavia.

North and south of the “Good Meadow” the land is similar in character and origin. It owes its place on the surface of the earth to the joint action of two forces-the powerful current of the Rhine on the one side, continually bringing down vast quantities of materials from the mountains and higher plains, and the tides of the restless ocean on the other, casting up sand and mud from its bed. Thus, in the course of ages, slowly rose the land which was destined in the sixteenth century to be the seat of so many proud cities, and the theater of so many sublime actions.

An expanse of shallows and lagoons, neither land nor water, but a thin consistency, quaking beneath the foot, and liable every spring and winter to the terrible calamities of being drowned by the waves, when the high tides or the fierce tempests heaped up the waters of the North Sea, and to be over-flown by the Rhine, when its floods were swollen by the long-continued rams, what, one asks, tempted the first inhabitant to occupy a country whose conditions were so wretched, and which was liable moreover to be overwhelmed by catastrophes so tremendous? Perhaps they saw in this oozy and herbless expanse the elements of future fertility. Perhaps they deemed it a safe retreat, from which they might issue forth to spoil and ravage, and to which they might retire and defy pursuit. But from whatever cause, both the center island and the whole adjoining coast soon found inhabitants. The Germans occupied the center; the Belgae took possession of the strip of coast stretching to the south, now known as Belgium. The similar strip running off to the north, Holland namely, was possessed by the Frisians, who formed a population in which the German and Celtic elements were blended without uniting.

The youth of these three tribes was a severe one. Their first struggle was with the soil; for while other nations choose their country, the Netherlanders had to create theirs. They began by converting the swamps and quicksands of which they had taken possession into grazing-lands and corn-fields. Nor could they rest even after this task had been accomplished: they had to be continually on the watch against the two great enemies that were ever ready to spring upon them, and rob them of the country which their industry had enriched and their skill embellished, by rearing and maintaining great dykes to defend themselves on the one side from the sea, and on the other from the river.

Their second great struggle was with the Roman power. The mistress of the world, in her onward march over the West, was embracing within her limits the forests of Germany, and the warlike tribes that dwelt in them. It is the pen of Julius Caesar, recording his victorious advance, that first touches the darkness that shrouded this land. When the curtain rises, the tribe of the Nervii is seen drawn up on the banks of the Sambre, awaiting the approach of the master of the world. We see them closing in terrific battle with his legions, and maintaining the fight till a ghastly bank of corpses proclaimed that they had been exterminated rather than subdued.[1] The tribes of Batavia now passed under the yoke of Rome, to which they submitted with great impatience. When the empire began to totter they rose in revolt, being joined by their neighbors, the Frisians and the Belgae, in the hope of achieving their liberty; but the Roman power, though in decay, was still too strong to be shaken by the assault of these tribes, however brave; and it was not till the whole German race, moved by an all-pervading impulse, rose and began their march upon Rome, that they were able, in common with all the peoples of the North, to throw off the yoke of the oppressor.

After four centuries of chequered fortunes, during which the Batavian element was inextricably blended with the Frisian, the Belgic, and the Frank, the Netherlanders, for so we may now call the mixed population, in which however the German element predominated, came under the empire of Charlemagne. They continued under his sway and that of his successors for some time. The empire whose greatness had severely taxed the energies of the father was too heavy for the

[1]Caesar, Comment. de Bello Gallico, lib. 2., cap. 15-30. “Hoc praelio facto, et prope ad internecionem gente, ac nomine Nerviorum redacto,” are the words of the conqueror (lib. 2., cap. 28). Niebuhr, Lectures on Roman History, vol. 3., PD. 43, 44; Lond. and Edin, 1850.

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shoulders of his degenerate sons, and they contrived to lighten the burden by dividing it. Germany was finally severed from France, and in AD 922 Charles the Simple, the last of the Carlovingian line, presented to Count Dirk the northern horn of this territory, the portion now known as Holland, which henceforth became the inheritance of his descendants; and about the same time, Henry the Fowler, of Germany, acquired the sovereignty of the southern portion, together with that of Lotharinga, the modern Lorraine, and thus the territory was broken into two, each part remaining connected with the German Empire; but loosely so, its rulers yielding only a nominal homage to the head of the empire, while they exercised sovereign rights in their own special domain.[2]

The reign of Charlemagne had effaced the last traces of free institutions and government by law which had lingered in Holland and Belgium since the Roman era, and substituted feudalism, or the government of the sword. Commerce began to flow, and from the thirteenth century its elevating influence was felt in the Netherlands. Confederations of trading towns arose, with their charters of freedom, and their leagues of mutual defense, which greatly modified the state of society in Europe. These confederated cities were, in fact, free republics flourishing in the heart of despotic empires. The cities which were among the first to rise into eminence were Ghent and Bruges. The latter became a main entrepot of the trade carried on with the East by way of the Mediterranean. “The wives and daughters of the citizens outvied, in the richness of their dress, that of a queen of France.... At Mechlin, a single individual possessed counting-houses and commercial establishments at Damascus and Grand Cairo.”[3] To Bruges the merchants of Lombardy brought the wares of Asia, and thence were they dispersed among the towns of Northern Europe, and along the shores of the German Sea. “A century later, Antwerp, the successful rival of Venice, could, it is said, boast of almost five hundred vessels daily entering her ports, and two thousand carriages laden with merchandise passing through her gates every week.”[4] Venice, Verona, Nuremberg, and Bruges were the chief links of the golden chain that united the civilised and fertile East with the comparatively rude and unskillful West. In the former the arts had long flourished. There men were expert in all that is woven on the loom or embroidered by the needle; they were able to engrave on iron, and to set precious jewels in cunningly-wrought frames of gold and silver and brass. There, too, the skillful use of the plough and the pruning-hook, combined with a vigorous soil, produced in abundance all kinds of luxuries; and along the channel we have indicated were all these various products poured into countries where arts and husbandry were yet in their infancy.[5]

Such was the condition of Holland and Flanders at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. They had come to rival the East, with which they traded. The surface of their country was richly cultivated. Their cities were numerous; they were enclosed within strong ramparts, and adorned with superb public buildings and sumptuous churches. Their rights and privileges were guaranteed by ancient charters, which they jealously guarded and knew how to defend. They were governed by a senate, which possessed legislative, judicial, and administrative powers, subject to the Supreme Council at Mechlin-as that was to the sovereign authority. The population was numerous, skillful, thriving, and equally expert at handling the tool or wielding the sword. These artisans and weavers were divided into guilds, which elected their own deans or rulers. They were brave, and not a little turbulent. When the bell tolled to arms, the inmate of the workshop could, in a few minutes, transform himself into a soldier; and these bands of artificers and weavers would present the appearance as well as the reality of an army. “Nations at the present day scarcely named,” says Muller, “supported their struggle against great armies with a heroism that reminds us of the valor of the Swiss.”[6]

Holland, lying farther to the north, did not so largely share in the benefits of trade and commerce as the cities of Flanders. Giving itself to the development of its internal resources, it clothed its soil with a fertility and beauty which more southern lands might have envied. Turning to its seas, it reared a race of fishermen, who in process of time developed into the most skillful and adventurous seamen in Europe. Thus were laid the foundations of that naval ascendency which Holland for a time enjoyed, and that great colonial empire of which this dyke-encircled territory was the mother and the mistress. “The common

[2]Muller, Univ. Hist., vol. 2., bk. 14., sec. 13-18.

[3]Stevens, Hist. of the Scot. Church, Rotterdam, pp. 259, 260; Edin., 1833.

[4]Ibid., p. 260.

[5]See “Historical Introduction” to Rise of the Dutch Republic by John Lothrop Motley; Edin. and Lond., 1859.

[6]Muller, Univ. Hist., vol. 2., p. 230.

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opinion is, “says Cardinal Bentivoglio, who was sent as Papal nuncio to the Low Countries in the beginning of the seventeenth century-” The common opinion is that the navy of Holland, in the number of vessels, is equal to all the rest of Europe together.”[7] Others have written that the United Provinces have more ships than houses.[8] And Bentivoglio, speaking of the Exchange of Amsterdam, says that if its harbour was crowded with ships, its piazza was not less so with merchants, “so that the like was not to be seen in all Europe; nay, in all the world.”[9]

By the time the Reformation was on the eve of breaking out, the liberties of the Netherlanders had come to be in great peril. For a century past the Burgundo-Austrian monarchs had been steadily encroaching upon them. The charters under which their cities enjoyed municipal life had become little more than nominal. Their senates were entirely subject to the Supreme Court at Mechlin. The forms of their ancient liberties remained, but the spirit was fast ebbing. The Netherlanders were fighting a losing battle with the empire, which year after year was growing more powerful, and stretching its shadow over the independence of their towns. They had arrived at a crisis in their history. Commerce, trade, liberty, had done all for them they would ever do. This was becoming every day more clear. Decadence had set in, and the Netherlanders would have fallen under the power of the empire and been reduced to vassalage, had not a higher principle come in time to save them from this fate. It was at this moment that a celestial fire descended upon the nation: the country shook off the torpor which had begun to weigh upon it, and girding itself for a great fight, it contended for a higher liberty than any it had yet known.[10]

[7]Relationi del Cardinal Bentivoglio, in Pareigi, 1631; lib. 1., cap. 7, p. 32.

[8]Misson, Travels, vol. 1., p. 4.

[9]Relat. Card. Bentiv., lib. 1., cap. 7, p. 32: “Che sia non solo in Europa, ma in tutto il mondo.”

[10]The Papal nuncio, Bentivoglio, willingly acknowledges their great physical and mental qualities, and praises them alike for their skill in arts and their bravery in war. “Gli huomini, che produce il paese, sono ordinariamente di grande statura; di bello, e candido aspetto, e di corpo vigorose, e robusto. Hanno gli animi non men vigorosi de’ corpi; e cio s’ e veduto in quella si lunga, e si pertinace resistenza, che da loro s’ e fatta all’ armi Spagnuole,” etc. (Relat. Card. Bentiv., lib. 1., cap. 3, pp. 4, 5)

Chapter 2: Introduction of Protestantism into the Netherlands

Power of the Church of Rome in the Low Countries in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries—Ebb in the Fifteenth Century—Causes—Forerunners—Waldenses and Albigenses—Romaunt Version of the Scriptures—Influence of Wicliffe’s Writings and Huss’s Martyrdom—Influence of Commerce, etc—Charles V. and the Netherlands—Persecuting Edicts—Great Number of Martyrs

Picture: View of the High Altar in the Church of Rotterdam

The great struggle for religion and liberty, of which the Netherlands became the theater in the middle of the sixteenth century, properly dates from 1555, when the Emperor Charles V. is seen elevating to the throne, from which he himself has just descended, his son Philip II. In order to the right perception of that momentous conflict, it is necessary that we should rapidly survey the three centuries that preceded it. The Church of Rome in the Netherlands is beheld, in the thirteenth century, flourishing in power and riches. The Bishops of Utrecht had become the Popes of the North. Favoured by the emperors, whose quarrel they espoused against the Popes in the Middle Ages, these ambitious prelates were now all but independent of Rome. “They gave place,” says Brandt, the historian of the Netherlands’ Reformation, “to neither kings nor emperors in the state and magnificence of their court; they reckoned the greatest princes in the Low Countries among their feudatories because they held some land of the bishopric in fee, and because they owed them homage. Accordingly, Baldwin, the second of that name and twenty-ninth bishop of the see, summoned several princes to Utrecht, to receive investiture of the lands that were so holden by them: the Duke of Brabant as first steward; the Count of Flanders as second; the Count of Holland as marshal.”[1] The clergy regulated their rank by the spiritual princedom established at Utrecht. They were the grandees of the land. They monopolised all the privileges but bore none of the burdens of the State. They imposed taxes on others, but they themselves paid taxes to no

[1]Brandt, History of the Reformation in the Low Countries, vol. 1., p. 14; Lond., 1720.

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one. Numberless dues and offerings had already swollen their possessions to an enormous amount, while new and ever-recurring exactions were continually enlarging their territorial domains. Their immoralities were restrained by no sense of shame and by no fear of punishment, seeing that to the opinion of their countrymen they paid no deference, and to the civil and criminal tribunals they owed no accountability. They framed a law, and forced it upon the government, that no charge should be received against a cardinal-bishop, unless supported by seventy-two witnesses; nor against a cardinal-priest, but by forty-four; nor against a cardinal-deacon, but by twenty-seven; nor against the lowest of the clergy, but by seven.[2] If a voice was raised to hint that these servants of the Church would exalt themselves by being a little more humble, and enrich themselves by being a little less covetous, and that charity and meekness were greater ornaments than sumptuous apparel and gaily-caparisoned mules, instantly the ban of the Church was evoked to crush the audacious complainer; and the anathema in that age had terrors that made even those look pale who had never trembled on the battle-field.

But the power, affluence, and arrogance of the Church of Rome in the Low Countries had reached their height; and in the fourteenth century we find an ebb setting in, in that tide which till now had continued at flood. Numbers of the Waldenses and Albigenses, chased from Southern France or from the valleys of the Alps, sought refuge in the cities of the Netherlands, bringing with them the Romaunt version of the Bible, which was translated into Low Dutch rhymes.[3]

The city of Antwerp occupies a most distinguished place in this great movement. So early as 1106, before the disciples of Peter Waldo had appeared in these parts, we find a celebrated preacher, Tanchelinus by name, endeavoring to purge out the leaven of the Papacy, and spread purer doctrine not only in Antwerp, but in the adjoining parts of Brabant and Flanders; and, although vehemently opposed by the priests and by Norbert, the first founder of the order of Premonstratensians, his opinions took a firm hold of some of the finest minds.[4] In the following century, the thirteenth, William Cornelius, also of Antwerp, taught a purer doctrine than the common one on the Eucharistic Sacrament, which he is said to have received from the disciples of Tanchelinus. Nor must we omit to mention Nicolas, of Lyra, a town in the east of Brabant, who lived about 1322, and who impregnated his Commentary on the Bible with the seeds of Gospel truth. Hence the remark of Julius Pflugius, the celebrated Romish doctor[5]-“Si Lyra non lirasset, Lutherus non saltasset.”[6] On the fourteenth century came another sower of the good seed of the Word in the countries of which we speak, Gerard of Groot. Nowhere, in short, had forerunners of the Reformation been so numerous as on this famous seaboard, a fact doubtless to be accounted for, in part at least, by the commerce, the intelligence, and the freedom which the Low Countries then enjoyed.

Voices began to be heard prophetic of greater ones to be raised in after-years. Whence came these voices? From the depth of the convents. The monks became the reprovers and accusers of one another. The veil was lifted upon the darkness that hid the holy places of the Roman Church. In 1290, Henry of Ghent, Archbishop of Tournay, published a book against the Papacy, in which he boldly questioned the Pope’s power to transform what was evil into good. Guido, the forty-second Bishop of Utrecht, refused-rare modesty in those times-the red hat and scarlet mantle from the Pope. He contrasts with Wevelikhoven, the fiftieth bishop of that see, who in 1380 dug the bones of a Lollard out of the grave, and burned them before the gates of his episcopal palace, and cast the ashes into the town ditch. His successor, the fifty-first Bishop of Utrecht, cast into a dungeon a monk named Matthias Grabo, for writing a book in support of the thesis that “the clergy are subject to the civil powers.” The terrified author recanted the doctrine of his book, but the magistrates of several cities esteemed it good and sound notwithstanding. As in the greater Papacy of Rome, so in the lesser Papacy at Utrecht, a schism took place, and rival Popes thundered anathemas at one another; this helped to lower the prestige of the Church in the eyes of the people. Henry Loeder, Prior of the Monastery of Fredesweel, near Northova, wrote to his brother in the following manner- “Dear brother, the love I bear your state, and welfare for the sake of the Blood of Christ, obliges me to take a rod instead of a pen into my hand... I never saw those cloisters flourish and increase in godliness which daily increased in temporal estates and possessions... The filth of your cloister greatly wants the broom and the mop... Embrace the Cross and the Crucified Jesus; therein ye shall find full content.” Near Haarlem was

[2]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 14.

[3]Ibid.

[4]Gerdesius, Hist. Evan. Ren., tom. 3., p. 3; Groning., 1749.

[5]Gerdesius, tom. 3., p. 3.

[6]“If Lyra had not piped, Luther had not danced.”

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the cloister of “The Visitation of the Blessed Lady,” of which John van Kempen was prior. We find him censuring the lives of the monks in these words-“We would be humble, but cannot bear contempt; patient, without oppressions or sufferings; obedient, without subjection; poor, without wanting anything, etc. Our Lord said the kingdom of heaven is to be entered by force.” Henry Wilde, Prior of the Monastery of Bois le Duc, purged the hymn-books of the wanton songs which the monks had inserted with the anthems. “Let them pray for us,” was the same prior wont to say when asked to sing masses for the dead; “our prayers will do them no good.” We obtain a glimpse of the rigour of the ecclesiastical laws from the attempts that now began to be made to modify them. In 1434 we find Bishop Rudolph granting power to the Duke of Burgundy to arrest by his bailiffs all drunken and fighting priests, and deliver them up to the bishop, who promises not to discharge them till satisfaction shall have been given to the duke. He promises farther not to grant the protection of churches and churchyards to murderers and similar malefactors; and that no subject of Holland shall be summoned to appear in the bishop’s court at Utrecht, upon any account whatsoever, if the person so summoned be willing to appear before the spiritual or temporal judge to whose jurisdiction he belongs.[7]

There follow, as it comes nearer the Reformation, the greater names of Thomas a. Kempis and John Wessel. We see them trim their lamp and go onward to show men the Way of Life. It was a feeble light that now began to break over these lands; still it was sufficient to reveal many things which had been unobserved or unthought of during the gross darkness that preceded it. It does not become Churchmen, the barons now began to say, to be so enormously rich, and so effeminately luxurious; these possessions are not less ours than they are theirs, we shall share them with them. These daring barons, moreover, learned to deem the spiritual authority not quite so impregnable as they had once believed it to be, and the consequence of this was that they held the persons of Churchmen in less reverence, and their excommunications in less awe than before. There was planted thus an incipient revolt. The movement received an impulse from the writings of Wicliffe, which began to be circulated in the Low Countries in the end of the fourteenth century.[8] There followed, in the beginning of the next century, the martyrdoms of Huss and Jerome. The light which these two stakes shed over the plains of Bohemia was reflected as far as to the banks of the Rhine and the shores of the North Sea, and helped to deepen the inquiry which the teachings of the Waldenses and the writings of Wicliffe had awakened among the burghers and artisans of the Low Countries. The execution of Huss and Jerome was followed by the Bohemian campaigns. The victories of Ziska spread the terror of the Hussite arms, and to some extent also the knowledge of the Hussite doctrines, over Western Europe. In the great armaments which were raised by the Pope to extinguish the heresy of Huss, numerous natives of Holland and Belgium enrolled themselves; and of these, some at least returned to their native land converts to the heresy they had gone forth to subdue.[9] Their opinions, quietly disseminated among their countrymen, helped to prepare the way for that great struggle in the Netherlands which we are now to record, and, which expanded into so much vaster dimensions than that which had shaken Bohemia in the fifteenth century.

To these causes, which conspired for the awakening of the Netherlands, is to be added the influence of trade and commerce. The tendency of commerce to engender activity of mind, and nourish independence of thought, is too obvious to require that we should dwell upon it. The tiller of the soil seldom permits his thoughts to stray beyond his native acres, the merchant and trader has a whole hemisphere for his mental domain. He is compelled to reflect, and calculate, and compare, otherwise he loses his ventures. He is thus lifted out of the slough in which the agriculturist or the herdsman is content to lie all his days. The Low Countries, as we have said in the previous chapter, were the heart of the commerce of the nations. They were the clearing-house of the world. This vast trade brought with it knowledge as well as riches; for the Fleming could not meet his customers on the wharf, or on the Bourse, without hearing things to him new and strange. He had to do with men of all nations, and he received from them not only foreign coin, but foreign ideas.

The new day was coming apace. Already its signals stood displayed before the eyes of men. One powerful instrumentality after another stood up to give rapid and universal diffusion to the new agencies that were about to be called into existence. Nor have the nations long to wait. A crash is heard, the fall of an ancient empire shakes the earth, and the sacred languages, so long imprisoned within the walls of Constantinople, are liberated,

[7]Brandt, bk. 1., passim.

[8]Ibid., vol. 1., p. 17.

[9]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 19.

[7] [8]

and become again the inheritance of the race. The eyes of men begin to be turned on the sacred page, which may now be read in the very words in which the inspired men of old time wrote it. Not for a thousand years had so fair a morning visited the earth. Men felt after the long darkness that truly “light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” The dawn was pale and chilly in Italy, but in the north of Europe it brought with it, not merely the light of pagan literature, but the warmth and brightness of Christian truth.

We have already seen with what fierce defiance Charles V. flung down the gage of battle to Protestantism. In manner the most public, and with vow the most solemn and awful, he bound himself to extirpate heresy, or to lose armies, treasures, kingdoms, body and soul, in the attempt. Germany, happily, was covered from the consequences of that mortal threat by the sovereign rights of its hereditary princes, who stood between their subjects and that terrible arm that was now uplifted to crush them. But the less fortunate Netherlands enjoyed no such protection. Charles was master there. He could enforce his will in his patrimonial estates, and his will was that no one in all the Netherlands should profess another than the Roman creed.

One furious edict was issued after another, and these were publicly read twice every year, that no one might pretend ignorance.[10] These edicts did not remain a dead letter as in Germany; they were ruthlessly executed, and soon, alas! the Low Countries were blazing with stakes and swimming in blood. It is almost incredible, and yet the historian Meteren asserts that during the last thirty years of Charles’s reign not fewer than 50,000 Protestants were put to death in the provinces of the Netherlands. Grotius, in his Annals, raises the number to 100,000.[11] Even granting that these estimates are extravagant, still they are sufficient to convince us that the number of victims was great indeed. The bloody work did not slacken owing to Charles’s many absences in Spain and other countries. His sister Margaret, Dowager-queen of Hungary, who was appointed regent of the provinces, was compelled to carry out all his cruel edicts. Men and women, whose crime was that they did not believe in the mass, were beheaded, hanged burned, or buried alive. These proceedings were zealously seconded by the divines of Louvain, whom Luther styled “bloodthirsty heretics, who, teaching impious doctrines which they could make good neither by reason nor Scripture, betook themselves to force, and disputed with fire and sword.[12] This terrible work went on from the 23rd of July, 1523, when the proto-martyrs of the provinces were burned in the great square of Brussels,[13] to the day of the emperor’s abdication. The Dowager-queen, in a letter to her brother, had given it as her opinion that the good work of purgation should stop only when to go farther would be to effect the entire depopulation of the country. The “Christian Widow,” as Erasmus styled her, would not go the length of burning the last Netherlander; she would leave a few orthodox inhabitants to repeople the land.

Meanwhile the halter and the axe were gathering their victims so fast, that the limits traced by the regent—wide as they were-bade fair soon to be reached. The genius and activity of the Netherlanders were succumbing to the terrible blows that were being unremittingly dealt them. Agriculture was beginning to languish; life was departing from the great towns; the step of the artisan, as he went to and returned from his factory at the hours of meal, was less elastic, and his eye less bright; the workshops were being weeded of their more skillful workmen; foreign Protestant merchants were fleeing from the country; and the decline of the internal trade kept pace with that of the external commerce.

It was evident to all whom bigotry had not rendered incapable of reflection, that, though great progress had been made towards the ruin of the country, the extinction of heresy was still distant, and likely to be reached only when the land had become a desert, the harbours empty, and the cities silent. The blood with which the tyrant was so profusely watering the Netherlands, was but nourishing the heresy which he sought to drown.

[10]Sleidan, bk. 16., p. 342; Lond., 1689.

[11]Grot., Annal., lib. 1., 17; Amsterdam, 1658. Watson, Philip II, vol. 1., p. 113.

[12]Sleidan, bk. 16., p. 343.

[13]See ante, vol. 1., bk. 9., chap. 3, p. 490.

[9]

Chapter 3: Antwerp: Its Confessors and Martyrs

Antwerp—Its Convent of Augustines—Jacob Spreng—Henry of Zutphen—Convent Razed—A Preacher Drowned—Placards of the Emperor Charles V—Well of Life—Long and Dreadful Series of Edicts—Edict of 1540—The Inquisition—Spread of Lutheranism—Confessors—Martyrdom of John de Bakker

Picture: Nicholas Preaching to the Crowd from a Boat on the Scheldt

Picture: View of Antwerp.

No city did the day that was now breaking over the Low Countries so often touch with its light as Antwerp. Within a year after Luther’s appearance, Jacob Spreng, prior of the Augustinian convent in that town, confessed himself a disciple of the Wittemberg monk, and began to preach the same doctrine. He was not suffered to do so long. In 1519 he was seized in his own convent, carried to Brussels, and threatened with the punishment of the fire. Though his faith was genuine, he had not courage to be a martyr. Vanquished by the fear of death, he consented to read in public his recantation. Being let go, he repaired to Bremen, and there, “walking softly from the memory of his fall,” he passed the remaining years of his life in preaching the Gospel as one of the pastors of that northern town.[1]

The same city and the same convent furnished another Reformer yet more intrepid than Spreng. This was Henry of Zutphen. He, too, had sat at the feet of Luther, and along with his doctrine had carried away no small amount of Luther’s dramatic power in setting it forth. Christ’s office as a Savior he finely put into the following antitheses:-“He became the servant of the law that he might be its master. He took all sin that he might take away sin.[2] He is at once the victim and the vanquisher of death; the captive of hell, yet he it was by whom its gates were burst open.” But though he refused to the sinner any share in the great work of expiating sin, reserving that entirely and exclusively to the Savior, Zutphen strenuously insisted that the believer should be careful to maintain good works. “Away,” he said, “with a dead faith.” His career in Antwerp was brief. He was seized and thrown into prison. He did not deceive himself as to the fate that awaited him. He kept awake during the silent hours of night, preparing for the death for which he looked on the coming day. Suddenly a great uproar arose round his prison. The noise was caused by his townsmen, who had come to rescue him. They broke open his gaol, penetrated to his cell, and bringing him forth, made him escape from the city. Henry of Zutphen, thus rescued from the fires of the Inquisition, visited in the course of his wanderings several provinces and cities, in which he preached the Gospel with great eloquence and success. Eventually he went to Holstein, where, after laboring some time, a mob, instigated by the priests, set upon him and murdered him[3] in the atrociously cruel and barbarous manner we have described in a previous part of our history.[4]

It seemed as if the soil on which the convent of the Augustines in Antwerp stood produced heretics. It must be dug up. In October, 1522, the convent was dismantled. Such of the monks as had not caught the Lutheran disease had quarters provided for them elsewhere. The Host was solemnly removed from a place, the very air of which was loaded with deadly pravity, and the building, like the house of the leper of old, was razed to the ground.[5] No man lodged under that roof any more for ever.

But the heresy was not driven away from Brabant, and the inquisitors began to wreak their vengeance on other objects besides the innocent stones and timbers of heretical monasteries. In the following year (1523) three monks, who had been inmates of that same monastery whose ruins now warned the citizens of Antwerp to eschew Lutheranism as they would the fire, were burned at Brussels.[6] When the fire was kindled, they first recited the Creed; then they chanted the Te Deum Laudamus. This hymn they sang, each chanting the alternate verse, till the flames had deprived them of both voice and life.[7]

In the following year the monks signalised their zeal by a cruel deed. The desire to hear the Gospel continuing to spread in Antwerp and the adjoining

[1]Gerdesius, tom. 3., pp. 23-25.

[2]“Totum peccatum tolerans et tollens.” (Gerdesius, tom. 3., Appendix, p. 18.)

[3]Gerdesius, tom. 3., pp. 28-30.

[4]See ante, vol. 1, bk. 9., chap. 6, p. 506.

[5]“Dirutum est penitusque eversum.” (Gerdesius tom. 3., p. 29.)

[6]See ante, vol. 1., bk. 9., chap. 3, p. 490.

[7]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 45.

[10]

country, the pastor of Meltz, a little place near Antwerp, began to preach to the people. His church was often unable to contain the crowds that came to hear him, and he was obliged to retire with his congregation to the open fields. In one of his sermons, declaiming against the priests of his time, he said:-“We are worse than Judas, for he both sold and delivered the Lord; but we sell him to you, and do not deliver him.” This was doctrine, the public preaching of which was not likely to be tolerated longer than the priests lacked power to stop it. Soon there appeared a placard or proclamation silencing the pastor, as well as a certain Augustinian monk, who preached at times in Antwerp. The assemblies of both were prohibited, and a reward of thirty gold caroli set upon their heads. Nevertheless, the desire for the Gospel was not extinguished, and one Sunday the people convened in great numbers in a ship-building yard on the banks of the Scheldt, in the hope that some one might minister to them the Word of Life. In that gathering was a young man, well versed in the Scriptures, named Nicholas, who seeing no one willing to act as preacher, rose himself to address the people. Entering into a boat that was moored by the river’s brink, he read and expounded to the multitude the, parable of the five loaves and the two small fishes. The thing was known all over the city. It was dangerous that such a man should be at large; and the monks took care that he should preach no second sermon. Hiring two butchers, they waylaid him next day, forced him into a sack, tied it with a cord, and hastily carrying him to the river, threw him in. When the murder was known a thrill of horror ran through the citizens of Antwerp.[8]

Ever since, the emperor’s famous fulmination against Luther, in 1521, he had kept up a constant fire of placards, as they were termed-that is, of persecuting edicts-upon the Netherlands. They were posted up in the streets, read by all, and produced universal consternation and alarm. They succeeded each other at brief intervals; scarcely had the echoes of one fulmination died away when a new and more terrible peal was heard resounding over the startled and affrighted provinces. In April, 1524, came a placard forbidding the printing of any book without the consent of the officers who had charge of that matter.[9] In 1525 came a circular letter from the regent Margaret, addressed to all the monasteries of Holland, enjoining them to send out none but discreet preachers, who would be careful to make no mention of Luther’s name. In March, 1526, came another placard against Lutheranism, and in July of the same year yet another and severer. The preamble of this edict set forth that the “vulgar had been deceived and misled, partly by the contrivance of some ignorant fellows, who took upon them to preach the Gospel privately, without the leave of their superiors, explaining the same, together with other holy writings, after their own fancies, and not according to the orthodox sense of the doctors of the Church, racking their brains to produce new-fangled doctrines. Besides these, divers secular and regular priests presumed to ascend the pulpit, and there to relate the errors and sinister notions of Luther and his adherents, at the same time reviving the heresies of ancient times, and some that had likewise been propagated in these countries, recalling to men’s memories the same, with other false and damnable opinions that had never till now been heard, thought, or spoken of.. Wherefore the edict forbids, in the emperor’s name, all assemblies in order to read, speak, confer, or preach concerning the Gospel or other holy writings in Latin, Flemish, or in the Walloon languages-as likewise to preach, teach, or in any sort promote the doctrines of Martin Luther; especially such as related to the Sacrament of the altar, or to confession, and other Sacraments of the Church, or anything else that affected the honour of the holy mother Mary, and the saints and saintesses, and their images..By this placard it was further ordered that, together with the books of Luther, etc., and all their adherents of the same sentiments, all the gospels, epistles, prophecies, and other books of the Holy Scriptures in High Dutch, Flemish, Walloon, or French, that had marginal notes, or expositions according to the doctrine of Luther, should be brought to some public place, and there burned; and that whoever should presume to keep any of the aforesaid books and writings by them after the promulgation of this placard should forfeit life and goods.”[10]

In 1528 a new placard was issued against prohibited books, as also against monks who had abandoned their cloister. There followed in 1529 another and more severe edict, condemning to death without pardon or reprieve all who had not brought their Lutheran books to be burned, or had otherwise contravened the former edicts. Those who had relapsed after having abjured their errors were to die by fire; as for others, the men were to die by the sword, and the women by the pit -

[8]Gerdesius, tom. 3., p. 37. Brandt, vol. 1., p. 51.

[9]Gerdesius, tom. 3., p. 39.

[10]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 56. Gerdesius, tom. 3., p. 56.

[11]

that is, they were to be buried alive. To harbour or conceal a heretic was death and the forfeiture of goods. Informers were to have one-half of the estates of the accused on conviction; and those who were commissioned to put the placard in execution were to proceed, not with “the tedious for-realities of trial,” but by summary process.[11]

It was about this time that Erasmus addressed a letter to the inhabitants of the Low Countries, in which he advised them thus:-“Keep yourselves in the ark, that you do not perish in the deluge. Continue in the little ship of our Savior, lest ye be swallowed by the waves. Remain in the fold of the Church, lest ye become a prey to the wolves or to Satan, who is always going to and fro, seeking whom he may devour. Stay and see what resolutions will be taken by the emperor, the princes, and afterwards by a General Council.”[12] It was thus that the man who was reposing in the shade exhorted the men who were in the fire. As regarded a “General Council,” for which they were bidden to wait, the Reformers had had ample experience, and the result had been uniform-the mountain had in every case brought forth a mouse. They were able also by this time to guess, one should think, what the emperor was likely to do for them. Almost every year brought with it a new edict, and the space between each several fulmination was occupied in giving practical application to these decrees-that is, in working the axe, the halter, the stake, and the pit.

A new impetus was given about this time to the Reform movement, by the translation of Luther’s version of the Scriptures into Low Dutch. It was not well executed; nevertheless, being read in their assemblies, the book instructed and comforted these young converts. Many of the priests who had been in office for years, but who had never read a single line of the Bible, good-naturedly taking it for granted that it amply authenticated all that the Church taught, dipped into it, and being much astonished at its contents, began to bring both their life and doctrine into greater accordance with it. One of the printers of this first edition of the Dutch Bible was condemned to death for his pains, and died by the axe. Soon after this, some one made a collection of certain passages from the Scriptures, and published them under the title of “The Well of Life.” The little book, with neither note nor comment, contained but the words of Scripture itself; nevertheless it was very obnoxious to the zealous defenders of Popery. A “Well of Life” to others, it was a Well of Death to their Church and her rites, and they resolved on stopping it. A Franciscan friar of Brabant set out on purpose for Amsterdam, where the little book had been printed, and buying up the whole edition, he committed it to the flames. He had only half done his work, however. The book was printed in other towns. The Well would not be stopped; its water would gush out; the journey and the expense which the friar had incurred had been in vain.

We pass over the edicts that were occasionally seeing the light during the ten following years, as well as the Anabaptist opinions and excesses, with the sanguinary wars to which they led. These we have fully related in a previous part of our history.[13] In 1540 came a more atrocious edict than any that had yet been promulgated. The monks and doctors of Louvain, who spared no pains to root out the Protestant doctrine, instigated the monarch to issue a new placard, which not only contained the substance of all former edicts, but passed them into a perpetual law. It was dated from Brussels, the 22nd September, 1540, and was to the following effect:-That the heretic should be incapable of holding or disposing of property; that all gifts, donations, and legacies made by him should be null and void; that informers who themselves were heretics should be pardoned that once; and it especially revived and put in force against Lutherans an edict that had been promulgated in 1535, and specially directed against Anabaptists—namely, that those who abandoned their errors should have the privilege, if men, of dying by the sword; and if women, of being buried alive; such as should refuse to recant were to be burned.[14]

It was an aggravation of these edicts that they were in violation of the rights of Holland. The emperor promulgated them in his character of Count of Holland; but the ancient Counts of Holland could issue no decree or law till first they had obtained the consent of the nobility and Commons. Yet the emperor issued these placards on his own sole authority, and asked leave of no one. Besides, they were a virtual establishment of the Inquisition. They commanded that when evidence was lacking, the accused should themselves be put to the question-that is, by torture or other inquisitorial methods. Accordingly, in 1522, and while only at the beginning of the terrible array of edicts which we have recited, the emperor appointed Francis van Hulst to make strict inquiry into people’s opinions in religious matters all

[11]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 57, 58.

[12]Ibid.

[13]See ante, vol. 1., bk. 9., chap. 8; and vol. 2., bk. 12., chap. 2.

[14]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 79; Gerdesius, tom. 3., p, 143.

[12] [13]

throughout the Netherlands; and he gave him as his fellow-commissioner, Nicolas van Egmont, a Carmelite monk. These two worthies Erasmus happily and characteristically hit off thus:—“Hulst,” said he, is a wonderful enemy to learning,” and “Egmont is a madman with a sword in his hand.” “These men,” says Brandt, “first threw men into prison, and then considered what they should lay to their charge.”[15]

Meanwhile the Reformed doctrine was spreading among the inhabitants of Holland, Brabant, and Flanders. At Bois-le-Duc all the Dominican monks were driven out of the city. At Antwerp, in spite of the edicts of the emperor, the conventicles were kept up. The learned Hollander, Dorpius, Professor of Divinity at Louvain, was thought to favor Luther’s doctrine, and he, as well as Erasmus, was in some danger of the stake. Nor did the emperor’s secretary at the Court of Brabant, Philip de Lens, escape the suspicion of heresy. At Naarden, Anthony Frederick became a convert to Protestantism, and was followed by many of the principal inhabitants-among others, Nicolas Quich, under-master of the school there. At Utrecht the Reformation was embraced by Rhodius, Principal of the College of St. Jerome, and in Holland by Cornelius Honius, a learned civilian, and counsellor in the Courts of Holland. Honius interpreted the text, “This is my body,” by the words, “This signifies my body”-an interpretation which he is said to have found among the papers of Jacob Hook, sometime Dean of Naldwick, and which was believed to have been handed down from hand to hand for two hundred years.[16] Among the disciples of Honius was William Gnaphaeus, Rector of the Gymnasium at the Hague. To these we may add Cornelius Grapheus, Secretary of Antwerp, a most estimable man, and an enlightened friend of the Reformation.

The first martyr of the Reformation in Holland deserves more particular notice. He was John de Bakker, of Woerden, which is a little town between Utrecht and Leyden. He was a priest of the age of twenty-seven years, and had incurred

[15]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 42.

[16]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 52.

[14]

the suspicion of heresy by speaking against the edicts of the emperor, and by marrying. Joost Laurence, a leading member of the Inquisition, presided at his trial. He declared before his judges that “he could submit to no rule of faith save Holy Writ, in the sense of the Holy Ghost, ascertained in the way of interpreting Scripture by Scripture.” He held that “men were not to be forced to ‘come in,’ otherwise than God forces them, which is not by prisons, stripes, and death, but by gentleness, and by the strength of the Divine Word, a force as soft and lovely as it is powerful.” Touching the celibacy of priests, concerning which he was accused, he did “not find it enjoined in Scripture, and an angel from heaven could not, he maintained, introduce a new article of faith, much less the Church, which was subordinate to the Word of God, but had no authority over it.” His aged father, who was churchwarden—although after this expelled from his office-was able at times to approach his son, as he stood upon his trial, and at these moments the old man would whisper into his ear, “Be strong, and persevere in what is good; as for me, I am contented, after the example of Abraham, to offer up to God my dearest child, that never offended me.”

The presiding judge condemned him to die. The next day, which was the 15th of September, 1525, he was led out upon a high scaffold, where he was divested of his clerical garments, and dressed in a short yellow coat. “They put on his head,” says the Dutch Book of Martyrs, “a yellow hat, with flaps like a fool’s cap. When they were leading him away to execution,” continues the martyrologist, “as he passed by the prison where many more were shut up for the faith, he cried with a loud voice,’ Behold! my dear brethren, I have set my foot upon the threshold of martyrdom; have courage, like brave soldiers of Jesus Christ, and being stirred up by my example, defend the truths of the Gospel against all unrighteousness.’ He had no sooner said this than he was answered by a shout of joy, triumph, and clapping of hands by the prisoners; and at the same time they honoured his martyrdom with ecclesiastical hymns, singing the Te Deum Laudamus, Certamen Magnum, and O beata Martyrum Solemnia. Nor did they cease till he had given up the ghost. When he was at the stake, he cried,’ O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?’ And again, ‘Death is swallowed up in the victory of Christ.’ And last of all, ‘Lord Jesus, forgive them, for they know not what they do. O Son of God! remember me, and have mercy upon me.’ And thus, after they had stopped his breath, he departed as in a sweet sleep, without any motions or convulsions of his head and body, or contortions of his eyes. This was the end of John de Bakker, the first martyr in Holland for the doctrine of Luther. The next clay Bernard the monk, Gerard Wormer, William of Utrecht, and perhaps also Gnaphaeus himself, were to have been put to death, had not the constancy of our proto-martyr softened a little the minds of his judges.”[17]

[17]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 53.

Chapter 4: Abdication of Charles V. and Accession of Philip II.

Decrepitude of the Emperor—Hall of Brabant Palace—Speech of the Emperor—Failure of his Hopes and Labours—Philip II—His Portrait—Slender Endowments—Portrait of William of Orange—Other Netherland Nobles—Close of Pageant

In the midst of his cruel work, and, we may say, in the midst of his years, the emperor was overtaken by old age. The sixteenth century is waxing in might around him; its great forces are showing no sign of exhaustion or decay; on the contrary, their rigour is growing from one year to another; it is plain that they are only in the opening of their career, while in melancholy contrast Charles V. is closing his, and yielding to the decrepitude that is creeping over himself and his empire. The scepter and the faggot-so closely united in his case, and to be still more closely united in that of his successor—he must hand over to his son Philip. Let us place ourselves in the hall where the act of abdication is about to take place, and be it ours not to record the common-places of imperial flattery, so lavishly bestowed on this occasion, nor to describe the pomps under which the greatest [15] monarch, of his age so adroitly hid his fall, but to sketch the portraits of some of those men who await a great part in the future, and whom we shall frequently meet in the scenes that are about to open.

We enter the great hall of the old palace of Brabant, in Brussels. It is the 25th of October, 1555, and this day the Estates of the Netherlands have met here, summoned by an imperial edict, to be the witnesses of the surrender of the sovereignty of his realms by Charles to his son. With the act of abdication one tragedy closes, and another and bloodier tragedy begins. No one in that glittering throng could forecast the calamitous future which was coming along with the new master of the Spanish monarchy. Charles V. enters the gorgeously tapestried hall, leaning his arm on the shoulder of William of Nassau. Twenty-five years before, we saw the emperor enter Augsburg, bestriding a steed of “brilliant whiteness,” and exciting by his majestic port, his athletic frame, and manly countenance, the enthusiasm of the spectators, who, with a touch of exaggeration pardonable in the circumstances, pronounced him “the handsomest man in the empire.” And now what a change in Charles! How sad the ravages which toil and care have, during these few years, made on this iron frame! The bulky mould in which the outer man of Charles was cast still remains to him-the ample brow, the broad chest, the muscular limbs; but the force that animated that powerful framework, and enabled it to do such feats in the tournament, the bull-ring, and the battle-field, has departed. His limbs totter, he has to support his steps with a crutch, his hair is white, his eyes have lost their brightness, his shoulders stoop-in short, age has withered and crippled him all over; and yet he has seen only fifty-five years. The toils that had worn him down he briefly and affectingly summarised in his address to the august assemblage before him. Resting this hand on his crutch, and that on the shoulder of the young noble by his side, he proceeds to count up forty expeditions undertaken by him since he was seventeen-nine to Germany, six to Spain, seven to Italy, four to France, ten to the Netherlands, two to England, and two to Africa. He had made eleven voyages by sea; he had fought four battles, won victories, held Diets, framed treaties—so ran the tale of work. He had passed nights and nights in anxious deliberation over the growth of Protestantism, and he had sought to alleviate the mingled mortification and alarm its progress caused him, by fulminating one persecuting edict after another in the hope of arresting it.

In addition to marches and battles, thousands of halters and stakes had he erected; but of these he is discreetly silent. He is silent too regarding the success which had crowned these mighty efforts and projects. Does he retire because he has succeeded? No; he retires because he has failed. His infirm frame is but the image of his once magnificent empire, over which decrepitude and disorder begin to creep. One young in years, and alert in body, is needed to recruit those armies which battle has wasted, to replenish that exchequer which so many campaigns have made empty, to restore the military prestige which the flight, from Innspruck and succeeding disasters have tarnished, to quell the revolts that are springing up in the various kingdoms which form his vast monarchy, and to dispel those dark clouds which his eye but too plainly sees to be gathering all round the horizon, and which, should he, with mind enfeebled and body crippled, continue to linger longer on the scene, will assuredly burst in ruin. Such is the true meaning of that stately ceremonial in which the actors played so adroitly, each his part, in the Brabant palace at Brussels, on the 25th of October, 1555. The tyrant apes the father; the murderer of his subjects would fain seem the paternal ruler; the disappointed, baffled, fleeing opponent of Protestantism puts on the airs of the conqueror, and strives to hide defeat under the pageantries of State, and the symbols of victory. The closing scene of Charles V. is but a repetition of Julian’s confession of discomfiture-“Thou hast overcome, O Galilean.”

We turn to the son, who, in almost all outward respects, presents a complete contrast to the father. If Charles was prematurely old, Philip, on the other hand, looked as if he never had been young. He did not attain to middle height. His small body was mounted on thin legs. Nature had not fitted him to shine in either the sports of the tournament or the conflicts of the battle-field; and both he shunned, he had the ample brow, the blue eyes, and the aquiline nose of his father; but these agreeable features were forgotten in the ugliness of the under part of his face. His lower jaw protruded. It was a Burgundian deformity, but in Philip’s case it had received a larger than the usual family development. To this disagreeable feature was added another repulsive one, also a family peculiarity, a heavy hanging under-lip, which enlarged the apparent size of his mouth, and strengthened the impression, which the unpleasant protrusion of the jaw made on the spectator, of animal voracity and savageness.

The puny, meagre, sickly-looking man who stood [16] beside the warlike and once robust form of Charles, was not more unlike his father in body than he was unlike him in mind. Not one of his father’s great qualities did he possess. He lacked his statesmanship; he had no knowledge of men, he could not enter into their feelings, nor accommodate himself to their ways, nor manifest any sympathy in what engaged and engrossed them; he, therefore, shunned them. He had the shy, shrinking air of the valetudinarian, and looked around with something like the scowl of the misanthrope on his face. Charles moved about from province to province of his vast dominions, speaking the language and conforming to the manners of the people among whom he chanced for the time to be; he was at home in all places. Philip was a stranger everywhere, save in Spain. He spoke no language but his mother tongue. Amid the gay and witty Italians-amid the familiar and courteous Flemings-amid the frank and open Germans-Philip was still the Spaniard: austere, haughty, taciturn, unapproachable. Only one quality did he share with his father-the intense passion, namely, for extinguishing the Reformation.[1]

From the two central figures we turn to glance at a third, the young noble on whose shoulder the emperor is leaning. He is tall and well-formed, with a lofty brow, a brown eye, and a peaked beard. His service in camps has bronzed his complexion, and given him more the look of a Spaniard than a Fleming. He is only in his twenty-third year, but the quick eye of Charles had discovered the capacity of the young soldier, and placed him in command of the army on the frontier, where resource and courage were specially needed, seeing he had there to confront some of the best generals of France. Could the emperor, who now leaned so confidingly on his shoulder, have foreseen his future career, how suddenly would he have withdrawn his arm! The man on whom he reposed was destined to be the great antagonist of his son. Despotism and Liberty stood embodied in the two forms on either hand of the abdicating emperor-Philip, and William, Prince of Orange; for it was he on whom Charles leaned. The contest between them was to shake Christendom, bring down from its pinnacle of power that great monarchy which Charles was bequeathing to his son, raise the little Holland to a pitch of commercial prosperity and literary glory which Spain had never known, and leave to William a name in the wars of liberty far surpassing that which Charles had won by his many campaigns-a name which can perish only with the Netherlands themselves.

Besides the three principal figures there were others in that brilliant gathering, who were either then, or soon to be, celebrated throughout Europe, and whom we shall often meet in the stirring scenes that are about to open. In the glittering throng around the platform might be seen the bland face of the Bishop of Arras; the tall form of Lamoral of Egmont, with his long dark hair and soft eye, the representative of the ancient Frisian kings; the bold but sullen face, and fan-shaped beard, of Count Horn; the debauched Brederode; the infamous Noircarmes, on whose countenance played the blended lights of ferocity and greed; the small figure of the learned Viglius, with his yellow hair and his green glittering eye, and round rosy face, from which depended an ample beard; and, to close our list, there was the slender form of the celebrated Spanish grandee, Ruy Gomez, whose coal-black hair and burning eye were finely set off by a face which intense application had rendered as colourless almost as the marble.

The pageant was at an end. Charles had handed over to another that vast possession of dominion which had so severely taxed his manhood, and which was crushing his age. The princes, knights, warriors, and counsellors have left the hall, and gone forth to betake them each to his own several road-Charles to the monastic cell which he had interposed between him and the grave; Philip to that throne from which he was to direct that fearful array of armies, inquisitors, and executioners, that was to make Europe swim in blood; William of Orange to prepare for that now not distant struggle, which he saw to be inevitable if bounds were to be set to the vast ambition and fanatical fury of Spain, and some remnants of liberty preserved in Christendom. Others went forth to humbler yet important tasks; some to win true glory by worthy deeds, others to leave behind them names which should be an execration to posterity; but nearly all of them to expire, not on the bed of peace, but on the battle-field, on the scaffold, or by the poignard of the assassin.

[1]Badovaro MS., apud Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, pt. 1., chap. 1; Edin., 1859.

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Chapter 5: Philip Arranges the Government of the Netherlands, and Departs for Spain

Philip II. Renews the Edict of 1535 of his Father—Other Atrocious Edicts—Further Martyrdoms—Inquisition introduced into the Low Countries—Indignation and Alarm of the Netherlanders—Thirteen New Bishops—The Spanish Troops to be left in the Country—Violations of the Netherland Charters—Bishop of Arras—His Craft and Ambition—Popular Discontent—Margaret, Duchess of Parma, appointed Regent—Three Councils—Assembly of the States at Ghent—The States request the Suppression of the Edicts—Anger of Philip—He sets Sail from Flushing—Storm—Arrival in Spain

Picture: The Emperor Charles V. Addressing the Estates on Resigning the Crown to his Son

Some few years of comparative tranquillity were to intervene between the accession of Philip II., and the commencement of those terrible events which made his reign one long dark tragedy. But even now, though but recently seated on the throne, one startling and ominous act gave warning to the Netherlands and to Europe of what was in store for them under the austere, bigoted, priest-ridden man, whom half a world had the misfortune to call master. In 1559, four years after his accession, Philip renewed that atrociously inhuman edict which his father had promulgated in 1540. This edict had imported into the civilised Netherlands the disgusting spectacles of savage lands; it kept the gallows and the stake in constant operation, and made such havoc in the ranks of the friends of freedom of conscience, that the more moderate historians have estimated the number of its victims, as we have already said, at 50,000.

The commencement of this work, as our readers know, was in 1521, when the emperor issued at Worms his famous edict against “Martin,” who was “not a man, but a devil under the form of a man.” That bolt passed harmlessly over Luther’s head, not because being “not a man,” but a spirit, even the imperial sword could not slay him, but simply because he lived on German soil, where the emperor might issue as many edicts as he pleased, but could not execute one of them without the consent of the princes. But the shaft that missed Luther struck deep into the unhappy subjects of Charles’s Paternal Estates. “Death or forfeiture of goods” was the sentence decreed against all Lutherans in the Netherlands, and to effect the unsparing and vigorous execution of the decree, a new court was erected in Belgium, which bore a startling resemblance to the Inquisition of Spain. In Antwerp, in Brussels, and in other towns piles began straightway to blaze.

The fires once kindled, there followed similar edicts, which kept the flames from going out. These made it death to pray with a few friends in private; death to read a page of the Scriptures; death to discuss any article of the faith, not on the streets only, but in one’s own house; death to mutilate an image; death to have in one’s possession any of the writings of Luther, or Zwingle, or Oecolampadius; death to express doubt respecting the Sacraments of the Church, the authority of the Pope, or any similar dogma. After this, in 1535, came the edict of which we have just made mention, consigning to the horrors of a living grave even repentant heretics, and to the more dreadful horrors, as they were deemed, of the stake, obstinate ones. There was no danger of these cruel laws remaining inoperative, even had the emperor been less in earnest than he was. The Inquisition of Cologne, the canons of Louvain, and the monks of Mechlin saw to their execution; and the obsequiousness of Mary of Hungary, the regent of the kingdom, pushed on the bloody work, nor thought of pause till she should have reached the verge of “entire depopulation.”

When Philip II. re-enacted the edict of 1540, he re-enacted the whole of that legislation which had disgraced the last thirty years of Charles’s reign, and which, while it had not extinguished, nor even lessened the Lutheranism against which it was directed, had crippled the industry and commerce of the Low Countries. There had been a lull in the terrible work of beheading and burning men for conscience sake during the few last years of the emperor’s reign; Charles’s design, doubtless, being to smooth the way for his son. The fires were not extinguished, but they were lowered; the scaffolds were not taken down, but the blood that flooded them was less deep; and as during the last years of Charles, so also during the first years of Philip, the furies of persecution seemed to slumber. But now they awoke; and not only was the old condition of things brought back, but a new machinery, more sure, swift, and deadly than that in use under Charles, was constructed to carry out the edicts which Philip had published anew. The emperor had established a court in Flanders that sufficiently resembled the Inquisition; but Philip II. made a [18] still nearer approach to that redoubtable institution, which has ever been the pet engine of the bigot and persecutor, and the execration of all free men. The court now established by Philip was, in fact, the Inquisition. It did not receive the name, it is true; but it was none the less the Inquisition, and lacked nothing which the “Holy Office” in Spain possessed. Like it, it had its dungeons and screws and racks. It had its apostolic inquisitors, its secretaries and sergeants. It had its familiars dispersed throughout the Provinces, and who acted as spies and informers. It apprehended men on suspicion, examined them by torture, and condemned them without confronting them with the witnesses, or permitting them to lead proof of their innocence. It permitted the civil judges to concern themselves with prosecutions for heresy no farther than merely to carry out the sentences the inquisitors had pronounced. The goods of the victims were confiscated, and denunciations were encouraged by the promise of rewards, and also the assurance of impunity to informers who had been co-religionists of the accused.

Even among the submissive natives of Italy and Spain, the establishment of the Inquisition had encountered opposition; but among the spirited and wealthy citizens of the Netherlands, whose privileges had been expanding, and whose love of liberty had been growing, ever since the twelfth century, the introduction of a court like this was regarded with universal horror, and awakened no little indignation. One thing was certain, Papal Inquisition and Netherland freedom could not stand together. The citizens beheld, in long and terrible vista, calamity coming upon calamity; their dwellings entered at midnight by masked familiars, their parents and children dragged to secret prisons, their civic dignitaries led through the streets with halters round their necks, the foreign Protestant merchants fleeing from their country, their commerce dying, autos da fe blazing in all their cities, and liberty, in the end of the day, sinking under an odious and merciless tyranny.

There followed another measure which intensified the alarm and anger of the Netherlanders. The number of bishops was increased by Philip from four to seventeen. The existing sees were those of Arras, Cambray, Tournay, and Utrecht; to these thirteen new sees were added, making the number of bishoprics equal to that of the Provinces. The bull of Pius IV., ratified within a few months by that of Paul IV., stated that “the enemy of mankind being abroad, and the Netherlands, then under the sway of the beloved son of his Holiness, Philip the Catholic, being compassed about with heretic and schismatic nations, it was believed that the eternal welfare of the land was in great danger;” hence the new laborers sent forth into the harvest. The object of the measure was transparent; nor did its authors affect to conceal that it was meant to strengthen the Papacy in Flanders, and extend the range of its right arm, the Inquisition. These thirteen new bishops were viewed by the citizens but as thirteen additional inquisitors

These two tyrannical steps necessitated a third. Philip saw it advisable to retain a body of Spanish troops in the country to compel submission to the new arrangements. The number of Spanish soldiers at that moment in Flanders was not great: they amounted to only 4,000: but they were excellently disciplined: the citizens saw in them the sharp end of the wedge that was destined to introduce a Spanish army, and reduce their country under a despotism; and in truth such was Philip’s design. Besides, these troops were insolent and rapacious to a degree. The inhabitants of Zealand refused to work on their dykes, saying they would rather that the ocean should swallow them up at once, than that they should be devoured piece-meal by the avarice and cruelty of the Spanish soldiers.[1]

The measures adopted by Philip caused the citizens the more irritation and discontent, from the fact that they were subversive of the fundamental laws of the Provinces. At his accession Philip had taken an oath to uphold all the chartered rights of the Netherlanders; but the new edicts traversed every one of these rights. He had sworn not to raise the clergy in the Provinces above the state in which he found them. In disregard of his solemn pledge, he had increased the ecclesiastical dioceses from four to seventeen. This was a formidable augmentation of the clerical force. The nobles looked askance on the new spiritual peers who had come to divide with them their influence; the middle classes regarded them as clogs on their industry, and the artisans detested them as spies on their freedom.

The violation of faith on the part of their monarch rankled in their bosoms, and inspired them with gloomy forebodings as regarded the future. Another fundamental law, ever esteemed by the Netherlanders among the most valuable of their privileges, and which Philip had sworn to respect, did these new arrangements contravene. It was unlawful to bring a foreign soldier into the country. Philip, despite his oath, refused to withdraw his Spanish troops. So long as they remained, the Netherlanders well knew that the door stood open for the entrance of a much larger

[1]Watson, Philip ll., vol. 1., p. 118,

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force. It was also provided in the ancient charters that the citizens should be tried before the ordinary courts and by the ordinary judges. But Philip had virtually swept all these courts away, and substituted in their room a tribunal of most anomalous and terrific powers: a tribunal that sat in darkness, that permitted those it dragged to its bar to plead no law, to defend themselves by no counsel, and that compelled the prisoner by torture to become his own accuser. Nor was this court required to assign, either to the prisoner himself or to the public, any reasons for the dreadful and horrible sentences it was in the habit of pronouncing. It was allowed the most unrestrained indulgence in a capricious and murderous tyranny. The ancient charters had farther provided that only natives should serve in the public offices, and that foreigners should be ineligible. Philip paid as little respect to this as to the rest of their ancient usages and rights. Introducing a body of foreign ecclesiastics and monks, he placed the lives and properties of his subjects of the Netherlands at the disposal of these strangers.

The ferment was great: a storm was gathering in the Low Countries: nor does one wonder when one reflects on the extent of the revolution which had been accomplished, and which outraged all classes. The hierarchy had been suddenly and portentously expanded: the tribunals had been placed in the hands of foreigners: in the destruction of their charters, the precious acquisitions of centuries had been swept away, and the citadel of their freedom razed. A foreign army was on their soil. The Netherlanders saw in all this a complete machinery framed and set up on purpose to carry out the despotism of the edicts.

The blame of the new arrangements was generally charged on the Bishop of Arras. He was a plausible, crafty, ambitious man, fertile in expedients, and even of temper. He was the ablest of the counsellors of Philip, who honoured him with his entire confidence, and consulted him on all occasions. Arras was by no means anxious to be thought the contriver, or even prompter, of that scheme of despotism which had supplanted the liberties of his native land; but the more he protested, the more did the nation credit him with the plan. To him had been assigned the place of chief authority among the new bishops, the Archbishopric of Mechlin. He was coy at first of the proffered dignity, and Philip had to urge him before he would accept the archiepiscopal mitre. “I only accepted it,” we find him afterwards writing to the king, “that I might not live in idleness, doing nothing for God and your Majesty.” If his See of Mechlin brought him labor, which he professed to wish, it brought him what he feigned not to wish, but which nevertheless he greedily coveted, enormous wealth and vast influence; and when the people saw him taking kindly to his new post, and working his way to the management of all affairs, and the control of the whole kingdom, they were but the more confirmed in their belief that the edicts, the new bishops, the Inquisition, and the Spanish soldiers had all sprung from his fertile brain. The Netherlanders had undoubtedly to thank the Bishop of Arras; for the first, the edicts namely, and these were the primal fountains of that whole tyranny that was fated to devastate the Low Countries. As regards the three last, it is not so clear that he had counselled their adoption. Nevertheless the nation persisted in regarding him as the chief conspirator against its liberties; and the odium in which he was held increased from day to day. Discontent was ripening into revolt.

Philip II. was probably the less concerned at the storm, which he could not but see was gathering, inasmuch as he contemplated an early retreat before it. He was soon to depart for Spain, and leave others to contend with the great winds he had unchained.

Before taking his departure, Philip looked round him for one whom he might appoint regent of this important part of his dominions in his absence. His choice lay between Christina, Duchess of Lorraine (his cousin), and Margaret, Duchess of Parma, a natural daughter of Charles V. He fixed at last on the latter, the Duchess of Parma. The Duchess of Lorraine would have been the wiser ruler; the Duchess of Parma, Philip knew, would be the more obsequious one. Her duchy was surrounded by Philip’s Italian dominions, and she was willing, moreover, to send her son-afterwards the celebrated Alexander Farnese-on pretense of being educated at the court of Spain, but in reality as a pledge that she would execute to the letter the injunctions of Philip in her government of the Provinces. Though far away, the king took care to retain a direct and firm grasp of the Netherlands.[2]

Under Margaret as regent, three Councils were organised-a Council of Finance, a Privy Council, and a Council of State, the last being the one of highest authority. These three Councils were appointed on the pretense of assisting the regent in her government of the Provinces, but in reality to mask her arbitrary administration by lending it the air of the popular will. It was meant that the

[2]Relat. Card. Bent., lib. 2., cap. 1, p. 45.

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government of the Provinces should possess all the simplicity of absolutism. Philip would order, Margaret would execute, and the Councils would consent; meanwhile the old charters of freedom would be sleeping their deep sleep in the tomb that Philip had dug for them; and woe to the man who should attempt to rouse them from their slumber!

Before setting sail, Philip convoked an assembly of the States at Ghent, in order to deliver to them his parting instructions. Attended by a splendid retinue, Philip presided at their opening meeting, but as he could not speak the tongue of the Flemings, the king addressed the convention by the mouth of the Bishop of Arras. The orator set forth, with that rhetorical grace of which he was a master, that “intense affection” which Philip bore to the Provinces; he next craved earnest attention to the three millions of gold florins which the king had asked of them; and these preliminaries dispatched, the bishop entered upon the great topic of his harangue, with a fervor that showed how much this matter lay on the heart of his master. The earnestness of the bishop, or rather of Philip, can be felt only by giving his words. “At this moment,”, said he, “many countries, and particularly the lands in the immediate neighborhood, were greatly infested by various ‘new, reprobate, and damnable sects;’ as these sects, proceeding from the foul fiend, father of discord, had not failed to keep those kingdoms in perpetual dissension and misery, to the manifest displeasure of God Almighty; as his Majesty was desirous to avert such terrible evils from his own realms, according to his duty to the Lord God, who would demand reckoning from him hereafter for the well-being of the Provinces; as all experience proved that change of religion ever brought desolation and confusion to the commonweal; as low persons, beggars, and vagabonds, under color of religion, were accustomed to traverse the land for the purpose of plunder and disturbance; as his Majesty was most desirous of following in the footsteps of his lord and father; as it would be well remembered what the emperor had said to him on the memorable occasion of his abdication, therefore his Majesty had commanded the regent Margaret of Parma, for the sake of religion and the glory of God, accurately and exactly to cause to be enforced the edicts and decrees made by his Imperial Majesty, and renewed by his present Majesty, for the extirpation of all sects and heresies.”[3] The charge laid on the regent Margaret was extended to all governors, councillors and others in authority, who were enjoined to trample heresy and heretics out of existence.

The Estates listened with intense anxiety, expecting every moment to hear Philip say that he would withdraw the Spanish troops, that he would lighten their heavy taxation, and that he would respect their ancient charters, which indeed he had sworn to observe. These were the things that lay near the hearts of the Netherlanders, but upon these matters Philip was profoundly silent. The convention begged till tomorrow to return its answer touching the levy of three millions which the, king had asked for.

On the following day the Estates met in presence of the king, and each province made answer separately. The Estate of Artois was the first to read its address by its representative. They would cheerfully yield to the king, not only the remains of their property, but the last drop of their blood. At the hearing of these loyal words, a gleam of delight shot across the face of Philip. No ordinary satisfaction could have lighted up a face so habitually austere and morose. It was a burst of that “affection” which Philip boasted he bore the Netherlanders, and which showed them that it extended not only to them, but to theirs. But the deputy proceeded to append a condition to this apparently unbounded surrender; that condition was the withdrawal of the Spanish troops. Instantly Philip’s countenance changed, and sinking into his chair of state, with gloomy and wrathful brow, the assembly saw how distasteful to Philip was the proposition to withdraw his soldiers from the Netherlands. The rest of the Estates followed; each, in its turn, making the same offer, but appending to it the same condition. Every florin of the three millions demanded would be forthcoming, but not a soldier must be left on the soil of the Provinces. The king’s face grew darker still. Its rapid changes showed the tempest that was raging in his breast. To ask him to withdraw his soldiers was to ask him to give up the Netherlands. Without the soldiers how could he maintain the edicts and Inquisition? and these let go, the haughty and heretical Netherlanders would again be their own masters, and would fill the Provinces with that rampant heresy which he had just cursed. The very idea of such a thing threw the king into a rage which he was at no pains to conceal.

But a still greater mortification awaited him before the convention broke up. A formal remonstrance on the subject of the Spanish soldiers was presented to Philip in the name of the States-General, signed by the Prince of Orange, Count Egmont, and many other nobles. The king was at

[3]Motley,. Rise of the Dutch Republic, pt. 1., ch. 3, p. 110.

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the same time asked to annul, or at least to moderate, the edicts; and when one of his ministers represented, in the most delicate terms possible, that to persist in their execution would be to sow the seeds of rebellion, and thereby lose the sovereignty of the Provinces, Philip replied that “he had much rather be no king at all than have heretics for his subjects.”[4]

So irritated was the king by these requests that he flung out of the hall in a rage, remarking that as he was a Spaniard it was perhaps expected that he, too, should withdraw himself. A day or two, however, sufficed for his passion to cool, and then he saw that his true policy was dissimulation till he should have tamed the stubbornness and pride of these Netherland nobles. He now made a feint of concession; he would have been glad, he said, to carry his soldiers with him in his fleet, had he been earlier made acquainted with the wishes of the Estates; he promised, however, to withdraw them in a few months. On the matter of Lutheranism he was inexorable, and could not even bring himself to dissemble. His parting injunction to the States was to pursue heresy with the halter, the axe, the stake, and the other modes of death duly enacted and set forth in his own and his royal father’s edicts.

On the 26th of August, Philip II., on the shore of Flushing, received the farewell salutations of the grandees of the Provinces, and then set sail for Spain, attended by a fleet of ninety vessels. He had quitted an angry land; around him was a yet angrier ocean. The skies blackened, the wind rose, and the tempest lay heavy upon the royal squadron. The ships were laden with the precious things of the Netherlands. Tapestries, silks, laces, paintings, marbles, and store of other articles which had been collected by his father, the emperor, in the course of thirty years, freighted the ships of Philip. He meant to fix his capital in Spain, and these products of the needles, the looms, and the pencils of his skillful and industrious subjects of the Low Countries were meant to adorn his palace. The greedy waves swallowed up nearly all that rich and various spoil. Some of the ships foundered outright; those that continued to float had to lighten themselves by casting their precious cargo into the sea. “Philip,” as the historian Meteren remarks, “had robbed the land to enrich the ocean.” The king’s voyage, however, was safely ended, and on the 8th of September he disembarked at Loredo, on the Biscayan coast.

The gloomy and superstitious mind of Philip interpreted his deliverance from the storm that had burst over his fleet in accordance with his own fanatical notions. He saw in it an authentication of the grand mission with which he had been entrusted as the destroyer of heresy;[5] and in token of thankfulness to that Power which had rescued him from the waves and landed him safely on Spanish earth, he made a vow, which found its fulfilment in the magnificent and colossal palace that rose in after-years on the savage and boulder strewn slopes of the Sierra Guadarrama-the Escorial.

[4]Bentivoglio. “Chegli voleva piu tosto restar senza regni che possedergli con heresia.”

[5]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 132, 133.

Chapter 6: Storms in the Council, and Martyrs at the Stake

Three Councils—These Three but One—Margaret, Duchess of Parma—Cardinal Granvelle—Opposition to the New Bishops-Storms at the Council-board—Position of Prince of Orange, and Counts Egmont and Horn—Their joint Letter to the King—Smouldering Discontent—Persecution—Peter Titlemann—Severity of the Edicts—Father and Son at the Stake—Heroism of the Flemish Martyrs—Execution of a Schoolmaster—A Skeleton at a Feast—Burning of Three Refugees—Great Number of Flemish Martyrs—What their Country Owed them

Picture: Philips Fleet Scattered by the Tempest.

Picture: Margaret, Duchess of Parma

Three councils were organised, as we have said, to assist the Duchess of Parma in the government of the Provinces; the nobles selected to serve in these councils were those who were highest in rank, and who most fully enjoyed the confidence of their countrymen. This had very much the look of popular government. It did not seem exactly the machinery which a despot would set up. The administration of the Provinces appeared to be within the Provinces themselves, and the popular will, expressed through the members of the councils, [23] must needs be an influential element in the decision of all affairs. And yet the administration which Philip had constructed was simply a despotism. He had so arranged it that the three councils were but one council; and the one council was but one man; and that one man was Philip’s most obedient tool. Thus the government of the Netherlands was worked from Madrid, and the hand that directed it was that of the king.

A few words will enable us to explain in what way Philip contrived to convert this semblance of popular rule into a real autocracy. The affairs of the nation were managed neither by the Council of Finance, nor by the Privy Council, nor by the Council of State, but by a committee of the latter. That committee was formed of three members of the Council of State, namely, the Bishop of Arras, Viglius, and Berlaymont. These three men constituted a Consulta, or secret conclave, and it soon became apparent that in that secret committee was lodged the whole power of government. The three were in reality but one; for Viglius and Berlaymont were so thoroughly identified in sentiment and will with their chief, that in point of fact the Bishop of Arras was the Consulta. Arras was entirely devoted to Philip, and the regent, in turn, was instructed to take counsel with Arras, and to do as he should advise. Thus from the depths of the royal cabinet in Spain came the orders that ruled the Netherlands.

Margaret had been gifted by nature with great force of will. Her talents, like her person, were masculine. In happier circumstances she would have made a humane as well as a vigorous ruler, but placed as she was between an astute despot, whom she dared not disobey, and an unscrupulous and cunning minister, whose tact she could not overrule, she had nothing for it but to carry out the high-handed measures of others, and so draw down upon herself the odium which of right belonged to guiltier parties. Educated in the school of Machiavelli, her statesmanship was expressed in a single word, dissimulation, and her religion taught her to regard thieves, robbers, and murderers as criminals less vile than Lutherans and Huguenots. Her spiritual guide had been Loyola.

Of Anthony Perrenot, Bishop of Arras, we have already spoken. He had been raised to the See of Mechlin, in the new scheme of the enlarged hierarchy; and was soon to be advanced to the purple, and to become known in history under the more celebrated title of Cardinal Granvelle. His learning was great, his wit was ready, his eloquence fluent, and his tact exquisite, his appreciation of men was so keen, penetrating, and perfect, that he clothed himself as it were with their feelings, and projects, and could be not so much himself as them. This rare power of sympathy, joined to his unscrupulousness, enabled him to inspire others with his own policy, in manner so natural and subtle that they never once suspected that it was his and not their own. By this masterly art more real than the necromancy in which that age believed-he seated himself in Philip’s cabinet-in Philip’s breast-and dictated when he appeared only to suggest, and governed when he appeared only to obey. It is the fate of such men to be credited at times with sinister projects which have arisen not in their own brain, but in those of others, and thus it came to pass that the Bishop of Arras was believed to be the real projector, not only of the edicts, which Philip had republished at his suggestion, but also of that whole machinery which had been constructed for carrying them out-the new bishops, the Inquisition, and the Spanish soldiers. The idea refused to quit the popular mind, and as grievance followed grievance, and the nation saw one after another of its libraries invaded, the storm of indignation and wrath which was daily growing fiercer took at first the direction of the bishop rather than of Philip.

The new changes began to take effect. The bishops created by the recent bull for the extension of the hierarchy, began to arrive in the country, and claim possession of their several sees. Noble, abbot, and commoner with one consent opposed the entrance of these new dignitaries; the commoners because they were foreigners, the abbots because their abbacies had been partially despoiled to provide livings for them, and the nobles because they regarded them as rivals in power and influence. The regent Margaret, however, knowing how unalterable was Philip’s will in the matter, braved the storm, and installed the new bishops. In one case she was compelled to yield. The populous and wealthy city of Antwerp emphatically refused to receive its new spiritual ruler. With the bishop they knew would come the Inquisition; and with secret denunciations, midnight apprehensions, and stakes blazing in their market-place they foresaw the flight of the foreign merchants from their country, and the ruin of their commerce. They sent deputies to Madrid, who put the matter in this light before Philip; and the king, having respect to the state of his treasury, and the sums with which these wealthy merchants were accustomed to replenish his coffers, was graciously pleased meanwhile to tolerate their opposition.[1]

[1]Bentivoglio.

[24] [25]

At the State Council storms were of frequent occurrence. At that table sat men, some of whom were superior in rank to Arras, yet his equals in talent, and who moreover had claims on Philip’s regard to which the bishop could make no pretensions, seeing they had laid him under great obligations by the brilliant services which they had rendered in the field. There were especially at that board the Prince of Orange and Counts Egmont and Horn, who in addition to great wealth and distinguished merit, held high position in the State as the Stadtholders of important Provinces. Yet they were not consulted in the public business, nor was their judgment ever asked in State affairs; on the contrary, all matters were determined in secret by Granvelle. They were but puppets at the Council-board, while an arrogant and haughty ecclesiastic ruled the country.

Meanwhile the popular discontent was growing; Protestantism, which the regent and her ministers were doing all that the axe and the halter enabled them to do to extirpate, was spreading every day wider among the people. Granvelle ascribed this portentous growth to the negligence of the magistrates in not executing the “edicts.” Orange and Egmont, on the other hand, threw the blame on the cardinal, who was replacing old Netherland liberty with Spanish despotism, and they demanded that a convention of the States should be summoned to devise a remedy for the commotions and evils that were distracting the kingdom.

This proposal was in the highest degree distasteful to Granvelle. He could tell beforehand the remedy which the convention would prescribe for the popular discontent. The convention, he felt assured, would demand the cancelling of the edicts, [26] the suppression of the Inquisition, and the revival of those charters under which civil liberty and commercial enterprise had reached that palmy state in which the Emperor Charles had found them when he entered the Netherlands. Granvelle accordingly wrote to his master counselling him not to call a meeting of the States. The advice of the cardinal but too well accorded with the views of Philip. Instead of summoning a convention the king sent orders to the regent to see that the edicts were more vigorously executed. It was not gentleness but rigour, he said, that was needed for these turbulent subjects.

Things were taking an ominous turn. The king’s letter showed plainly to the Prince of Orange, and Counts Egmont and Horn, that Philip was resolved at all hazards to carry out his grand scheme against the independence of the Provinces. Not one of the edicts would he cancel; and so long as they continued in force Philip must have bishops to execute them, and Spanish soldiers to protect these bishops from the violence of an oppressed and indignant people. The regent, in obedience to the king’s new missive, sent out fresh orders, urging upon the magistrates the yet hotter prosecution of heresy. The executions were multiplied. The scaffolds made many victims, but not one convert. On the contrary, the Protestants increased, and every day furnished new evidence that sufferers for conscience sake were commanding the admiration of many who did not share their faith, and that their cause was attracting attention in quarters where before it had received no notice. The regent, and especially Granvelle, were daily becoming more odious. The meetings at the Council-board were stormier than ever. The bland insolence and supercilious haughtiness of the cardinal were no longer endurable by Egmont and Horn. Bluff, out-spoken, and irascible, they had come to an open quarrel with him. Orange could parry the thrust of Granvelle with a weapon as polished as his own, and so was able still to keep on terms of apparent friendliness with him; but his position in the Council, where he was denied all share in the government, and yet held responsible for its tyrannical proceedings, was becoming unbearable, and he resolved to bring it to an end. On the 23rd of July, 1561, Orange and Egmont addressed a joint letter to the king, stating how matters stood in Flanders, and craving leave to retire from the Council, or to be allowed a voice in those measures for which they were held to be responsible. The answer, which was far from satisfactory, was brought to Flanders by Count Horn, who had been on a visit to Madrid, and had parted from the king in a fume at the impertinence of the two Flemish noblemen. His majesty expected them to give attendance at the Council-board as aforetime, without, however, holding out to them any hope that they would be allowed a larger share than heretofore in the business transacted there.

The gulf between Orange and Cardinal Granvelle was widening. The cardinal did not abate a jot of his tyranny. He knew that Philip would support him in the policy he was pursuing; indeed, that he could not retain the favor of his master unless he gave rigorous execution to the edicts, he must go forward, it mattered not at what amount of odium to himself, and of hanging, burning, and burying alive of Philip’s subjects of the Netherlands. Granvelle sat alone in his “smithy”-for so was his country house, a little outside the walls of Brussels, denominated-writing daily letters to Philip, insinuating or directly advancing accusations against the nobles, especially Orange and Egmont, and craftily suggesting to Philip the policy he ought to pursue. In reply to these letters would come fresh orders to himself and the regent, to adopt yet sterner measures toward the refractory and the heretical Netherlanders. He had suspended the glory of his reign on the trampling out of heresy in this deeply-infected portion of his dominions, and by what machinery could he do this unless by that which he had set up-the edicts, the bishops, and the Inquisition?-the triple wall within which he had enclosed the heretics of the Low Countries, so that not one of them should escape.

The Flemings are a patient and much-enduring people. Their patience has its limits, however, and these limits once passed, their determination and ire are in proportion to their former forbearance. As yet their submissiveness had not been exhausted; they permitted their houses to be entered at midnight, and themselves dragged from their beds and conducted to the Inquisition, with the meekness of a lamb that is being led to the slaughter; or if they opened their mouths it was only to sing one of Marot’s psalms. The familiars of this abhorred tribunal, therefore, encountered hardly any resistance in executing their dreadful office. The nation as yet stood by in silence, and saw the agents of Granvelle and Philip hewing their victims in pieces with axes, or strangling them with halters, or drowning them in ponds, or digging graves for their living entombment, and gave no sign. But all the while these cruelties were writing on the nation’s heart, in ineffaceable characters, an abhorrence of the Spanish tyrant, and a stern unconquerable resolve, when the hour came, to throw off his yoke. In the crowd of those [27] monsters who were now revelling in the blood and lives of the Netherlanders, there stands out one conspicuous monster, Peter Titlemann by name; not that he was more cruel than the rest of the crew, but because his cruelty stands horridly out against a grim pleasantry that seems to have characterised the man. “Contemporary chroniclers,” says Motley, “give a picture of him as of some grotesque yet terrible goblin, careering through the country by night or day, alone, on horseback, smiting the trembling peasants on the head with a great club, spreading dismay far and wide, dragging suspected persons from their firesides or their beds, and thrusting them into dungeons, arresting, torturing, strangling, burning, with hardly the shadow of warrant, information, or process.”[2]

The whole face of the Low Countries during the years of which we write, (1560-65), was crossed and recrossed with lines of blood, traced by the cruel feet of monsters like this man. It was death to pray to God in one’s own closet; it was death not to bow when an image was carried past one in the street; it was death to copy a hymn from a Genevese psalter, or sing a psalm; it was death not to deny the heresy of which one was suspected when one was questioned, although one had never uttered it. The monster of whom we have made mention above one day arrested Robert Ogier of Ryssel, with his wife and two sons. The crime of which they were accused was that of not going to mass, and of practising worship at home. The civil judges before whom Titlemann brought them examined them touching the rites they practiced in private. One of the sons answered, “We fall on our knees and pray that God may enlighten our minds and pardon our sins; we pray for our sovereign, that his reign may be prosperous, and his life happy; we pray for our magistrates, that God may preserve them.” This artless answer, from a mere, boy, touched some of the judges, even to tears,. Nevertheless the father and the elder son were adjudged to the flames. “O God,” prayed the youth at the stake, “Eternal Father, accept the sacrifice of our lives in the name of thy beloved Son!” “Thou liest, scoundrel!” fiercely interrupted a monk, who was lighting the fire. “God is not your father; ye are the devil’s children.” The flames rose; again the boy exclaimed, “Look, my father, all heaven is opening, and I see ten hundred thousand angels rejoicing over us. Let us be glad, for we are dying for the truth.” “Thou liest, thou liest,” again screamed the monk; “I see hell opening, and ten thousand devils waiting to thrust you into eternal fire.” The father and son were heard talking with one another in the midst of the flames, even when they were at the fiercest; and so they continued till both expired.[3]

If the fury of the persecutor was great, not less was the heroism of these martyrs. They refused all communion with Rome, and worshipped in the Protestant forms, in the face of all the dreadful penalties with which they were menaced. Nor was it the men only who were thus courageous; women-nay, young girls-animated by an equal faith, displayed an equal fortitude. Some of them refused to flee when the means of escape from prison were offered to them. Wives would take their stand by their husband’s stake, and while he was enduring the fire they would whisper words of solace, or sing psalms to cheer him; and so, in their own words, would they bear him company while “he was celebrating his last wedding feast.” Young maidens would lie down in their living grave as if they were entering into their chamber of nightly sleep; or go forth to the scaffold and the fire, dressed in their best apparel, as if they were going to their marriage.[4] In April, 1554, Galein de Mulere, schoolmaster at Oudenard, was arrested by Inquisitor Titlemann. The poor man was in great straits, for he had a wife and five young children, but he feared to deny God and the truth. He endeavored to extricate himself from the dilemma by demanding to be tried before the magistrate and not by the Inquisition. “You are my prisoner,” replied Titlemann; “I am the Pope’s and the emperor’s plenipotentiary.” The schoolmaster gave, at first, evasive answers to the questions put to him. “I adjure thee not to trifle with me,” said Titlemann, and cited Scripture to enforce his adjuration; “St. Peter,” said the terrible inquisitor, “commands us to be ready always to give to every man that asketh us, a reason of the hope that is in us.” On these words the schoolmaster’s tongue broke loose. “My God, my God, assist me now according to thy promise,” prayed he. Then turning to the inquisitors he said, “Ask me now what you please, I shall plainly answer.” He then laid open to them his whole belief, concealing nothing of his abhorrence of Popery, and his love for the Savior. They used all imaginable arts to induce him to recant; and finding that no argument would prevail with him, “Do you not love your wife and children?” said they to him as the last appeal. “You know,“

[2]Motley, Rise of the Dutch. Republic, vol. 1., p. 170; Edin., 1859.

[3]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 108, 109.

[4]Ibid., vol. 1., p. 93.

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replied he, “that I love them from my heart; and I tell you truly, if the whole world were turned into gold, and given to me, I would freely resign it, so that I might keep these dear pledges with me in my confinement, though I should live upon bread and water.’” “Forsake then,” said Titlemann, “your heretical opinions, and then you may live with your wife and children as formerly.” “I shall never,” he replied, “for the sake of wife and children renounce my religion, and sin against God and my conscience, as God shall strengthen me with his grace.” He was pronounced a heretic; and being delivered to the secular arm, he was strangled and burned.[5]

The very idiots of the nation lifted up their voice in reproof of the tyrants, and in condemnation of the tyranny that was scourging the country. The following can hardly be read without horror. At Dixmuyde, in Flanders, lived one Walter Capel, who abounded in almsgiving, and was much beloved by the poor. Among others whom his bounty had fed was a poor simple creature, who hearing that his benefactor was being condemned to death (1553), forced his way into the presence of the judges, and cried out, “Ye are murderers, ye are murderers; ye spill innocent blood; the man has done no ill, but has given me bread.” When Capel was burning at the stake, this man would have; thrown himself into the flames and died with his patron, had he not been restrained by force. Nor did his gratitude die with his benefactor. He went daily to the gallows-field where the half-burned carcase was fastened to a stake, and gently stroking the flesh of the dead man with his hand, he; said, “Ah, poor creature, you did no harm, and yet they have spilt your blood. You gave me my bellyful of victuals.” When the flesh was all gone, and nothing but the bare skeleton remained, he took down the bones, and laying them upon his shoulders, he carried them to the house of one of the burgomasters, with whom it chanced that several of the magistrates were at that moment feasting. Throwing his ghastly burden at their feet, he cried out, “There, you murderers, first you have eaten his flesh, now eat his bones.”[6]

The following three martyrdoms connect themselves with England. Christian de Queker, Jacob Dienssart, and Joan Konings, of Stienwerk, in Flanders, had found an asylum in England, under Queen Elizabeth. In 1559, having visited their native country on their private affairs, they fell into the hands of Peter Titlemann. Being brought before the inquisitors, they freely confessed their opinions. Meanwhile, the Dutch congregation in London procured letters from the Archbishop of Canterbury and other English prelates, which were forwarded to the magistrates of Furness, where they were confined in prison. The writers said that they had been informed of the apprehension of the three travelers; that they were the subjects of the Queen of England; that they had gone into the Low Countries for the dispatch of their private affairs, with intent to return to England; that they had avoided disputes and contest by the way, and therefore could not be charged with the breach of any law of the land; that none of the Flemings had been meddled with in England, but that if now those who had put themselves under English jurisdiction, and were members of the English Church, were to be thus treated in other countries, they should be likewise obliged, though much against their wills, to deal out the same measure to foreigners. Nevertheless, they expected the magistrates of Furness to show prudence and justice, and abstain from the spilling of innocent blood.

The magistrates, on receipt of this letter, deputed two of their number to proceed to Brussels, and lay it before the Council. It was read at the Board, but that was all the attention it received. The Council resolved to proceed with the prisoners according to the edicts. A few days thereafter they were conducted to the court to receive their sentence, their brethren in the faith lining the way, and encouraging and comforting them. They were condemned to die. They went cheerfully to the stake. A voice addressing them from the crowd was heard, saying, “Joan, behave valiantly; the crown of glory is prepared for you.” It was that of John Bels, a Carmelite friar. While the executioner was fastening them to the stake, with chains put round their necks and feet, they sang the 130th Psalm, “Out of the depths have I cried to thee, O Lord;” whereupon a Dominican, John Campo, cried out, “Now we perceive you are no Christians, for Christ went weeping to his death;” to which one of the bystanders immediately made answer, “That’s a lie, you false prophet.” The martyrs were then strangled and scorched, and their bodies publicly hung in chains in the gallows-field. Their remains were soon after taken down by the Protestants of Furness, and buried.[7]

These men, although in number amounting to many thousands, were only the first rank of that greater army of martyrs which was to come after them. With the exception of a very few, we do not

[5]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 94.

[6]Ibid., vol. 1., p. 93.

[7]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 135.

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know even the names of the men who so willingly offered their lives to plant the Gospel in their native land. They were known only in the town, or village, or district in which they resided, and did not receive, as they did not seek, wider fame. But what matters it? They themselves are safe, and so too are their names. Not one of them but is inscribed in a record more lasting than the historian’s page, and from which they can never be blotted out. They were mostly men in humble station-weavers, tapestry-workers, stone-cutters, tanners; for the nobles of the Netherlands, not even excepting the Prince of Orange, had not yet abjured the Popish faith, or embraced that of Protestantism. While the nobles were fuming at the pride of Granvelle, or humbly but uselessly petitioning Philip, or fighting wordy battles at the Council-board, they left it to the middle and lower classes to bear the brunt of the great war, and jeopardise their lives in the high places of the field. These humble men were the true nobles of the Netherlands. Their blood it was that broke the power of Spain, and redeemed their native land from vassalage. Their halters and stakes formed the basis of that glorious edifice of Dutch freedom which the next generation was to see rising proudly aloft, and which, but for them, would never have been raised.

Chapter 7 : Retirement of Granvelle-Belgic Confession of Faith

Tumults at Valenciennes—Rescue of Two Martyrs—Terrible Revenge—Rhetoric Clubs—The Cardinal Attacked in Plays, Farces, and Lampoons—A Caricature—A Meeting of the States Demanded and Refused—Orders from Spain for the more Vigorous Prosecution of the Edicts—Orange, Egmont, and Horn Retire from the Council—They Demand the Recall of Granvelle—Doublings of Philip II—Granvelle under pretense of Visiting his Mother Leaves the Netherlands—First Belgic Confession of Faith—Letter of Flemish Protestants to Philip II—Toleration

Picture: Walter Capel Reading the Scriptures to his Daughter

The murmurs of the popular discontent grew louder every day. In that land the storm is heard long to mutter before the sky blackens and the tempest bursts; but now there came, not indeed the hurricane-that was deferred for a few years-but a premonitory burst like the sudden wave which, while all as yet is calm, the ocean sends as the herald of the storm. At Valenciennes were two ministers, Faveau and Mallart, whose preaching attracted large congregations. They were condemned in the autumn of 1561 to be burned. When the news spread in Valenciennes that their favourite preachers had been ordered for execution, the inhabitants turned out upon the street, now chanting Clement Marot’s psalms, and now hurling menaces at the magistrates should they dare to touch their preachers. The citizens crowded round the prison, encouraging the ministers, and promising to rescue them should an attempt be made to put them to death. These commotions were continued nightly for the space of six months. The magistrates were in a strait between the two evils-the anger of the cardinal, who was daily sending them peremptory orders to have the heretics burned, and the wrath of the people, which was expressed in furious menaces should they do as Granvelle ordered. At last they made up their minds to brave what they took to be the lesser evil, for they trusted that the people would not dare openly to resist the law. The magistrates brought forth Faveau and Mallart one Monday morning, before sunrise, led them to the market-place, where preparations had been made, tied them to the stake, and were about to light the fires and consume them. At that moment a woman in the crowd threw her shoe at the stake; it was the preconcerted signal. The mob tore down the barriers, scattered the faggots, and chased away the executioners. The guard, however, had adroitly carried off the prisoners to their dungeon. But the people were not to be baulked; they kept possession of the street; and when night came they broke open the prison, and brought forth the two ministers, who made their escape from the city. This was called “The Day of the Ill-burned,” one of the ministers having been scorched by the partially kindled faggots before he was rescued.[1]

A terrible revenge was taken for the slur thus

[1]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 138, 139.

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cast upon the Inquisition, and the affront offered to the authority of Granvelle. Troops were poured into the ill-fated city. The prisons were filled with men and women who had participated, or were suspected of having participated, in the riot. The magistrates who had trembled before were furious now. They beheaded and burned almost indiscriminately; the amount of blood spilt was truly frightful-to be remembered at a future day by the nation, and atonement demanded for it.

We return to the Council-board at Brussels, and the crafty tyrannical man who presided at it-the minion of a craftier and more tyrannical-and who, buried in the depths of his cabinet, edited his edicts of blood, and sent them forth to be executed by his agents. The bickerings still continued at the Council-table, much to the disgust of Granvelle. But besides the rough assaults of Egmont and Horn, and the delicate wit and ridicule of Orange, other assailants arose to embitter the cardinal’s existence, and add to the difficulties of his position. The Duchess of Parma became alienated from him. As regent, she was nominal head of the government, but the cardinal had reduced her to the position of a puppet, by grasping the whole power of the States, and leaving to her only an empty title. However, the cardinal consoled himself by reflecting that if he had lost the favor of Margaret, he could very thoroughly rely on that of Philip, who, he knew, placed before every earthly consideration the execution of his edicts against heresy. But what gave more concern to Granvelle was a class of foes that now arose outside the Council-chamber to annoy and sting him. These were the members of the “Rhetoric Clubs.” We find similar societies springing up in other countries of the Reformation, especially in France and Scotland, and they owed their existence to the same cause that is said to make wit flourish under a despotism. These clubs were composed of authors, poetasters, and comedians; they wrote plays, pamphlets, pasquils, in which they lashed the vices and superstitions, and attacked the despotisms of the age. They not only assailed error, but in many instances they were also largely instrumental in the diffusion of truth. They discharged the same service to that age which the newspaper and the platform fulfill in ours. The literature of these poems and plays was not high; the wit was not delicate, nor the satire polished-the wood-carving that befits the interior of a cathedral would not suit for the sculpture-work of its front-but the writers were in earnest; they went straight to the mark, they expressed the pent-up feeling of thousands, and they created and intensified the feeling which they expressed.

Such was the battery that was now opened upon the minion of Spanish and Papal tyranny in the Low Countries. The intelligent, clever, and witty artisans of Ghent, Bruges, and other towns chastised Granvelle in their plays and lampoons, ridiculed him in their farces, laughed at him in their burlesques, and held him up to contempt and scorn in their caricatures. The weapon was rough, but the wound it inflicted was rankling. These farces were acted in the street, where all could see them, and the poem and pasquil were posted on the walls where all could read them. The members of these clubs were individually insignificant, but collectively they were most formidable. Neither the sacredness of his own purple, nor the dread of Philip’s authority, could afford the cardinal any protection. As numerous as a crowd of insects, the annoyances of his enemies were ceaseless as their stings were countless. As a sample of the broad humor and rude but truculent satire with which Philip’s unfortunate manager in the Netherlands was assailed, we take the following caricature. In it the worthy cardinal was seen occupied in the maternal labor of hatching a brood of bishops. The ecclesiastical chickens were in all stages of development. Some were only chipping the shell; some had thrust out their heads and legs; others, fairly disencumbered from their original envelopments, were running about with mitres on their heads. Each of these fledglings bore a whimsical resemblance to one or other of the new bishops. But the coarsest and most cutting part of the caricature remains to be noticed. Over the cardinal was seen to hover a dark figure, with certain appendages other than appertain to the human form, and that personage was made to say, “This is my beloved son, hear ye him.”[2]

Such continued for some years to be the unsatisfactory and eminently dangerous state of affairs in the Low Countries. The regent Margaret, humiliated by the ascendency of Granvelle, and trembling at the catastrophe to which his rigour was driving matters, proposed that the States should be summoned, in order to concert measures for restoring the tranquillity of the nation. Philip would on no account permit such an assembly to be convoked. Margaret had to yield, but she resorted to the next most likely expedient. She summoned a meeting of the Knights of the Golden Fleece and the Stadtholders of the Provinces. Viglius, one of the members of Council, but less obnoxious than Granvelle, was chosen to address the knights. He was a learned man, and discoursed, with much

[2]Hooft, 2. 42-apud Motley, 1. 178. Brandt, 1. 127,128.

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plausibility and in the purest Latin, on the disturbed state of the country, and the causes which had brought it into its present condition. But it was not eloquence, but the abolition of the edicts and the suppression of the Inquisition, that was needed, and this was the very thing which Philip was determined not to grant. In vain had the Knights of the Fleece and the Stadtholders assembled. Still some good came of the gathering, although the result was one which Margaret had neither contemplated nor desired. The Prince of Orange called a meeting of the nobles at his own house, and the discussion that took place, although a stormy one, led to an understanding among them touching the course to be pursued in the future.

The Lord of Montigny was sent as a deputy to Spain to lay the state of matters before Philip, and urge the necessity, if his principality of the Netherlands was to be saved, of stopping the persecution. Philip, who appeared to have devoted himself wholly to one object, the extirpation of heresy, was incapable of feeling the weight of the [32] representations of Montigny. He said that he had never intended, and did not even now intend, establishing the Inquisition in the Low Countries in its Spanish form; and while he bade Montigny carry back this assurance-a poor one even had it been true-to those from whom he had come, he sent at the same time secret orders to Granvelle to carry out yet more rigorously the decrees against the heretics.

Orange, Egmont, and Horn, now utterly disgusted and enraged, retired from the Council-table. They wrote a joint letter to the king, stating the fact of their withdrawal, with the reasons which had led to it, and demanding the dismissal of the cardinal as the only condition on which they could resume their place at the Board. They also plainly avowed their belief that should Granvelle be continued in the administration, the Netherlands would be lost to Philip. The answer returned to this letter was meant simply to gain time. While Philip was musing on the steps to be taken, the fire was spreading. The three seigniors wrote again to the monarch. They begged to say, if the statement had any interest for him, that the country was on the road to ruin. The regent Margaret about the same time wrote also to her brother, the king. As she now heartily hated Granvelle, her representations confirmed those of Orange, although, reared as she had been in the school of Loyola, she still maintained the semblance of confidence in and affection for the cardinal. The king now began to deliberate in earnest. Pending the arrival of Philip’s answer, the Flemish grandees, at a great feast where they all met, came to the resolution of adopting a livery avowedly in ridicule of the grand dresses and showy equipages of the cardinal. Accordingly, in a few days, all their retainers appeared in worsted hose, and doublets of coarse grey, with hanging sleeves, but with no ornament whatever, except a fool’s cap and bells embroidered upon each sleeve. The jest was understood, but the cardinal affected to laugh at it. In a little while the device was changed. The fool’s cap and bells disappeared, and a sheaf of arrows came in the room of the former symbol.[3] The sheaf of arrows, Granvelle, in writing to Philip, interpreted to mean “conspiracy.” Meanwhile the king had made up his mind as to the course to be taken. He dispatched two sets of instructions to Brussels, one open and the other secret. According to the first, the Duchess Margaret was commanded to prosecute the heretics with more rigour than ever; the three lords were ordered to return to their posts at the Council-table; and the cardinal was told that the king, who was still deliberating, would make his resolution known through the regent. But by the secret letter, written at the same time, but sent off from Madrid so as to arrive behind the others, Philip wrote to the cardinal, saying that it appeared to him that it might be well he should leave the Provinces for some days, in order to visit his mother, and bidding him ask permission to depart from the regent, whom he had secretly instructed to give such permission, without allowing it to be seen that these orders had come from the king.

The plan mystified all parties at the time, save Orange, who guessed how the matter really stood; but the examination of Philip’s correspondence has since permitted this somewhat complicated affair to be unravelled. The king had, in fact, yielded to the storm and recalled Granvelle. All were delighted at the cardinal’s new-sprung affection for his mother, and trusted that it would not cool as suddenly as it had arisen;[4] in short, that “the red fellow,” as they termed him, had taken a final leave of the country. Nor, indeed, did Granvelle ever return.

It is time that we should speak of the summary of doctrines, or Confession of Faith, which was put forth by these early Protestants of the Netherlands. About the year 1561, Guido de Bres, with the assistance of Adrian Saravia, and three other ministers, published a little treatise in French under the title of “A Confession of the Faith generally and unanimously maintained by the Believers dispersed throughout the Low Countries, who desire to live according to the purity of the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[5] This treatise was afterwards translated into Dutch. Saravia, who assisted De Bres in the compilation of it, states in a letter which the historian Brandt says he had seen, that “Guido de Bres communicated this Confession to such ministers as he could find, desiring them to correct what they thought amiss in it, so that it was not to be considered as one man’s work, but that none who were concerned in it ever designed it for a rule of faith to others, but only as a scriptural proof of what they themselves believed.” In the year 1563, this Confession was published both in high and low Dutch. It consists of thirty-seven articles. Almost every one of these articles is formally and antithetically set over against some one dogma of Romanism. With the great stream of Reformation theology as set forth in the Confessions of the Protestant Churches, the Belgic Confession is in beautiful harmony. It differs from

[3]Strada, bk. 4., p. 79; Lond., 1667.

[4]Strada, bk. 4., p. 80.

[5]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 142.

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the Augsburg Confession under the head of the Lord’s Supper, inasmuch as it repudiates the idea of consubstantiation, and teaches that the bread and wine are only symbols of Christ’s presence, and signs and seals of the blessing. In respect of the true catholicity of the Church, the doctrine of human merit and good works, and the justification of sinners by faith alone, on the righteousness of Christ, and, in short, in all the fundamental doctrines of the Scriptures, the Belgic Confession is in agreement with the Augustine Creed, and very specially with the Confession of Helvetia, France, Bohemia, England, and Scotland. The Reformation, as we have seen, entered the Low Countries by the gate of Wittemberg, rather than by the gate of Geneva: nevertheless, the Belgic Confession has a closer resemblance to the theology of those countries termed Reformed than to that of those usually styled Lutheran. The proximity of Flanders to France, the asylum sought on the soil of the Low Countries by so many of the Huguenots, and the numbers of English merchants trading with the Netherlanders, or resident in their cities, naturally led to the greater prominence in the Belgic Confession of those doctrines which have been usually held to be peculiar to Calvinism; although we cannot help saying that a very general misapprehension prevails upon this point. With the one exception stated above, the difference on the Lord’s Supper namely, the theology of Luther and the theology of Calvin set forth the same views of Divine truth, and as respects that class of questions confessedly in their full conception and reconcilement beyond the reach of the human faculties, God’s sovereignty and man’s free agency, the two great chiefs, whatever differences may have come to exist between their respective followers, were at one in their theology. Luther was quite as Calvinistic as Calvin himself.

The Belgic Creed is notable in another respect. It first saw the light, not in any synod or Church assembly, for as yet the Church of the Low Countries as an organised body did not exist; it had its beginning with a few private believers and preachers in the Netherlands. This is a very natural and very beautiful genesis of a creed, and it admirably illustrates the real object and end of the Reformers in framing their Confessions. They compiled them, as we see these few Flemish teachers doing, to be a help to themselves and to their fellow-believers in understanding the Scriptures, and to show the world what they believed to be the truth as set forth in the Bible. It did not enter into their minds that they were forging a yoke for the conscience, or a fetter for the understanding, and that they were setting up a barrier beyond which men were not to adventure in the inquiry after truth. Nothing was further from the thoughts of the Reformers than this; they claimed no lordship over the consciences of men. The documents which they compiled and presented to the world they styled not a decree, or a rise, much less a creation, but a Confession, and they issued their Confessions under this reservation, that the Bible alone possessed inherent authority, that it alone was complete and perfect, and that their confession was only an approximation, to be reviewed, altered, amended, enlarged, or abbreviated according as believers advanced in the more precise, full, and accurate understanding of the meaning of the Spirit speaking in the Word. We have nowhere found the views of the Reformers on this point so admirably set forth as in the celebrated John a Lasco’s preface to his book on the Sacraments; and as this is a matter on which great misapprehension has been spread abroad, we shall here give his words. Speaking of the union of the Churches of Zurich and Geneva on the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, he says: “Our union is not so to be understood as if we designed to exclude the endeavours of all such as shall attempt to introduce a greater purity of doctrine. We perceive, indeed, that many things are now taught much better than formerly, and that many old ways of speaking, long before used in the Church, are now altered. In like manner it may hereafter happen, that some of our forms of speaking being changed, many things may be better explained. The Holy Ghost will doubtless be present with others, in the Church of Christ after us, as he has vouchsafed to be with us and our ancestors; for he proceeds gradually, or by steps, and gives an insensible increase to his gifts. And since we find that all things tend to farther perfection, I do not know, I own, whether it becomes us to endeavor to confine the gradual increase of his gifts within the compass of our forms of speaking, as within certain palisades and entrenchments; as if that same Spirit were not at liberty, like the wind, to blow how, and when, and where he listeth. I do not pretend to give a loose to the sowing of all kinds of new-fangled doctrines, but I contend for the liberty of adorning and explaining the foundations when once laid, and with design to show that the Spirit of God does not cease from daily imparting to us more and more light.” How truly catholic! and how happily the mean is here struck between those who say that Confessions ought to be abolished because they tyrannically forbid process, and those who hold that they are [34] to be changed in not one iota, because they are already perfect!

This Confession of Faith, being revised by a synod that met in Antwerp in May, 1566, was in that year reprinted and published.[6] Following the example of Calvin in his celebrated letter to the King of France, which accompanied his Institutes, the Reformed in the Netherlands prefaced their Confession of Faith with a letter to the King of Spain. Their Confession was their defense against the charges of heresy and disloyalty which had been preferred against them; it was their “protestation before God and his angels” that what they sought was “to enjoy the liberty of a pure conscience in serving God, and reforming themselves according to his Word and Holy Commandments;” and it was their appeal to be freed from “the excommunications, imprisonments, banishments, racks and tortures, and other numberless oppressions which they had undergone.” They remind the king that it was not their weakness which prompted this appeal to his compassion; and that if they did not resist, it was not because they were few in number-“there being,” say they, “above one hundred thousand souls in these Provinces who profess the same religion, of which they presented him the Confession”-but to prevent his “stretching out his hand to embue and embathe it in the blood of so many poor innocent men,” and thereby bringing calamity upon his kingdom and throne.

They appended to their Confession a “Representation to the magistrates and higher powers throughout the Low Countries. In this Representation we see these Flemish Protestants taking their stand at the very threshold of the modern religious liberties. Nay, they so state the functions of the magistrate, and so define his jurisdiction, that fairly interpreted their words approximate very nearly, if not altogether, to our own idea of toleration. They indeed condemn those who taught that it is “unlawful for the magistrate to speak of the Scripture, or to judge of doctrines and matters of religion.” But these words in their mouths have a very different meaning from that which they would have in ours. The Church of Rome said to the magistrates, You are not to speak of Scripture, nor to judge of doctrines; that belongs exclusively to us: you are to believe that whatever we call heresy, is heresy, and, without farther inquiry, are to punish it with the sword. On the contrary, the Flemish Protestants vindicated the rights of princes and magistrates in this matter. They were not to be the blind tools of the Church in putting to death all whom she may choose to condemn as heretical. They must, for their own guidance, though not for the coercion of others, judge of doctrines and matters of religion. “They are not for going so far,” they say, “as those good old fathers who say that our consciences are not to be molested, much less constrained or forced to believe, by any powers on earth, to whom the sword is only entrusted for the punishment of robbers, murderers, and the like disturbers of civil government.” “We acknowledge,” they add, “that the magistrate may take cognisance of heresies.” But let us mark what sort of heresies they are of which the magistrate may take cognisance. They are heresies which involve “sedition and uproars against the government.”[7]

Thus again, when they explain themselves they come back to their grand idea of the freedom of conscience, as respects all human authority, in matters appertaining to God and his worship. Toleration had its birth in the same hour with Protestantism; and, like the twins of classic story, the two powers have flourished together and advanced by equal stages. Luther exhibited toleration in act; Calvin, ten years before the time of which we write, began to formulate it, when he took heresy, strictly so called, out of the jurisdiction of the magistrate, and left him to deal with blasphemy, “which unsettled the foundation of civil order;” and now we behold the Protestants of the Low Countries treading in the steps of the Reformer of Geneva, and permitting the magistrate to take cognisance of heresy only when it shows itself in disturbances and uproars. It is important to bear in mind that the Reformers had to fight two battles at once. They had to contend for the emancipation of the magistrate, and they had to contend for the emancipation of the conscience. When they challenged for the magistrate exemption from the authority of Rome, they had to be careful not to appear to exempt him from the authority of the law of God. The Papists were ever ready to accuse them of this, and to say that the Reformation had assigned an atheistic position to princes. If at times they appear to deny the toleration which at other times they teach, much, if not all, of this is owing to the double battle which the times imposed upon them-the emancipation of the magistrate from the enslavement of the Church, and the emancipation of the conscience from the enslavement of both the magistrate and the Church.

[6]Brandt, vol. 1., 158.

[7]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 158, 159.

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Chapter 8: The Rising Storm

Speech of Prince of Orange at the Council-table—Egmont sent to Spain-Demand for the States-General, and the Abolition of the Edicts—Philip’s Reply—More Martyrs—New and More Rigorous Instructions from Philip—The Nobles and Cities Remonstrate—Arrogance of the Inquisitors—New Mode of putting Protestants to Death—Rising Indignation in the Low Countries—Rumours of General Massacre—Dreadful Secret Imparted to Prince of Orange—Council of Trent—Programme of Massacre

Picture: View of the Chapel of “Saint Sang” (Holy Blood), Bruges

Picture: Cardinal Granvelle

The cardinal had taken flight and was gone, but the Inquisition remained. So long as the edicts were in force, what could be expected but that the waves of popular tumult would continue to flow? Nevertheless, the three lords-Orange, Egmont, and Horn-came to the helm which Granvelle had been compelled to let go, and, along with the regent, worked hard, if haply the shipwreck that appeared to impend over the vessel of the State might be averted. The clear eye of Orange saw that there was a deeper evil at work in the country than the cardinal, and he demanded the removal of that evil. Two measures he deemed essential for the restoration of quiet, and he strenuously urged the instant adoption of these:-first, the assembling of the States-General; and secondly, the abolition of the edicts. The prince’s proposition struck at the evil in both its roots. The States-General, if permitted to meet, would resume its government of the nation after the ancient Flemish fashion, and the abolition of the edicts would cut the ground from under the feet of the bishops and the inquisitors-in short, it would break in pieces that whole machinery by which the king was coercing the consciences and burning the bodies of his subjects. These two measures would have allayed all the ferment that was fast ripening into revolt. But what hope was there of their adoption? None whatever while Philip existed, or Spain had a single soldier at her service or a single ducat in her treasury. The Prince of Orange and his two fellow-councillors, however, let slip no opportunity at the Council-board of urging the expediency of these measures if the country was to be saved. “It was a thing altogether impracticable,” they said, “to extirpate such a multitude of heretics by the methods of fire and sword. On the contrary, the more these means were employed, the faster would the heretics multiply.”[1] Did not facts attest the truth and wisdom of their observation? Neither cords nor stakes had been spared, and yet on every hand the complaint was heard that heresy was spreading.

Waxing yet bolder, at a meeting of Council held towards the end of the year (1564), the Prince of Orange energetically pleaded that, extinguishing their fires, they should give liberty to the people to exercise their religion in their own houses, and that in public the Sacrament should be administered under both kinds. “With commotions and reformations on every side of them, “he said, “it was madness to think of maintaining the old state of matters by means of placards, inquisitions, and bishops. The king ought to be plainly informed what were the wishes of his subjects, and what a mistake it was to propose enforcing the decrees of the Council of Trent, while their neighbors in Germany, as well Roman Catholics as Protestants, had indignantly rejected them.” “As for himself,” he said, in conclusion, “although resolved to adhere to the Roman Catholic religion, he could not approve that princes should aim at any dominion over the souls of men, or deprive them of the freedom of their faith and religion.”

The prince warmed as he spoke. His words flowed like a torrent. Hour passed after hour, and yet there were no signs of his oration drawing to a close. The councillors, who usually sat silent, or contented themselves with merely giving a decorous assent to the propositions of Granvelle, might well be astonished at the eloquence that now resounded through the Council-chamber. It was now seven o’clock of the evening, and the orator would not have ended even yet, had not the Duchess of Parma hinted that the dinner-hour had arrived, and that the debate must be adjourned for the day. Viglius, who had taken the place of the cardinal at the Council-table, went home to his house in a sort of stupefaction at what he had witnessed. He lay awake all night ruminating on the line of argument he should adopt in reply to Orange. He felt how necessary it was to efface the impression the prince’s eloquence had made. The dawn found him still

[1]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 149.

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perturbed and perplexed. He got up, and was dressing himself, when a stroke of apoplexy laid him senseless upon the floor. The disease left him shattered in mind as in body, and his place at the Council-board had to be supplied by his friend Joachin Hopper, a professor of Louvain, but a man of very humble parts, and entirely subservient to the regent.[2]

It was resolved to dispatch Count Egmont to Madrid, to petition Philip for permission to the States-General to meet, as also for some mitigation of the edicts. But first the terms of Egmont’s instructions had to be adjusted. The people must not cry too loudly, lest their tyrant should heat their furnace seven-fold. But it was no easy matter to find mild epithets to designate burning wrongs. Words that might appear sufficiently humble and loyal on the comparatively free soil

[2]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 150.

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of the Low Countries, might sound almost like treason when uttered in the Palace of Spain. This delicate matter arranged, Egmont set out. A most courteous reception awaited the deputy of the Netherlands on his arrival at Madrid. He was caressed by the monarch, feted and flattered by the nobles, loaded with rich gifts; and these blandishments and arts had the effect, which doubtless they were meant to produce, of cooling his ardour as the advocate of his country. If the terms of the remonstrance which Egmont was to lay at the foot of the throne had been studiously selected so as not to grate on the royal ear, before the ambassador left Flanders, they were still further softened by Egmont now that he stood on Spanish soil. Philip frequently admitted him to a private audience, and consulted with him touching the matters respecting which he had been deputed to his court. The king professed to defer much to Egmont’s opinion; he gave no promise, however, that he would change his policy as regarded religious matters, or soften in aught the rigour of the edicts. But to show Egmont, and the seigniors of the Netherlands through him, that in this he was impelled by no caprice of cruelty or bigotry, but on the contrary was acting from high and conscientious motives, Philip assembled a council of divines, at which Egmont assisted, and put to them the question, whether he was bound to grant that liberty of conscience which some of the Dutch towns so earnestly craved of him? The judgment of the majority was that, taking into account the present troubles in the Low Countries-which, unless means were found for allaying them, might result in the Provinces falling away from their obedience to the king’s authority and to their duty to the one true Church—his Majesty [38] might accord them some freedom in matters of religion without sinning against God. On this judgment being intimated to Philip, he informed the Fathers that they had misapprehended the special point of conscience he wished to have resolved. What he desired to know was, whether he must, not whether he might grant the liberty his Flemish subjects desired. The ecclesiastics made answer plainly that they did not think that the king was bound in conscience so to do. Whereupon Philip, falling down before a crucifix, addressed it in these words:-“I beseech thee, O God and Lord of all things, that I may persevere all the days of my life in the same mind as I am now, never to be a king, nor called so of any country, where thou art not acknowledged for Lord.”[3]

Egmont’s embassy to the court of Spain being now ended, he set out on his return to the Low Countries. He was accompanied on his journey by the young Prince Alexander of Parma, the nephew of Philip, and son of Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands, and whose destiny it was in after-years to be fatally mixed up with the tragic woes of that land on which he now set foot for the first time. The results of Egmont’s mission were already known at Brussels by letters from Spain, which, although written after his departure from Madrid, had arrived before him; nevertheless, he appeared in the Council on the 5th of May, 1565, and gave in a report of the measures which the king had in contemplation for the pacification of the Provinces. The Prince of Orange clearly saw that the “holy water” of the court had been sprinkled on Egmont, and that the man who had gone forth a patriot had come back a courtier and apologist. The deputy informed the Council that on the matter of the edicts no relaxation was to be expected. Heresy most be rooted out. Touching the meeting of the States-General, the king would send his decision to the regent. This was all. Verily Egmont had gone far and brought back little. But he had a little codicil or postscript in reserve for the Council, to the effect that Philip graciously granted leave for a synod of ecclesiastics, with a few civilians, to convene and concert measures for the instruction of the people, the reformation of the schools, and the purgation of heresy. And further, if the penal laws now in use did not serve their end, they had Philip’s permission to substitute others “more efficacious.” The Prince of Orange and others were willing to believe that by the “more efficacious” methods against heresy, milder methods only could be intended, seeing that it would be hard to invent measures more rigorous than those now in use; such, however, was not the meaning of Philip.[4]

During the absence of Egmont, the persecution did not slacken. In February, Joost de Cruel was beheaded at Rosen. He had been first drawn to the Reformed faith by a sermon by Peter Titlemann, Dean of Rosen, who had since become the furious persecutor we have described above. In the same month, John Disreneaux, a man of seventy years, was burned at Lisle. At the same time, John de Graef was strangled and burned at Hulst, with the New Testament hung round his neck. His persecutors had subjected him while in prison to the extremities of hunger, and thirst, and cold, in the hope of subduing him. Mortification had set in, and he went halting to death, his frost-bitten toes and feet refusing their office. Tranquil and courageous, notwithstanding, he exhorted the by-standers, if they had attained a knowledge of the truth, not to be deterred by the fear of death from confessing it. In the following month, two youths were discovered outside the town of Tournay reading the Scriptures. An intimacy of the closest kind, hallowed by their love of the Gospel, had knit them together all their lives; nor were they parted now. They were strangled and burned at the same stake.[5] Considering the number and the barbarity of these executions, it does not surprise one that Orange and his associates believed that if the methods of extirpating heresy were to be changed, it could only be for milder inflictions. They had yet to learn the fertility of Philip’s inventive genius.

Scarcely had Egmont given in his report of his mission, when new instructions arrived from Philip, to the effect that not only were the old placards to be rigorously enforced, but, over and above, the canons of the Council of Trent were to be promulgated as law throughout the Netherlands. These canons gave the entire power of trying and punishing heretics to the clergy. In short, they delivered over the inhabitants of the Netherlands in all matters of opinion to the sole irresponsible and merciless jurisdiction of the Inquisition. Alarm, terror, and consternation overspread the Provinces. The nobles, states, and cities sent deputies to the governor to remonstrate against the outrage on their ancient rights about to be perpetrated, and the destruction into which such a policy was

[3]Strada, p. 183-apud Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 150, 151. Laval, vol. 3, p. 134.

[4]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 154. Laval, vol. 3., p. 134.

[5]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 158.

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sure to drag the country. “There could be no viler slavery,” they said, “than to lead a trembling life in the midst of spies and informers, who registered every word, action, look, and even every thought which they pretended to read from thence.” The four chief cities of Brabant, Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp, and Bois le Duc sent deputies to the Chancellor and Council of that Province, to say plainly that the orders of Philip were sounding the death-knell of the Province; the foreign merchants were making haste to get away, the commerce of their States was hastening to extinction, and soon their now flourishing country would be a “mere wilderness.” The Prince of Orange wrote to the Duchess of Parma to the effect that if this business of burning, beheading, and drowning was to go on, he begged that some other might be invested with the functions with which his sovereign had clothed him, for he would be no party to the ruin of his country, which he as clearly foresaw as he was powerless to avert. Other Stadtholders wrote to the Duchess of Parma, in reply to her earnest exhortations to assist in carrying out the edicts, saying that they were not inclined to be the lifeguards of the Inquisition. One of the chief magistrates of Amsterdam, a Roman Catholic, happening one day to meet a sheriff who was very zealous in the work of persecution, thus addressed him: “You would do well, when called to appear before the tribunal of God, to have the emperor’s placards in your hand, and observe how far they will bear you out.” Papers were being daily scattered in the streets, and posted on the gates of the palace of Orange, and of other nobles, calling on them to come to their country’s help in its hour of need, to the end that, the axe and the halter being abolished in the affairs of religion, every one might be able to live and die according to his conscience.

On the other hand, the governor was besieged by remonstrances and outcries from the bishops and monks, who complained that they were withstood in carrying out their sovereign’s wish in the matter of the execution of the edicts. The aid they had been encouraged to expect in the work of the extirpation of heresy was withheld from them. The tribunals, prisons, and scaffolds of the country had been made over to them, and all magistrates, constables, and gaolers had been constituted their servants; nevertheless, they were often denied the use of that machinery which was altogether indispensable if their work was to be done, not by halves, but effectually. They had to bear odium and calumny, nay, sometimes they were in danger of their lives, in their zeal for the king’s service and the Church’s glory. On all sides is heard the cry that heresy is increasing, continued these much-injured men; but how can it be that heretics should not multiply, they asked, when they were denied the use of prisons in which to shut them up, and fires in which to burn them? The position of the Duchess of Parma was anything but pleasant. On the one side she was assailed by the screams and hootings of this brood of Inquisitors; and on the other was heard the muttered thunder of a nation’s wrath.[6]

Rocked thus on the great billows, the Duchess of Parma wrote to her brother, letting him know how difficult and dangerous her position had become, and craving his advice as to how she ought to steer amid tempests so fierce, and every hour growing fiercer. Philip replied that the edicts must ever be her beacon-lights. Philip’s will was unalterably fixed on the extirpation of heresy in his kingdom of the Netherlands, and that will must be the duchess’s pole-star. Nevertheless, the tyrant was pleased to set his wits to work, and to devise a method by which the flagrancy, but not the cruelty, of the persecution might be abated. Instead of bringing forth the heretic, and beheading or burning him at midday, he was to be put to death in his prison at midnight. The mode of execution was as simple as it was barbarous. The head of the prisoner was tied between his knees with a rope, and he was then thrown into a large tub full of water, kept in the prison for that use. This Christian invention is said to have been the original device of the “most Catholic king.” The plea which Bishop Biro of Wesprim set up in defense of the clemency of the Church of Rome, would have been more appropriate in Philip’s mouth, its terms slightly altered, than it was in the mouth of the bishop. “It is a calumny to say that the Church of Rome is bloodthirsty,” said the worthy prelate, Biro; “that Church has always been content if heretics were burned.”

A new and dreadful rumor which began to circulate through the Netherlands, added to the alarm and terrors of the nation. It was during this same summer that Catherine de Medici and the Duke of Alva held their celebrated conference at Bayonne. Soon thereafter, whispers which passed from land to land, and from mouth to mouth, reached the Low Countries, that a dark plot had been concocted between these two personages, having for its object the utter extirpation of the new opinions. These rumors corresponded with what was said to have been agreed upon at one of the last sessions of the

[6]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 154, 155. Laval, vol. 3., pp. 136, 137.

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Council of Trent, which had closed its sittings the year before, and on that account greater stress was laid on these whispers. They appeared to receive still further authentication, at least in the eyes of William, Prince of Orange, from the circumstance that a plot precisely identical had been disclosed to him six years before, by Henry II., when the king and the prince were hunting together in the Wood of Vincennes. The rest of the hunting-party had left them, Henry and William were alone, and the mind of the French king being full of the project, and deeming the prince, then the intimate friend both of Philip II. and the Duke of Alva, a safe depositary of the great secret, he unhappily for himself, but most happily for humanity, communicated to the prince the details of the plan.[7] Henry II. told him how apprehensive he was of his throne being swept away in the flood of Protestantism, but he hoped, with the help of his son-in-law Philip II., soon to rid France of the last Huguenot. The monarch went on to explain to the prince how this was to be done, by entrapping the Protestants at the first convenient moment, destroying them at a single blow; and extending the same thorough purgation to all countries to which heresy had spread. William could not have been more astounded although the earth had suddenly yawned at his feet; however, he carried the secret in his breast from that dark wood, without permitting the French king to read, by word or look of his, the shock the disclosure had given him. And he retained it in his breast for years, without speaking of it to any one, although from the moment of his coming to the knowledge of it, it began to shape his conduct. It is from this circumstance that he received the significant name of “William the Silent.”

All three-the rumors from Bayonne, the tidings from the Council of Trent, and the dark secret imparted to William in the Forest of Vincennes—pointed to a storm now gathering, of more than usual severity, and which should burst over all Christendom, in which the Netherlands could not miss having their full share. But what had been plotted at Trent among the Fathers was nearly as little known as what had been agreed on at Bayonne, between Catherine and Alva. The full truth—the definite plan

- was locked up in the archives of the Vatican, whence it is probable its first suggestion had come, and in the breasts of the little coterie that met at the dosing sessions of the Council. But a paper by one of the secretaries of Cardinal Boromeo, since given to the world, has published on the housetops what was then spoken in whispers in the cabinets of kings or the conclaves of ecclesiastical synods. “First, in order that the business may be conducted with the greater authority, they” (the Fathers of the Council) “advise to commit the superintendence of the whole affair to Philip the Catholic king, who ought to be appointed with common consent the head and conductor of the whole enterprise.” The Catholic king was to begin by preferring a complaint to his neighbour, Anthony Bourbon, King of Navarre, “that, contrary to the institutions of his predecessors, he entertains and nourishes a new religion.” Should the King of Navarre turn a deaf ear to this remonstrance, Philip was to essay him “by fair promises to draw him off from his wicked and unhappy design.” He was to hold out to him the hope of having that portion of his ancestral dominions of which he had been stripped, restored, or an equivalent given him in some other part of Europe. Should Philip succeed in soothing him, “the operations of the future war will then be rendered more easy, short, and expeditious.” If he still continued obstinate, the King of Spain was to “intermix some threatenings with his promises and flatteries.” Meanwhile Philip was to be collecting an army “as privily as possible;” and in the event of the King of Navarre continuing obdurate, the Spanish king was to fall upon him suddenly and unawares, and chase him from his kingdom, which the leaguers were to occupy.

From the mountains of Navarre the war was to be moved down to the plains. The Huguenots of France were to be extirpated root and branch. For the execution of this part of the programme, the main stress was rested on the zeal of the Duke of Guise, aided by reinforcements from Spain. While the sword was busy drowning the plains of that country in Protestant blood, such of the German princes as were Roman Catholic were to stop the passes into France, lest the Protestant princes should send succour to their brethren. Shut in, and left to contend unaided with two powerful armies, the fall of French Protestantism could not be doubtful. France, chastised and restored to obedience to the Roman See, would regain her pristine purity and glory.

Matters being thus “ordered in France,” Germany was next to be undertaken. “Luther and his era” that hour of portentous eclipse which had thrust itself into Germany’s golden day—must be razed from the tablets and chronicles of the Fatherland, nor ever be once remembered or spoken of by the generations to come. “It will be necessary,” says the document from which we quote,

[7]Sleidan, Continuation, bk. 2., p. 27.

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“with men collected from all quarters, to invade Germany, and with the aid of the emperor and the bishops, to render and restore it again to the Holy Apostolic See.” It was arranged that this war of purgation should support itself. “The Duke of Guise shall lend to the emperor and the other princes of Germany, and the ecclesiastical lords, all the money that shall be gathered from the spoils and confiscations of so many noble, powerful, and wealthy citizens as shall be killed in France on account of the new religion, which will amount to a very great sum; the said Lord of Guise taking sufficient caution and security, that so he may, after the conclusion of the war, be reimbursed of all the money employed for that purpose, from the spoils of the Lutherans and others who shall, on account of religion, be slain in Germany.”

What of Helvetia while this great conflagration should be raging all round it? At the cry of their brethren the Reformed Swiss would rush from their mountains to aid their co-religionists. To prevent their doing so, work was to be found for them at home. “For fear,” says the document, “that the cantons of Switzerland should lend aids, it is necessary that the cantons which continue still obedient to the Roman Church declare war against the rest, and that the Pope assist these cantons that are of his religion, to the utmost of his power.”

The branches cut off in France and Germany, a last and finishing blow was to be dealt at the root of the tree in Geneva. “The Duke of Savoy, whilst the war thus embroils France and the Swiss, shall rush suddenly and unexpectedly with all his forces upon the city of Geneva, on the lake of Leman, assault it by force, and shall not abandon it nor withdraw his men until he become master and obtain full possession of the said city, putting to the point of the sword, or casting into the lake, every living soul who shall be found therein, without any distinction of age or sex, that all may be taught that the Divine Power in the end hath compensated for the delay of the punishment by the greatness and severity of it.”[8]

The tempest seemed about to burst in the days of Henry II., but the fatal tournament which sent that monarch to a premature grave drew off the storm for a time. It continued, however, to lower in the sky of Europe; the dark cloud would at times approach as if about to break, and again it would roll away. At last it exploded in the St. Bartholomew Massacre, and

its awful reverberations were reiterated again and again in the wars of Philip II. in the Low Countries, and in the campaigns and battles which for thirty years continued to devastate Germany.

[8]Discours des Conjurations de ceux de la Maison de Guise, contre le Roy, son Royaume, les Princes de son Sang, et ses Etats; printed in 1565, and republished at Ratisbon in 1712, among the proofs of Satyre Menipee, tom. 3.

Chapter 9: The Confederates or “Beggars”

League of the Flemish Nobles—Franciscus Junius—The “Confederacy “—Its Object—Number of Signatories—Meeting of the Golden Fleece and States-General—How shall Margaret Steer?—Procession of the Confederates—Their Petition—Perplexity of the Duchess—Stormy Debate in the Council—The Confederates first styled “Beggars”—Medals Struck in Commemoration of the Name—Livery of the Beggars—Answer of the Duchess—Promised Moderation of the Edicts—Martyrdoms Continued—Four Martyrs at Lille—John Cornelius Beheaded

Picture: View of the Town hall Amsterdam

Picture: A Field preaching near Ghent

Finding that new and more tyrannical orders were every day arriving from Spain, and that the despot was tightening his hold upon their country, the leading nobles of the Netherlands now resolved to combine, in order to prevent, if possible, the utter enslavement of the nation. The “Compromise,” as the league of the nobles was called, was formed early in the year 1566. Its first suggestion was made at a conventicle, held on the Prince of Parma’s marriage-day (3rd of November, 1565), at which Franciscus Junius, the minister of the Walloon or Huguenot congregation in Antwerp, preached.[1] This Junius, who was a Frenchman and of noble birth, had studied in Geneva, and though not more than twenty years of age, his great learning and extraordinary talents gave his counsel weight with

[1]So Brandt affirms, on the authority of a MS. Journal in Junius’s own handwriting (vol. 1., p. 162).

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the Flemish nobles who sometimes consulted him in cases of emergency. As he studied Tully, De Legibus, in his youth, there came one who said to him, in the words of the epicure, “God cares for none of us,” and plied Junius with arguments so subtle that he sucked in the poison of this dreary belief. Libertinism laid the reins on the neck of passion. But a marvellous escape from death, which he experienced at Lyons about a year afterwards, arrested him in his wickedness. He opened the New Testament, and the passage on which his eyes first lighted was this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” etc. As the stars grow dim and vanish when the sun rises, so the wisdom and eloquence of the pagans paled before the surpassing majesty and splendor of the Gospel by St. John. “My body trembled,” said he, “my mind was astonished, and I was so affected all that day that I knew not where nor what I was. Thou wast mindful of me, O my God, according to the multitude of thy mercies, and calledst home thy lost sheep into the fold.” From that day he studied the Scriptures; his life became pure; and his zeal waxed strong in proportion as his knowledge enlarged. He possessed not a little of the fearless spirit of the great master at whose feet he had sat. He would preach, at times, with the stake standing in the square below, and the flames in which his brethren were being burned darting their lurid flashes through the windows of the apartment upon the faces of his audience.[2] On the present occasion the young preacher addressed some twenty of the Flemish nobles, and after sermon a league against the “barbarous and violent Inquisition” was proposed. All Brussels was ringing with the marriage festivities of Parma. There were triumphal arches in the street, and songs in the banquet-hall; deep goblets were

[2]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 163.

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drained to the happiness of Parma, and the prosperity of the great monarchy of Spain. At the same moment, in the neighboring town of Antwerp, those movements were being initiated which were to loosen the foundations of Philip’s empire, and ultimately cast down the tyrant from the pinnacle on which he so proudly, and as he deemed so securely, stood.

The aims of the leaguers were strictly constitutional; they made war only against the Inquisition, “that most pernicious tribunal, which is not only contrary to all human and divine laws, but exceeds in cruelty the most barbarous institutions of the most savage tyrants in the heathen world.” “For these reasons,” say they, “we whose names are here subscribed have resolved to provide for the security of our families, goods, and persons; and for this purpose we hereby enter into a secret league with one another, promising with a solemn oath to oppose with all our power the introduction of the above-mentioned Inquisition into these Provinces, whether it shall be attempted secretly or openly, or by whatever name it shall be called...

We likewise promise and swear mutually to defend one another, in all places, and on all occasions, against every attack that shall be made, or prosecution that shall be raised, against any individual among us on account of his concern in this Confederacy.”[3] The first three who took the pen to sign this document were Count Brederode, Charles de Mansfeld, and Louis of Nassau. Copies were circulated over the country, and the subscribers rapidly multiplied. In the course of two months 2,000 persons had appended their names to it. Tidings of the league were wafted to the ears of the governor, and it was added-a slight exaggeration, it may be

- that it was already 15,000 strong.[4] Roman Catholics as well as Protestants were permitted to sign, and the array now gathering round this uplifted standard was, as may be supposed, somewhat miscellaneous.

The Duchess of Parma was startled by the sudden rise of this organisation, whose numbers increased every day. Behind her stood Philip, whose truculent orders left her no retreat; before her was the Confederacy, a less formidable but nearer danger. In her perplexity the governor summoned the Knights of the Fleece and the Stadtholders of the Provinces, to ask their advice touching the steps to be taken in this grave emergency. Two courses, she said, appeared to be open to her-the one was to modify the edicts, the other was to suppress the Confederacy by arms; the latter course, she said, was the one to which she leaned, especially knowing how inexorable was the will of the king, but her difficulty lay in finding one to whom she could safely entrust the command of the troops. Orange was disqualified, having pronounced so strongly against the edicts and in favor of liberty of conscience; and Egmont had positively declined the task, saying that “he would never fight for the penal laws and the Inquisition.”[5] What was to be done?

While the Council was deliberating, the Confederates arrived in a body at Brussels. On the 3rd of April, 1566, a cavalcade of 200 nobles and knights, headed by the tall, military form of Brederode, rode into Brussels. The nobleman who was foremost in the procession traced his lineage backwards 500 years, in unbroken succession, to the old sovereigns of Holland. Amid the chances and turnings of the contest now opening, who could tell whether the sovereignty of the old country might not return to the old line? Such was the vision that may have crossed the mind of Brederode. The day following the number of Confederates in Brussels was augmented by the arrival of about 100 other cavaliers. Their passage through the streets was greeted, as that of the first had been, by the acclamations of the populace. “There go,” said they, “the deliverers of our country.” Next day, the 5th of April, the whole body of Confederates, dressed in their richest robes, walked in procession to the old palace of Brabant, and passing through the stately hall in which Charles V. eleven years before had abdicated his sovereignties, they entered the audience chamber of the Regent of the Netherlands. Margaret beheld not without emotion this knightly assemblage, who had carried to her feet the wrongs of an oppressed nation. Brederode acted as spokesman. The count was voluble. Orange possessed the gift of eloquence, but the latter had not yet enrolled himself among the Confederates. William the Silent never retraced his steps, and therefore he pondered well his path before going forward. He could not throw down the gauntlet to a great monarchy like Spain with the light-hearted, jaunty defiance which many of the signatories of the Confederacy were now hurling against the tyrant, but whose heroism was likely to be all expended before it reached the battle-field, in those Bacchanalian meetings then so common among the Flemish nobles.

Brederode on this occasion was prudently brief.

[3]Watson; Philip II., vol. 1., pp. 255, 256.

[4]Motley, vol. 1., p. 224. Laval, vol. 3., p. 138.

[5]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 165.

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After defending himself and his associates from certain insinuations which had been thrown out against their loyalty, he read the petition which had been drafted in view of being presented to the duchess, in order that she might convey it to Philip. The petition set forth that the country could no longer bear the tyranny of the edicts: that rebellion was rearing its head, nay, was even at the palace-gates; and the monarch was entreated, if he would not imperil his empire, to abolish the Inquisition and convoke the States-General. Pending the king’s answer, the duchess was asked to suspend the edicts, and to stop all executions for religious opinion.[6]

When Brederode had finished, the duchess sat silent for a few minutes. Her emotion was too great to be disguised, the tears rolling down her cheeks.[7] As soon as she had found words she dismissed the Confederates, telling them that she would consult with her councillors, and give her answer on the morrow. The discussion that followed in the council-hall, after Brederode and his followers had withdrawn, was a stormy one. The Prince of Orange argued strongly in favor of liberty of conscience, and Count Berlaymont, a keen partisan of Rome and Spain, argued as vehemently, if not as eloquently, against the Confederates and the liberty which they craved. This debate is famous as that in which Berlaymont first applied to the Confederates an epithet which he meant should be a brand of disgrace, but which they accepted with pride, and wore as a badge of honour, and by which they are now known in history. “Why, madam,” asked Berlaymont of the duchess, observing her emotion, “why should you be afraid of these beggars?” The Confederates caught up the words, and at once plucked the sting out of them. “Beggars, you call us,” said they; “henceforth we shall be known as beggars.”[8] The term came soon to be the distinguishing appellation for all those in the Netherlands who declared for the liberties of their country and the rights of conscience. They never met at festival or funeral without saluting each other as “Beggars.” Their cry was “Long live the Beggars!” They had medals struck, first of wax and wood, and afterwards of silver and gold, stamped on the one side with the king’s effigies, and on the other with a beggar’s scrip or bag, held in two clasped right hands, with the motto, “Faithful to the king, even to beggary.” Some adopted grey cloth as livery, and wore the common felt hat, and displayed on their breasts, or suspended round their beavers, a little beggar’s wooden bowl, on which was wrought in silver, Vive le Gueux. At a great entertainment given by Brederode, after drinking the king’s health out of wooden bowls, they hung the dish, together with a beggar’s scrip, round their necks, and continuing the feast, they pledged themselves at each potation to play their part manfully as “Beggars,” and ever to yield a loyal adherence and stout defense to the Confederacy.[9]

The duchess gave her answer next day. She promised to send an envoy to Spain to lay the petition of the Confederates before Philip. She had no power, she said, to suspend the Inquisition, nevertheless she would issue orders to the inquisitors to proceed with discretion. The discretion of an inquisitor! Much the Beggars marvelled what that might mean. The new project shortly afterwards enlightened them. As elaborated, and published in fifty-three articles, that project amounted to this: that heretics, instead of being burned, were to be beheaded or hanged; but they were to be admitted to this remarkable clemency only if they did not stir up riots and tumults. The people appear to have been but little thankful for this uncommon “moderation,” and nicknamed it “murderation.” It would appear that few were deemed worthy of the Government’s mercy, for not only did blood continue to flow by the axe, but the stake blazed nearly as frequently as before. About this time, four martyrs were burned at Lille. “They all four” says Brandt, “sung as with one mouth the first verse of the twenty-seventh Psalm, and concluded their singing and their life together with the hymn of Simeon,’ Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.’” A tapestry weaver of Oudenard, near Ghent, by name John Tiscan, who had committed the indiscretion of snatching the wafer from the hand of the priest and crumbling it into bits, to show the people that it was bread and not God, had his hand cut off, and afterwards his body cast into the flames. Some there were, however, who were judged to fall within the scope of the Government’s indulgence, and were permitted to die by the sword. John Cornelius Winter had been minister in the town of Horn, and had spent some thirty years in the quiet but zealous diffusion of the truth. He was apprehended and thrown first into prison at the Hague, and afterwards into the Bishop of Utrecht’s prisons, and

[6]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 165, 166

[7]Pontus Peyen, 2., MS.-apud Motley, vol. 1., p. 254.

[8]Gueux. It is a French word, “and seems to be derived,” says Brandt,” from the Dutch Guits, which signifies as much as rogues, vagabonds, or sturdy beggars.”

[9]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 167. Laval, vol. 3., p. 139. 10 Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 168,169.

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now this year he was brought forth to be beheaded. He submitted, himself cheerfully, and it was observed that, singing the Te Deum on the scaffold, the executioner struck, and his head was severed from his body just as he had finished the line, “All the martyrs praise thee.”[10]

[10]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 168,169.

Chapter 10: The Field-Preachings

The Protestants Resolve to Worship in Public—First Field-Preaching near Ghent-Herman Modet—Seven Thousand Hearers—The Assembly Attacked, but Stands its Ground—Second Field-Preaching—Arrangements at the Field-Preaching—Wall of Waggons—Sentinels, etc—Numbers of the Worshippers—Singing of the Psalms—Field-Preaching near Antwerp—The Governor Forbids them—The Magistrates unable to put them down—Field-Preaching at Tournay—Immense Congregations—Peregrine de la Grange—Ambrose Wille—Field-Preaching in Holland—Peter Gabriel and John Arentson—Secret Consultations—First Sermon near Horn—Enormous Conventicle near Haarlem—The Town Gates Locked—The Imprisoned Multitude Compel their Opening—Grandeur of the Conventicle—Difference between the Field-Preachers and the Confederates—Preaching at Delft—Utrecht—The Hague—Arrival of more Preachers

Picture: Dutch Protestants in Hiding

The Confederates had been given proof of what was meant by the discretion of the inquisitors, and the Protestants were able to judge how far their condition was likely to be improved under the promised “Moderation of the Placards.” It neither blunted the sword nor quenched the violence of the stake. If the latter blazed somewhat less frequently, the former struck all the oftener; and there was still no diminution of the numbers of those who were called to seal their testimony with their blood. Despairing of a Government that was growing daily milder in word, but more cruel in act, the Protestants resolved that from this time forward they would hold their worshipping assemblies in public, and try what effect a display of their numbers would have upon their oppressors. At a meeting held at Whitsuntide, 1566, at which the Lord of Aldegonde-who was destined to play the most distinguished part, next to Orange, in the coming drama-was present, it was resolved that “the churches should be opened, and divine service publicly performed at Antwerp as it was already in Flanders.” This resolution was immediately acted upon. In some places the Reformed met together to the number of 7,000, in others to that of 15,000.[1] From West Flanders, where preaching in public took its rise, it passed into Brabant, and thence into other provinces. The worshippers at the beginning sought the gloom and seclusion of wood and forest. As they grew bolder, they assembled in the plains and open places; and last of all, they met in villages, in towns, and in the suburbs of great cities. They came to these meeting, in the first instance, unarmed; but being threatened, and sometimes attacked, they appeared with sticks and stones, and at last provided themselves with the more formidable weapons of swords, pistols, and muskets.[2]

It is said that the first field-preaching in the Netherlands took place on the 14th of June, 1566, and was held in the neighborhood of Ghent. The preacher was Herman Modet, who had formerly been a monk, but was now the Reformed pastor at Oudenard. “This man,” says a Popish chronicler, “was the first who ventured to preach in public, and there were 7,000 persons at his first sermon.”[3] The Government “scout,” as the head of the executive was named, having got scent of the meeting, mounted his horse and galloped off to disperse it. Arriving on the scene, he boldly rode in amongst the multitude, holding a drawn sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, and made a dash at the minister with intent to apprehend him. Modet, making off quickly, concealed himself in a neighboring wood. The people, surprised and without arms, appeared for a moment as if they would disperse; but their courage rallying, they plentifully supplied themselves with stones, in lack of other weapons, and saluted the officer with such a shower of missiles on all sides

[1]Laval, vol. 3., p. 140.

[2]Ibid., p. 171.

[3]N. Burgund, Hist. Belg., lib. 3., p. 213-apud Brandt, vol. 1., p. 171.

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that, throwing away his sword and pistol, he begged for quarter, to which his captors admitted him. He escaped with his life, although badly bruised.

The second great field-preaching took place on the 23rd, of July following, the people assembling in a large meadow in the vicinity of Ghent. The “Word” was precious in those days, and the people, thirsting to hear it, prepared to remain two days consecutively on the ground. Their arrangements more resembled an army pitching their camp than a peaceful multitude assembling for worship. Around the worshippers was a wall of barricades in the shape of carts and waggons. Sentinels were planted at all the entrances. A rude pulpit of planks was hastily run up and placed aloft on a cart. Modet was preacher, and around him were many thousands of hearers, who listened with their pikes, hatchets, and guns lying by their side, ready to be grasped on a sign from the sentinels who kept watch all around the assembly. In front of the entrances were erected stalls, whereat pedlars offered prohibited books to all who wished to buy. Along the roads running into the country were stationed certain persons, whose office it was to bid the casual passenger turn in and hear the Gospel. After sermon, water was fetched from a neighboring brook, and the Sacrament of baptism dispensed. When the services were finished, the multitude would repair to other districts, where they encamped after the same fashion, and remained for the same space of time, and so passed through the whole of West Flanders. At these conventicles the Psalms of David, which had been translated into Low Dutch from the version of Clement Marot, and Theodore Beza, were always sung. The odes of the Hebrew king, pealed forth by from five to ten thousand voices, and borne by the breeze over the woods and meadows, might be heard at great distances, arresting the ploughman as he turned the furrow, or the traveller as he pursued his way, and making him stop and wonder whence the minstrelsy proceeded.

Heresy had been flung into the air, and was spreading like an infection far and near over the Low Countries. The contagion already pervaded all Flanders, and now it appeared in Brabant. The first public sermon in this part of the Netherlands was preached on the 24th of June, in a wood belonging to the Lord of Berghen, not far from Antwerp. It being St. John’s-tide, and so a holiday, from four to five thousand persons were present. A rumor had been circulated that a descent would be made on the worshippers by the military; and armed men were posted at all the avenues, some on foot, others on horseback: no attack, however, took place, and the assembly concluded its worship in peace.[4] Tidings having reached the ear of the governor that field-preachings had commenced at Antwerp, she wrote to the magistrates of that city, commanding them to forbid all such assemblies of the people, and if holden, to disperse them by force of arms. The magistrates replied that they had not the power so to do, nor indeed had they; the burgher-guard was weak, some of them not very zealous in the business, and the conventicle-holders were not only numerous, but every third man went armed to the meeting. And as regards the Protestants, so little were they terrified by the threats of the duchess, that they took forcible possession of a large common, named the Laer, within a mile of Antwerp, and having fortified all the avenues leading into it, by massing waggons and branches of trees in front, and planting armed scouts all around, they preached in three several places of the field at[5] once.

The pestilence, which to the alarm and horror of the authorities had broken out, they sought to wall in by placards. Every day, new and severer prohibitions were arriving from the Duchess of Parma against the field-preachings. In the end of June, she sent orders to the magistrates of Antwerp to disperse all these assemblies, and to hang all the preachers.[6] Had the duchess accompanied these orders with troops to enforce them, their execution might have been possible; but the governor, much to her chagrin, had neither soldiers nor money. Her musketeers and cross-bowmen were themselves, in many instances, among the frequenters of these illegal meetings. To issue placards in these circumstances was altogether idle. The magistrates of Antwerp replied, that while they would take care that no conventicle was held in the city, they must decline all responsibility touching those vast masses of men, amounting at times to from fifteen to twenty thousand, that were in the practice of going outside the walls to sermon.

About this time Tournay became famous for its field-preachings. Indeed, the town may be said to have become Protestant, for not more than a sixth of its population remained with the Roman Church. Adjoining France its preachers were Walloons-that is, Huguenots-and on the question of the Sacrament, the main doctrinal difference between the Lutheran and the Reformed, the citizens of Tournay were decided Calvinists. Nowhere in the Netherlands had the Protestants as yet ventured on preaching publicly within the walls of a city,

[4]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 172.

[5]Ibid., p. 173.

[6]Ibid., p.174.

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and the inhabitants of Tournay, like those of all the Flemish towns, repaired to the fields to worship, leaving for the time the streets silent. One day in the beginning of July, 1566, some 10,000 citizens passed out at its gates to hear Peregrine de la Grange, an eloquent preacher from Provence. La Grange had brought to the Low Countries the warm and impulsive temperament and lively oratory of the South; he galloped with the air of a cavalier to the spot where thousands, gathered round a hastily prepared pulpit, waited his coming; and when he stood up to begin, he would fire a pistol over the heads of his immense audience as a signal to listen. Other two days passed, and another enormous conventicle assembled outside Tournay. A preacher even more popular than Peregrine de la Grange was this day to occupy the pulpit in the fields, and the audience was twice as large as that which had assembled two days before.

Ambrose Wille had sat at the feet of Calvin, and if the stream of his eloquence was not so rapid, it was richer and deeper than that of the Provencal; and what the multitudes which thronged to these field-preachings sought was not so much to have their emotions stirred as to have their understandings informed by the truths of Scripture, and above all, to have their consciences set at rest by hearing the way of pardon clearly explained to them. The risks connected with attendance were far too tremendous to be hazarded for the sake of mere excitement. Not only did the minister preach with a price set upon his head, but every one of these 20,000 now before him, by the mere fact of hearing him, had violated the edicts, and incurred the penalty of death. Their silence bespoke their intense anxiety and interest, and when the sermon had ended, the heartiness of their psalm testified to the depth of their joy. It was at the peril of their lives that the inhabitants of the Netherlands sought, in those days, the bread of their souls in the high places of the fields.

The movement steadily maintained its march northwards. It advanced along that famous seaboard, a mighty silent power, bowing the hearts of young and old, of the noble and the artisan, of the wealthy city merchant and the landward tiller of the soil, and gathering them, in defiance of fiery placards, in tens of thousands round that tree whereon was offered the true Sacrifice for the sins of the world. We have seen the movement advance from Flanders into Brabant, and now we are to follow it from Brabant into Holland. In vain does Philip bid it stop; in vain do the placards of the governor threaten death; it continues its majestic march from province to province, and from city to city, its coming, like that of morning, heralded by songs of joy. It is interesting to mark the first feeble beginnings of Protestant preaching in a country where the Reformation was destined to win so many brilliant triumphs. In an obscure street of Amsterdam, there lived at that time Peter Gabriel, formerly of Bruges, with his wife Eilzabeth, who was childless. He had been a monk, but having embraced the Protestant faith, he threw off the frock, and was now accustomed to explain the Heidelberg catechism every Sunday to a small congregation, who came to him by twos and threes at a time for fear of the magistrates, who were animated by a sanguinary zeal against the Reformation, and trembled lest the plague of field-preaching should invade their city. There also dwelt at Kampen at the same time John Arentson, a basket-maker by trade, but gifted with eloquence, and possessed of a knowledge of the Scriptures. Him a few pious burghers of Amsterdam invited to meet them, that they might confer touching the steps to be taken for commencing the public preaching of the Gospel in Holland. They met near St. Anthony’s Gate, outside Amsterdam, for Arentson durst not venture into the city. They were a little congregation of seven, including the preacher; and having prayed for Divine guidance in a crisis so important for their country, they deliberated; and having weighed all the difficulties, they resolved, in spite of the danger that threatened their lives, to essay the public preaching of the Word in Holland.

Before breaking up they agreed to meet on the same spot, the same afternoon, to devise the practical steps for carrying out their resolution. As they were re-entering Amsterdam, by separate gates, they heard the great bell of the Stadthouse ring out. Repairing to the market-place they found the magistrates promulgating the last placard which had been transmitted from the court. It threatened death against all preachers and teachers, as also against all their harbourers, and divers lesser penalties against such as should attend their preaching. The six worthy burghers were somewhat stumbled. Nevertheless, in the afternoon, at the appointed hour, they returned to their old rendezvous, and having again earnestly prayed, they decided on the steps for having the Gospel openly preached to the people in all parts of Holland. On the 14th of July the first sermon was preached by Arentson, in a field near Horn, in North Holland, the people flocking thither from all the villages around. In the humble basket-maker we see the pioneer of that numerous band of eloquent preachers [49] and erudite divines, by which Holland was to be distinguished in days to come.[7]

The movement thus fairly commenced soon gathered way. News of what had taken place at Horn spread like lightning all over Holland, and on the following Sunday, the 21st of July, an enormous gathering took place at Overeen, near Haarlem. Proclamation of the intended field-preaching had been made on the Exchange of Amsterdam on the previous day. The excitement was immense; all the boats and waggons in Amsterdam were hired for the transport of those who were eager to be present. Every village and town poured out its inhabitants, and all the roads and canals converging on Haarlem were crowded. The burgomasters of Amsterdam sent notice to the magistrates of Haarlem of what was impending. The Stadthouse bell was rung at nine o’clock of the evening of Saturday, and the magistrates hastily assembled, to be told that the plague of which they had heard such dreadful reports at a distance, was at last at their gates. Haarlem was already full of strangers; not an inn in it that was not crowded with persons who purposed being present at the field-preaching on the coming day. The magistrates deliberated and thought that they had found a way by which to avert the calamity that hung over them: they would imprison this whole multitude within the walls of their town, and so extinguish the projected conventicle of to-morrow. The magistrates were not aware, when they hit on this clever expedient, that hundreds had already taken up their position at Overeen, and were to sleep on the ground. On Sunday morning, when the travelers awoke and sallied out into the street, they found

[7]Brandt, vol 1., pp.178, 179.

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the city gates locked. Hour passed after hour, still the gates were kept closed. The more adventurous leaped from the walls, swam the moat, and leaving their imprisoned companions behind them, hastened to the place of meeting. A few got out of the town when the watch opened the gates to admit the milk-women, but the great bulk of the conventiclers were still in durance, and among others Peter Gabriel, who was that day to be preacher. It was now eleven o’clock of the forenoon; the excitement on the streets of Haarlem may be imagined; the magistrates, thinking to dispel the tempest, had shut themselves in with it. The murmurs grew into clamours, the clamours into threatenings, every moment the tempest might be expected to burst. There was no alternative but to open the gates, and let the imprisoned multitude escape.

Citizens and strangers now poured out in one vast stream, and took the road to Overeen. Last of all arrived Peter Gabriel the minister. Two stakes were driven perpendicularly into the ground, and a bar was laid across, on which the minister might place his Bible, and rest his arms in speaking. Around this rude pulpit were gathered first the women, then the men, next those who had arms, forming an outer ring of defense, which however was scarcely needed, for there was then no force in Holland that would have dared to attack this multitude. The worship was commenced with the singing of a psalm. First were heard the clear soft notes of the females at the center; next the men struck in with their deeper voices; last of all the martial forms in the outer circle joined the symphony, and gave completeness and strength to the music. When the psalm had ended, prayer was offered, and the thrilling peals that a moment before had filled the vault overhead were now exchanged for a silence yet more thrilling. The minister, opening the Bible, next read out as his text the 8th, 9th, and10th verses of the second chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Not of works lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Here in a few verses, said the minister, was the essence of the whole Bible the “marrow” of all true theology:—“the gift of God,” salvation; its source, “the grace of God;” the way in which it is received, “through faith;” and the fruits ordained to follow, “good works.”

It was a hot midsummer day; the audience was not fewer than 5,000; the preacher was weak and infirm in body, but his spirit was strong, and the lightning-power of his words held his audience captive. The sermon, which was commenced soon after noon, did not terminate till past four o’clock. Then again came prayer. The preacher made supplication, says Brandt, “for all degrees of men, especially for the Government, in such a manner that there was hardly a dry eye to be seen.”[8] The worship was closed as it had been commenced, with the melodious thunder of 5,000 voices raised in praise.

So passed this great movement through Holland in the course of a few weeks. Wherever it came it stirred the inhabitants not into wrath, nor into denunciations of the Government, and much less into seditions and insurrections; it awoke within them thoughts which were far too serious and solemn to find vent in tumult and noise. They asked, “What must we do to be saved?” It was the hope of having this the greatest of all questions answered, that drew them out into woods and wildernesses, and open fields, and gathered them in thousands and tens of thousands around the Book of Life and its expositor. While Brederode and his fellow Confederates were traversing the country, making fiery speeches against the Government, writing lampoons upon the bishops, draining huge bowls of wine, and then hanging them round their necks as political badges-in short, rousing passions which stronger passions and firmer wills were to quell—these others, whom we see searching the Scriptures, and gathering to the field-preachings, were fortifying themselves and leavening their countrymen with those convictions of truth, and that inflexible fidelity to God and to duty, which alone could carry them through the unspeakably awful conflict before them, and form a basis strong enough to sustain the glorious fabric of Dutch liberty which was to emerge from that conflict.

By the middle of August there was no city of note in all Holland where the free preaching of the Gospel had not been established, not indeed within the walls, but outside in the fields. The magistrates of Amsterdam, of all others, offered the most determined resistance. They convoked the town militia, consisting of thirty-six train-bands, and asked them whether they would support them in the suppression of the field-conventicles. The militia replied that they would not, although they would defend with their lives the magistrates and city against all insurrections.[9] The authorities

[8]Memoirs of Laurence Jacobson Real, an eye-witness-apud Brandi, vol. 1., pp. 179-181.

[9]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 183.

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were thus under the necessity of tolerating the public sermon, which was usually preached outside the Haarlem gate. The citizens of Delft, Leyden, Utrecht, and other places now took steps for the free preaching of the Gospel. The first sermon was preached at Delft by Peter Gabriel at Hornbrug, near the city. The concourse was great. The next city to follow was the Hague. Twenty waggons filled with the burghers of Delft accompanied the preacher thither; they alighted before the mansion of the president, Cornelius Suis, who had threatened the severest measures should such a heretical novelty be attempted in his city. They made a ring with the waggons, placing the preacher in the centre, while his congregation filled the enclosure. The armed portion of the worshippers remained in the waggons and kept the peace. They sang their psalm, they offered their prayer, the preaching of the sermon followed; the hostile president surveying all the while, from his own window, the proceedings which he had stringently forbidden, but was quite powerless to prevent.

There were only four Protestant ministers at this time in all Holland. Their labours were incessant; they preached all day and journeyed all night, but their utmost efforts could not overtake the vastness of the field. Every day came urgent requests for a preacher from towns and villages which had not yet been visited. The friends of the Gospel turned their eyes to other countries; they cried for help; they represented the greatness of the crisis, and prayed that laborers might be sent to assist in reaping fields that were already white, and that promised so plenteous a harvest. In answer to this appeal some ten pastors were sent, mainly from the north of Germany, and these were distributed among the cities of Holland. Other preachers followed, who came from other lands, or arose from amongst the converts at home, and no long time elapsed till each of the chief towns enjoyed a settled ministration of the Gospel.

Chapter 11: The Image-Breakings

The Confederate Envoys—Philip’s Cruel Purpose—The Image-Breakers—Their Character—Their Devastations—Overspread the Low Countries in a Week—Pillage of 400 Churches—Antwerp Cathedral—Its Magnificence—Its Pillage—Pillage of the Rest of the Churches—The True Iconoclast Hammer-The Preachers and their People take no part in the Image-Breakings—Image-Breaking in Holland—Amsterdam and other Towns—What Protestantism Teaches concerning Image-Breaking—The Popular Outbreaks at the Reformation and at the French Revolution Compared

Picture: Iconoclasts Destroying the Images and Altar Decorations of a Roman Catholic Church

We have seen the procession of the 300 noblemen who, with Count Brederode at their head, on the 5th of April, 1566, walked two and two on foot to the old palace of Brabant in Brussels, to lay the grievances under which their nation groaned at the feet of Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands. We have also heard the answer which the regent returned. She promised to send their petition by special envoys to Philip, with whom alone the power lay of granting or withholding its request; and meanwhile, though she could not close the Inquisition, she would issue orders to the inquisitors to proceed “with discretion.” The noblemen whom Margaret selected to carry the Confederate Petition to Spain were the Marquis de Berghen and the Baron de Montigny. They gladly undertook the mission entrusted to them, little suspecting how fruitless it would prove for their country, and how fatally it would end for themselves. The tyrant, as we shall afterwards see, chose to consider them not as ambassadors, but as conspirators against his Government. Philip took care, however, to keep the dark purpose he harboured in connection therewith in his breast; and meanwhile he professed to be deliberating on the answer which the two deputies, who he purposed should see the Netherlands no more, were to carry back. While Philip was walking in “leaden shoes,” the country was hurrying on with “winged feet.”

The progress of the movement so far had been peaceful. The psalms sung and the prayers offered at the field-preachings, and above all the Gospel published from the pulpits, tended only to banish thoughts of vengeance, and inspire to amity and good-will. The consideration of the forgiveness of Heaven, freely accorded to the most enormous offenses, disposed all who accepted it to forgive in their turn. But numerous other causes were in [52] operation tending to embroil the Protestant movement. The whole soil of the Netherlands was volcanic. Though the voice of the pulpit was peace, the harangues which the Confederates were daily firing off breathed only war. The Protestants were becoming conscious of their strength; the remembrance of the thousands of their brethren who had been barbarously murdered, rankled in their minds-nay, they were not permitted to forget the past, even had they been willing so to do. Did not their pastors preach to them with a price set upon their heads, and were not their brethren being dragged to death before their eyes? With so many inflammable materials all about, it needed only a spark to kindle a blaze. A mighty conflagration now burst out.

On the 14th of August, the day before the fete of the Assumption of the Virgin, there suddenly appeared in Flanders a band of men armed with staves, hatchets, hammers, ladders, and ropes; some few of them carried guns and swords.[1] This party was composed of the lowest of the people, of idlers, and women of disreputable character, “hallooed on,” says Grotius, “by nobody knows whom.”[2] They had come forth to make war upon images; they prosecuted the campaign with singular energy, and, being unopposed, with complete success. As they marched onwards the crosses, shrines, and saints in stone that stood by the roadside fell before them. They entered the villages and lifted up their hammers upon all their idols, and smote them in pieces. They next visited the great towns, where they pulled down the crucifixes that stood at the corners of the streets, and broke the statues of the Virgin and saints. The churches and cathedrals they swept clean of all their consecrated symbols. They extinguished the tapers on the altars and mounting the wall of the edifice with their ladders, pulled down the pictures that adorned it. They overturned the Madonnas, and throwing their ropes around the massive crosses that surmounted altars and chapels, bore them to the ground; the altars too, in some cases, they demolished; they took a special delight in soiling the rich vestments of the priests, in smearing their shoes with the holy oil, and trampling under foot the consecrated bread; and they departed only when there was nothing more to break or to profane. It was in vain that the doors of some churches and convents were hastily barricaded. This iconoclast army was not to be withstood. Some sturdy image-hater would swing his hammer against the closed portal, and with one blow throw it open. The mob would rush in, and nothing would be heard but the clang of axes and the crash of falling pictures and overturned images. A few minutes would suffice to complete the desolation of the place. Like the brook when the rams descend, and a hundred mountain torrents keep pouring their waters into it, till it swells into a river, and at last widens into a devastating flood, so this little band of iconoclasts, swelled by recruits from every village and town through which they passed, grew by minutes into an army, that army into a far-extending host, which pursued its march over the country, bursting open the doors of cathedrals and the gates of cities, chasing burgomasters before it, and striking monk and militia-man alike with terror. It seemed even as if iconoclasts were rising out of the soil. They would start up and begin their ravages at the same instant in provinces and cities widely apart. In three days they had spread themselves over all the Low Countries, and in less than a week they had plundered 400 churches.[3] To adapt to this destroying host the words of the prophet, descriptive of the ravages of another army-before them was a garden, clothed in the rich blossoms of the Gothic genius and art, behind them was a wilderness strewn over with ruins.

These iconoclasts appeared first in the district of St. Omer, in Flanders, where they sacked the convent of the Nuns of Wolverghen. Emboldened by their success, the cry was raised, “To Ypres, to Ypres!”[4] “On their way thither,” says Strada, “their number increased, like a snowball rolling from a mountain-top into the valley.”[5] They purged the roads as they advanced, they ravaged the churches around Ypres, and entering the town they inflicted unsparing demolition upon all the images in its sanctuaries. “Some set ladders to the walls, with hammers and staves battering the pictures. Others broke asunder the iron-work, seats, and pulpit. Others casting ropes about the great statues of Our Savior Christ, and the saints, pulled them down to the ground.”[6] The day following there gathered “another flock of the like birds of prey,” which directed their flight towards Courtray and Douay, ravaging and plundering as they went onward. Not a penny of property did they appropriate, not a hair of the head of monk or nun did they hurt. It was not plunder but destruction which they sought, and their wrath if fierce was discharged

[1]Strada, lib. 5.

[2]Grotius, Annales, lib. 1., p. 22-apud Brandt, vol. 1., p. 191.

[3]Hooft, lib. 3., p. 99. Strada, lib. 5., p. 260. Brandt, vol. 1., p. 191.

[4]Strada, lib. 5.

[5]Ibid.

[6]Ibid.

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not on human beings, but on graven images. They smote, and defaced, and broke in pieces, with exterminating fury, the statues and pictures in the churches, without permitting even one to escape, “and that with so much security,” says Strada, “and with so little regard of the magistrate or prelates, as you would think they had been sent for by the Common Council, and were in pay of the city.”[7]

Tidings of what was going on in Flanders were speedily carried into Brabant, and there too the tempest gathered with like suddenness, and expended itself with like fury. Its more terrific burst was in Antwerp, which the wealth and devotion of preceding ages had embellished with so many ecclesiastical fabrics, some of them of superb architectural magnificence, and all of them filled with the beautiful creations of the chisel and the pencil. The crowning glory of Antwerp was its cathedral, which, although begun in 1124, had been finished only a few years before the events we are narrating. There was no church in all Northern Europe, at that day, which could equal the Notre-Dame of the commercial capital of Brabant, whether in the imposing grandeur of its exterior, or in the variety and richness of its internal decorations. The magnificence of its statuary, the beauty of its paintings, its mouldings in bronze and carvings in wood, and its vessels of silver and gold, made it the pride of the citizens, and the delight and wonder of strangers from other lands. Its spire shot up to a height of 500 feet, its nave and aisles stretched out longitudinally the same length. Under its lofty roof, borne up by columns of gigantic stature, hung round with escutcheons and banners, slept mailed warriors in their tombs of marble, while the boom of organ, the chant of priest, and the whispered prayers of numberless worshippers, kept eddying continually round their beds of still and deep and never-ending repose.

When the magistrates and wealthy burghers of Antwerp heard of the storm that was raging at no great distance from their gates, their hearts began to fail them. Should the destructive cloud roll hither, how much will remain a week hence, they asked themselves, of all that the wealth and skill and penitence of centuries have gathered into the Church of Our Lady? It needed not that the very cloud that was devastating Flanders should transport itself to the banks of the Scheldt; the whole air was electrical. In every quarter of the firmament the same dark clouds that hung over Flanders were appearing, and wherever stood Virgin, or saint, or crucifix, there the lightnings were seen to fall. The first mutterings of the storm were heard at Antwerp on the fete-day of the Assumption of the Virgin. “Whilst,” says Strada, “her image in solemn procession was carried upon men’s shoulders, from the great church through the streets, some jeering rascals of the meaner sort of artificers first laughed and hissed at the holy solemnity, then impiously and impudently, with mimic salutations and reproachful words, mocked the effigies of the Mother of God.”[8] The magistrates of Antwerp in their wisdom hit upon a device which they thought would guide the iconoclast tempest past their unrivalled cathedral. It was their little manoeuvre that drew the storm upon them.

The great annual fair was being held in their city;[9] it was usual during that concourse for the image of the Virgin to stand in the open nave of the cathedral, that her rotaries might the more conveniently offer her their worship. The magistrates, thinking to take away occasion from those who sought it, bade the statue be removed inside the choir, behind the iron railing of its gates. When the people assembled next day, they found “Our Lady’s” usual place deserted. They asked her in scorn “why she had so early flown up to the roost?” “Have you taken fright,” said they sarcastically, “that you have retreated within this enclosure?” As “Our Lady” made them no reply, nor any one for her, their insolence waxed greater. “Will you join us,” said they, “in crying, ‘Long live the Beggars’?” It is plain that those who began the iconoclast riots in Antwerp were more of Confederates than Reformers. A mischievously frolicsome lad, in tattered doublet and old battered hat, ascended the pulpit, and treated the crowd to a clever caricature of the preaching of the friars. All, however, did not approve of this attempt to entertain the multitude. A young sailor rushed up the stairs to expel the caricaturist preacher. The two struggled together in the pulpit, and at last both came rolling to the ground. The crowd took the part of the lad, and some one drawing his dagger wounded the sailor. Matters were becoming serious, when the church officers interfered, and with the help of the margrave of the city, they succeeded with some difficulty in ejecting the mob, and locking the cathedral-doors for the night.[10]

The governor of the city, William of Orange, was absent, having been summoned a few days before to a council at Brussels; and the two burgomasters and magistrates were at their wits’ end.

[7]Strada, lib. 5.

[8]Strada, lib. 5

[9]Hooft, Strada, etc.-apud Brandt, vol. 1., p. 192.

[10]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 192.

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They had forbidden the Gospel to be preached within the walls of Antwerp, having rejected the petition lately presented to that effect by a number of the principal burghers; but the gates which the Gospel must not enter, the iconoclast tempest had burst open without leave of the Senate. Where the psalm could not be sung, the iconoclast saturnalians lifted up their hoarse voices. The night passed in quiet, but when the day returned, signs appeared of a renewal of the tempest. Crowds began to collect in the square before the cathedral; numbers were entering the edifice, and it was soon manifest that they had come not to perform their devotions, but to stroll irreverently through the building, to mock at the idols in nave and aisle, to peer through the iron railings behind which the Virgin still stood ensconced, to taunt and jeer her for fleeing, and to awaken the echoes of the lofty roof with their cries of “Long live the Beggars!” Every minute the crowd was increasing and the confusion growing. In front of the choir, sat an ancient crone selling wax tapers and other things used in the worship of the Virgin. Zealous for the honour of Mary, whom Antwerp and all Brabant worshipped, she began to rebuke the crowd for their improper behavior. The mob were not in a humor to take the admonition meekly. They turned upon their reprover, telling her that her patroness’ day was over, and her own with it, and that she had better “shut shop.” The huckster thus baited was not slow to return gibe for gibe. The altercation drew the youngsters in the crowd around her, who possibly did not confine their annoyances to words. Catching at such missiles as lay within her reach, the stall-woman threw them at her tormentors. The riot thus begun rapidly extended through all parts of the church. Some began to play at ball, some to throw stones at the altar, some to shout, “Long live the Beggars!” and others to sing psalms. The magistrates hastened to the scene of uproar, and strove to induce the people to quit the cathedral. The more they entreated, the more the mob scowled defiance. They would remain, they said, and assist in singing Ave Maria to the Virgin. The magistrates replied that there would be no vespers that night, and again urged them to go. In the hope that the mob would follow, the magistrates made their own exit, locking the great door of the cathedral behind them, and leaving open only a little wicket for the people to come out by. Instead of the crowd within coming out, the mob outside rushed in at the wicket, and the uproar was increased. The margrave and burgomasters re-entered the church once more, and made yet another attempt to quell the riot. They found themselves in presence of a larger and stormier crowd, which they could no more control than they could the waves of an angry sea. Securing what portion they could of the more valuable treasures in the church, they retired, leaving the cathedral in the hands of the rioters.[11]

All night long the work of wholesale destruction still went on. The noise of wrenching, breaking, and shouting, the blows of hammers and axes, and the crash of images and pictures, were heard all over the city; and the shops and houses were closed. The first object of the vengeance of the rioters, now left sole masters of the building and all contained in it, was the colossal image of the Virgin, which only two days before had been borne in jewelled robes, with flaunt of banner, and peal of trumpet, and beat of drum, through the streets. The iron railing within which she had found refuge was torn down, and a few vigorous blows from the iconoclast axes hewed her in pieces and smote her into dust. Execution being done upon the great deity of the place, the rage of the mob was next discharged on the minor gods. Traversing nave and side-aisle, the iconoclast paused a moment before each statue of wood or stone. He lifted his brawny arm, his hammer fell, and the image lay broken. The pictures that hung on the walls were torn down, the crosses were overturned, the carved work was beaten into atoms, and the stained glass of the windows shivered in pieces. All the altars-seventy in number-were demolished;[12] in short, every ornament was rifled and destroyed. Tapers taken from the altar lighted the darkness, and enabled the iconoclasts to continue their work of destruction all through the night.

The storm did not expend itself in the cathedral only, it extended to the other churches and chapels of Antwerp. These underwent a like speedy and terrible purgation. Before morning, not fewer than thirty churches within the walls had been sacked. When there remained no more images to be broken, and no more pictures and crucifixes to be pulled down, the rabble laid their hands on other things. They strewed the wafers on the floor; they filled the chalices with wine, and drank to the health of the Beggars; they donned the gorgeous vestments of the priests, and, breaking open the cellars, a vigorous tap of the hammer set the red wine a-flowing. A Carmelite, or bare-footed monk, who had languished twelve years in the prison of his monastery, received his liberty at the hands of these image-breakers. The nunneries were invaded,[13] and

[11]Strada, p. 254-apud Brandt, vol. 1., p. 193.

[12]Ibid., lib. 5.

[13]Ibid., pp. 255, 269-apud Brandt, vol. 1., p. 193.

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the sisters, impelled by fright, or moved by the desire of freedom, escaped to the houses of their relatives and friends. Violence was offered to no one. Unpitying towards dead idols, these iconoclasts were tender of living men.

When the day broke a body of the rioters sallied out at the gates, and set to work on the abbeys and religious houses in the open country. These they ravaged as they had done those of the city. The libraries of some of these establishments they burned. The riotings continued for three days. No attempt to put them down was made by any one. The magistrates did nothing beyond their visit to the cathedral on the first day. The burghal militia were not called out. The citizens kept themselves shut up in their houses, the Protestants because they suspected that the Roman Catholics had conspired to murder them, and the Roman Catholics because they feared the same thing of the Protestants. Though the crowd was immense, the actual perpetrators of these outrages were believed not to number over a hundred. A little firmness on the part of the authorities at the beginning might easily have restrained them. “All these violences, plunderings, and desolations,” said those of the Spanish faction, “were committed by about a hundred unarmed rabble at the most.” The famous Dutch historian, Hooft, says: “I do not think it strange, since there are good and bad men to be found in all sects, that the vilest of the [Reformed] party showed their temper by these extravagances, or that others fed their eyes with a sport that grew up to a plague, which they thought the clergy had justly deserved by the rage of their persecutions.” “The generality of the Reformed,” he adds, “certainly behaved themselves nobly by censuring things which they thought good and proper to be done, because they were brought about by improper methods.”[14] In an Apology which they published after these occurrences had taken place the Reformed said: “The Papists themselves were at the bottom of the image-breaking, to the end they might have a pretext for charging those of the Religion with rebellion: this, they added, plainly appeared by the tumult renewed at Antwerp by four Papists, who were hanged for it next day.”[15]

It is light and not axes that can root out idols. It is but of small avail to cast down the graven image, unless the belief on which the worship of it is founded be displaced from the heart. This was not understood by these zealous iconoclasts. Cast images out of the breast, said Zwingle, and they will soon disappear from the sanctuary. Of this opinion were the Protestant preachers of the Low Countries. So far from lifting axe or hammer upon any of the images around them, they strove to the utmost of their power to prevent the rabble doing so. The preacher Modet, in an Apology which he published soon after these disorders, says “that neither he himself nor any of his consistory had any more knowledge of this design of destroying images when it was first contrived than of the hour of their death.” It was objected against him that he was in the church while the mob was breaking and defacing the images. This he owns was true; but he adds that “it was at the desire of the magistrates themselves, and at the peril of his own life, that he went thither to quiet the mob, though he could not be heard, but was pulled down from the pulpit, and thrust out of the church; that, moreover, he had gone first to the convent of the Grey Friars, and next to the nunnery of St. Clara, to entreat the people to depart; that of this matter fifty or sixty nuns could testify. That was all the concern he had in that affair.” A written address was also presented to the burgomaster by the ministers and elders of the Dutch and Walloon congregations, in which “they called God to witness that what happened in the taking away and destroying of images was done without either their knowledge or consent; and they declared their detestation of these violent deeds.”[16]

This destroying wind passed on to Breda, Bergen-op-Zoom, and other towns of Brabant. Eight men presented themselves at the gates of Lier, and said they had come to ascertain whether the idols had been taken down. The magistrates admitted two of them into the city, led them from church to church, and removed whatever they ordered, without once asking them by whose authority they had come.[17] At Tournay the churches were stripped to the very walls; the treasures of gold and silver which the priests had buried in the earth, exhumed; and the repositories broken into, and the chalices, reliquaries, rich vestments, and precious jewels scattered about as things of no value. At Valenciennes the massacre of the idols took place on St. Bartholomew’s Day. “Hardly as many senseless stones,” says Motley, “were victims as there were to be living Huguenots sacrificed in a single city upon a Bartholomew which was fast approaching. In the Valenciennes massacre not a human being was injured.”[18]

The storm turned northward, and inflicted its ravages on the churches of Holland. Hague, Delft, Leyden, the Brill, and other towns were visited

[14]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 194.

[15]Ibid., p. 258.

[16]Brandt, vol.1., p.196.

[17]Ibid., p. 197.

[18]Motley, 1., 282.

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and purged. At Dort, Gouda, Rotterdam, Haarlem, and other places, the magistrates anticipated the coming of the iconoclasts by giving orders beforehand for the removal of the images. Whether the pleasure or the mortification of the rioters was the greater at having the work thus taken off their hands, it would be hard to affirm. At Amsterdam the matter did not pass off so quietly. The magistrates, hearing that the storm was travelling northwards, gave a hint to the priests to remove their valuables in time. The precaution was taken with more haste than good success. The priests and friars, lading themselves with the plate, chalices, patens, pyxes, and mass-vestments, hurried with them along the open street. They were met by the operatives, who were returning from their labor to dinner. The articles were deemed public property, and the clergy in many cases were relieved of their burdens. The disturbances had begun. The same evening, after vespers had been sung, several children were brought for baptism. While the priest was performing the usual exorcisms one of the crowd shouted out, “You priest, forbear to conjure the devil out of him; baptise the child in the name of Jesus, as the apostles were wont to do.” The confusion increased; some mothers had their infants hastily baptised in the mother tongue, others hurried home with theirs unbaptised. Later in the evening a porter named Jasper, sauntering near that part of the church where the pyx is kept, happened to light upon a placard hanging on the wall, having reference to the mystery in the pyx. “Look here,” said he to the bystanders, at the same time laying hold on the board and reading aloud its inscription, which ran thus: “Jesus Christ is locked up in this box; whoever does not believe it is damned.” Thereupon he threw it with violence on the floor; the crash echoed through the church, and gave the signal for the breakings to begin. Certain boys began to throw stones at the altar. A woman threw her slipper at the head of a wooden Mary-an act, by the way, which afterwards cost her her own head. The mob rushed on: images and crucifixes went down before them, and soon a heap of pictures, vases, crosses, and saints in stone, broken, bruised, and blended undistinguishably, covered with their sacred ruins the floors of the churches.[19]

It does not appear from the narratives of contemporary historians that in a single instance these outrages were stimulated, or approved of, by the Protestant preachers. On the contrary, they did all in their power to prevent them. They wished to see the removal of images from the churches, knowing that this method of worship had been forbidden in the Decalogue; but they hoped to accomplish the change peacefully, by enlightening the public sentiment and awakening the public conscience on the matter. He is the true iconoclast, they held, who teaches that “God is a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit.” This is the hammer that is to break in pieces the idols of the nations.

Nor can the destruction of these images, with truth, be laid at the door of the Protestant congregations of the Low Countries. There were fanatical persons in their ranks, no doubt, who may have aided the rioters by voice and hand; but the great body of the Reformers-all, in short, who were worthy of the name, and had really been baptised into the spirit of Protestantism-stood aloof from the work of destruction, knowing it to be as useless as it was culpable. These outrages were the work of men who cared as little for Protestantism, in itself, as they did for Roman Catholicism. They belonged to a class found in every Popish country, who, untaught, vindictive, vicious, are ever ready to break out into violence the moment the usual restraints are withdrawn. These restraints had been greatly relaxed in the Low Countries, as in all the countries of Christendom, by the scandals of the priesthood, and yet more by the atrocious cruelty of the Government, which had associated these images in the minds of the people with the 30,000 victims who had been sacrificed during the three or four decades past. And most of all, perhaps, had Protestantism tended to relax the hold which the Church of Rome exercised over the masses. Protestantism had not enlightened the authors of these outrages to the extent of convincing them of its own truth, but it had enlightened them to the extent of satisfying them that Popery was a cheat; and it is of the nature of the human mind to avenge itself upon the impositions by which it has been deluded and duped. But are we therefore to say that the reign of imposture must be eternal? Are we never to unmask delusions and expose falsehoods, for fear that whirlwinds may come in with the light? How many absurdities and enormities must we, in that case, make up our minds to perpetuate! In no one path of reform should we ever be able to advance a step. We should have to sternly interdict progress not only in religion, but in science, in politics, and in every department of social well-being. And then, how signally unjust to blame the remedy, and hold it accountable for the disturbances that accompany it, and acquit the evil that made the remedy necessary! Modern times have presented us with two

[19]Hooft, lib. 3.-apud Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 199, 200.

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grand disruptions of the bonds of authority; the first was that produced by Protestantism in the sixteenth century, and the second was that caused by the teachings of the French Encyclopedists in the end of the eighteenth century. In both cases the masses largely broke away from the control of the Roman Church and her priesthood; but every candid mind will admit that they broke away not after the same fashion, or to the same effect. The revolt of the sixteenth century was attended, as we have seen in the Low Countries, by an immense and, we shall grant, most merciless execution of images; the revolt of the eighteenth was followed by the slaughter of a yet greater number of victims; but in this case the victims were not images, but living men. Both they who slew the images in the sixteenth century, and they who slew the human beings in the eighteenth, were reared in the Church of Rome; they had learned her doctrines and had received their first lessons from her priests; and though now become disobedient and rebellious, they had not yet got quit of the instincts she had planted in them, nor were they quite out of her leading-strings.

Chapter 12: Reaction-Submission of the Southern Netherlands

Treaty between the Governor and Nobles—Liberty given the Reformed to Build Churches—Remonstrances of Margaret—Reply of Orange—Anger of Philip—His Cruel Resolve—Philip’s Treachery—Letters that Read Two Ways—the Governor raises Soldiers—A Great Treachery Meditated—Egmont’s and Horn’s Compliance with the Court, and Severities against the Reformed—Horn at Tournay—Forbids the Reformed to Worship inside the Walls—Permitted to erect Churches outside—Money and Materials—the Governor Violates the Accord—Re-formed Religion Forbidden in Tournay and Valenciennes—Siege of Valenciennes by Noircarmes—Sufferings of the Besieged—They Surrender-Treachery of Noircarmes—Execution of the Two Protestant Ministers—Terror inspired by the Fall of Valenciennes—Abject Submission of the Southern Netherlands

Picture: A Village Green in Holland

Picture: The Countess de Reux Visiting De Bray and La Grange in Prison

The first effect of the tumults was favorable to the Reformers. The insurrection had thoroughly alarmed the Duchess of Parma, and the Protestants obtained from her fear concessions which they would in vain have solicited from her sense of justice. At a conference between the leading nobles and the governor at Brussels on the 25th of August, the following treaty was agreed to and signed:-The duchess promised on her part “that the Inquisition should be abolished from this time forward for ever,” and that the Protestants should have liberty of worship in all those places where their worship had been previously established. These stipulations were accompanied with a promise that all past offenses of image-breaking and Beggar manifestoes should be condoned. The nobles undertook on their part to dissolve their Confederacy, to return to the service of the State, to see that the Reformed did not come armed to their assemblies, and that in their sermons they did not inveigh against the Popish religion.[1] Thus a gleam broke out through the cloud, and the storm was succeeded by a momentary calm.

On the signing of this treaty the princes went down to their several provinces, and earnestly labored to restore the public peace. The Prince of Orange and Counts Egmont, Horn, and Hoog-straten were especially zealous in this matter, nor were their efforts without success. In Antwerp, where Orange was governor, and where he was greatly beloved, quiet was speedily re-established, the great cathedral was again opened, and the Romish worship resumed as aforetime. It was agreed that all the consecrated edifices should remain in the possession of the Roman Catholics, but a convention was at the same time made with the Dutch and Walloon congregations, empowering them to erect places of worship within the city-walls for their own use. The latter arrangement,-the privilege, namely, accorded the Reformed of worshipping within the walls

- was a concession which it cost the bigotry of Margaret a grudge to make. But Orange, in reply to her remonstrances, told her that, in the first place, this was expedient, seeing assemblies of 20,000 or 25,000 persons were greater menaces to the public peace outside the walls, where they were removed from the eye of the magistrate, than they could possibly

[1]Grotins, Annales, lib. 1., p. 23. Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 204, 205.

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be within the city, where not only were their congregations smaller, their numbers seldom exceeding 10,000, but their language and bearing were more modest; and, in the second place, this concession, he reminded the duchess, was necessary. The Reformed were now 200,000 strong, they were determined to enjoy their rights, and he had no soldiers to gainsay their demands, nor could he prevail on a single burgher to bear arms against them.[2] In a few days the Walloon congregation, availing themselves of their new liberties, laid the first stone of their future church on a spot which had been allotted them; and their example was speedily followed by the Dutch Reformed congregation. Through the efforts of Orange the troubles were quieted all over Holland and Brabant. His success was mainly owing to the great weight of his personal character, for soldiers to enforce submission he had none. The churches were given back to the priests, who, doffing the lay vestments in which many of them had encased themselves in their terror, resumed the public celebration of their rites; and the Protestants were contented with the liberty accorded them of worshipping in fabrics of their own creation, which in a few places were situated within the walls, but in the great majority of cases stood outside, in the suburbs, or the open country.

Meanwhile the news of churches sacked, images destroyed, and holy things profaned was travelling to Spain. Philip, who during his stay in Brussels had been wont to spend his nights in the stews, or to roam masked through the streets, satiating his base appetites upon their foul garbage, when the tidings of the profanation reached him, first shuddered with horror, and next trembled with rage. Plucking at his beard, he exclaimed, “It shall cost them dear, I swear it by the soul of my father.”[3] For every image that had been mutilated hundreds of living men were to die; the affront offered to the Roman Catholic faith, and its saints in stone, must be washed out in the blood of the inhabitants of the Netherlands. So did the tyrant resolve.

Meanwhile keeping secret the terrible purpose in his breast, he began to move toward it with his usual slowness, but with more than his usual doggedness and duplicity. Before the news of the image-breaking had arrived, the king had written to Margaret of Parma, in answer to the petition which the two envoys, the Marquis of Berghen and the Count de Montigny, had brought to Madrid, saying to her-so bland and gracious did he seem-that he would pardon the guilty, on certain conditions, and that seeing there was now a full staff of bishops in the Provinces, able and doubtless willing vigilantly to guard the members of their flock, the Inquisition was no longer necessary, and should henceforth cease. Here was pardon and the abolition of the Inquisition: what more could the Netherlanders ask? But if the letter was meant to read one way in Brussels, it was made to read another way in Madrid. No sooner had Philip indited it than, summoning two attorneys to his closet, he made them draw out a formal protest in the presence of witnesses to the effect that the promise of pardon, being not voluntary but compulsory, was not binding, and that he was not obliged thereby to spare any one whom he chose to consider guilty. As regarded the Inquisition, Philip wrote to the Pope, telling him that he had indeed said to the Netherlanders that he would abolish it, but that need not scandalise his Holiness, inasmuch as he neither could nor would abolish the Inquisition unless the Pope gave his consent. As regarded the meeting of the Assembly of the States for which the Confederates had also petitioned, Philip replied with his characteristic prudence, that he forbade its meeting for the moment; but in a secret letter to Margaret he told her that that moment meant for ever. The two noblemen who brought the petition were not permitted to carry back the answer: that would have been dangerous. They might have initiated their countrymen into the Spanish reading of the letter. They were still, upon various pretences, detained at Madrid.

Along with this very pleasant letter, which the governor was to make known to all Philip’s subjects of the Netherlands, that they might know how gracious a master they had, came another communication, which Margaret was not to make known, but on the contrary keep to herself. Philip announced in this letter that he had sent the governor a sum of money for raising soldiers, and that he wished the new battalions to be enlisted exclusively from Papists, for on these the king and the duchess might rely for an absolute compliance with their will. The regent was not remiss in executing this order; she immediately levied a body of cavalry and five regiments of infantry. As her levies increased her fears left her, and the conciliatory spirit which led her to consent to the Accord of the 25th of August, was changed to a mood of mind very different.

But if the Accord was to be kept, the good effects of which had been seen in a pacified country,

[2]Hooft, p. 111. Strada, p. 268. Brandt, vol. 1., p. 206.

[3]Letter of Morillon to Granvelle, 29th September, 1566, in Gachard, Annal. Belg., 254-apud Motley, vol. 1., p. 284.

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and if the guilty were to be pardoned and the Inquisition abolished, as the king’s letter had promised, where was the need of raising armaments? Surely these soldiers are not merely to string beads. A great treachery is meditated, said Orange and his companions, Egmont and Horn. It is not the abolition of the Inquisition, but a rekindling of its fires on a still larger scale, that awaits us; and instead of a resurrection of Flemish liberty by the assembling of the States-General, it is the entire effacement of whatever traces of old rights still remain in these unhappy countries, and the establishment of naked despotism on the ruins of freedom by an armed force, that is contemplated. Of that these levies left Orange in no doubt. In the Council all three nobles expressed their disapprobation of the measure, as a rekindling of the flames of civil discord and sedition. [61]

Every day new proofs of this were coming to light. The train-bands of the tyrant were gathering round the country, and the circle of its privileges and its liberties was contracting from one hour to another. The regent had no cause to complain of the lukewarmness of Egmont and Horn, whatever suspicions she might entertain of Orange. The prince was now a Lutheran, and he had calmed the iconoclastic tumults all over Brabant, Holland, and Zealand, without staining his hands with a single drop of blood. The Counts Egmont and Horn were Romanists, and their suppression of the image-breakings in Flanders and Tournay had been marked by great severity towards the Reformers. Egmont showed himself an ardent partisan of the Government, and his proceedings spread terror through Flanders and Artois. Thousands of Protestants fled the country; their wives and families were left destitute; the public profession of the Reformed religion was forbidden, [62] despite the Accord; and numbers of its adherents, including ministers, hanged.[4] The chief guilt of these cruelties rests with Egmont’s secretary, Bakkerzeel, who had great influence over the count, and who, along with his chief, received his reward in due time from the Government they so zealously and unscrupulously served.

It was much after the same fashion that Tournay was pacified by Count Horn. Five-sixths of the inhabitants of that important place were Calvinists; Horn, therefore, feared to forbid the public preachings. But no church and no spot inside the walls would Horn permit to be defiled by the Protestant worship; nevertheless, three places outside the gates were assigned for sermon. The eloquent Ambrose Wille, whom we have already met, was the preacher, and his congregation generally numbered from fifteen to twenty thousand hearers. Permission was at last given for the erection of churches on the three spots where the field-preaching had been held; and Councillor Taffen made what he judged an eminently reasonable proposal to the magistrates touching the cost of their erection. The Papists, he said, who were not more than a fourth of the citizens, retained all the old churches; the other three-fourths, who were Protestants, were compelled to build new ones, and in these circumstances he thought it only fair that the community should defray the expense of their erection. The Romanists exclaimed against the proposal. To be compelled to refrain from burning the heretics was much, but to be taxed for the support of heresy was an unheard-of oppression. Money and materials, however, were forthcoming in abundance: the latter were somewhat too plentiful; fragments of broken images and demolished altars were lying about everywhere, and were freely but indiscreetly used by the Protestants in the erection of their new fabrics. The sight of the things which they had worshipped, built into the walls of a heretical temple, stung the Romanists to the quick as the last disgrace of their idols.

The levies of the regent were coming in rapidly, and as her soldiers increased her tone waxed the bolder. The Accord of the 25th of August, which was the charter of the Protestants, gave her but small concern. She had made it in her weakness with the intention of breaking it when she should be strong. She confiscated all the liberties the Reformed enjoyed under that arrangement. The sermons were forbidden, on the ridiculous pretext that, although the liberty of preaching had been conceded, that did not include the other exercises commonly practiced at the field assemblies, such as singing, praying, and dispensing the Sacraments. Garrisons were placed by the regent in Tournay, in Valenciennes, and many other towns; the profession of the Reformed religion was suppressed in them; the Roman temples were re-opened, and the Popish rites restored in their former splendor.

The fall of Valenciennes as a Protestant city exerted so disastrous and decisive an influence upon the whole country, that it must detain us for a little while. In the end of the year 1566-the last year of peace which the Netherlands were to see for more than a generation-the regent sent the truculent Noircarmes to demand that Valenciennes should open its gates to a garrison. Strongly fortified, Protestant to all but a fourth or sixth of its population, courageous and united, Valenciennes refused to admit the soldiers of Margaret. Her general thereupon declared it in a state of siege, and invested it with his troops. Its fate engaged the interest of the surrounding villages and distracts, and the peasants, armed with pitchforks, picks, and rusty muskets, assembling to the number of 3,000, marched to its relief. They were met by the troops of Noircarmes, discomfited, and almost exterminated. Another company also marching to its assistance met a similar fate. Those who escaped the slaughter took refuge in the church of Watrelots, only to be overtaken by a more dreadful death. The belfry, into which they had retreated, was set on fire, and the whole perished. These disasters, however, did not dispirit the besieged. They made vigorous sallies, and kept the enemy at bay. To cut off all communication between the city and the surrounding country, and so reduce the besieged by famine, orders were given to the soldiers to lay the district waste. The villages were pillaged or burned, the inhabitants slaughtered in cold blood, or stripped naked in the dead of winter, or roasted alive over slow fires to amuse a brutal soldiery. Matrons and virgins were sold in public auction at tuck of drum. While these horrible butcheries were being enacted outside Valenciennes, Noircarmes was drawing his lines closer about the city. In answer to a summons from Margaret, the inhabitants offered to surrender on certain conditions. These were indignantly rejected, and Noircarmes now commenced to bombard Valenciennes. It was the morning of alm-Sunday. The bells in the steeples were chiming the air to which the 22nd Psalm, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” as versified by Marot, was commonly sung. The boom of the cannon, the quaking of the houses, the toppling of the chimneys, mingling with the melancholy chimes

[4]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 249.

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of the steeples, and the wailings of the women and children in the streets, formed a scene depressing indeed, and which seems to have weighed down the spirits of the inhabitants into despair. The city sent to Noircarmes offering to surrender on the simple condition that it should not be sacked, and that the lives of the inhabitants should be spared. The general gave his promise only to break it. Noircarmes closed the gates when he had entered. The wealthy citizens he arrested; some hundreds were hanged, and others were sent to the stake.[5] There was no regular sack, but the soldiers were quartered on the inhabitants, and murdered and robbed as they had a mind. The elders and deacons and principal members of the Protestant congregation were put to death.[6] The two Protestant preachers, Guido de Bray and Peregrine de la Grange, the eloquent Huguenot, made their escape, but being discovered they were brought back, cast into a filthy dungeon, and loaded with chains.

In their prison they were visited by the Countess of Reux, who asked them how they could eat and drink and sleep with so heavy a chain, and so terrible a fate in prospect. “My good cause,” replied De Bray, “gives me a good conscience, and my good conscience gives me a good appetite.” “My bread is sweeter, and my sleep sounder,” he continued, “than that of my persecutors.” “But your heavy irons?” interposed the countess. “It is guilt that makes a chain heavy,” replied the prisoner, “innocence makes mine light. I glory in my chains, I account them my badges of honour, their clanking is to my ear as sweet music; it refreshes me like a psalm.”[7]

They were sentenced to be hanged. When their fate was announced to them, says Brandt, “they received it as glad tidings, and prepared as cheerfully to meet it as if they had been going to a wedding-feast.” De Bray was careful to leave behind him the secret of his sound sleep in heavy irons and a filthy dungeon, that others in like circumstances might enjoy the same tranquillity. “A good conscience, a good conscience!” “Take care,” said he to all those who had come to see him die, “Take care to do nothing against your conscience, otherwise you will have an executioner always at your heels, and a pandemonium burning within you.” Peregrine de la Grange addressed the spectators from the ladder, “taking heaven and earth to witness that he died for no cause save that of having preached the pure Word of God.” Guido do Bray kneeled on the scaffold to pray; but the executioner instantly raised him, and compelled him to take his place on the ladder. Standing with the rope round his neck he addressed the people, bidding them give all due reverence to the magistrate, and adhere to the Word of God, which he had purely preached. His discourse was stopped by the hangman suddenly throwing him off. At the instant a strange frenzy seized the soldiers that guarded the market-place. Breaking their ranks, they ran about the town in great disorder, “nobody knowing what ailed them,” firing off their muskets, and wounding and killing Papists and Protestants indiscriminately.[8]

We stand on the threshold of a second great era of persecution to the Church of the Netherlands. The horrors of this era, of which the scaffolds of these two learned and eloquent divines mark the commencement, were to be so awful that the sufferings of the past forty years would not be remembered. The severities that attended the fall of the powerful and Protestant Valenciennes discouraged the other cities; they looked to see the terrible Noircarmes and his soldiers arrive at their gates, offering the alternative of accepting a garrison, or enduring siege with its attendant miseries as witnessed in the case of Valenciennes. They made up their minds to submission in the hope of better days to come. If they could have read the future: if they had known that submission would deepen into slavery; that one terrible woe would depart only to make room for another more terrible, and that the despot of Spain, whose heart bigotry had made hard as the nether millstone, would never cease emptying upon them the vials of his wrath, they would have chosen the bolder, which would also have been the better part. Had they accepted conflict, the hardest-fought fields would have been as nothing compared with the humiliations and inflictions that submission entailed upon them. Far better would it have been to have died with arms in their hands than with halters round their necks; far better would it have been to struggle with the foe in the breach or in the field, than to offer their limbs to the inquisitor’s rack. But the Flemings knew not the greatness of the crisis: their hearts fainted in the day of trial. The little city of Geneva had withstood single-handed the soldiers of the Duke of Savoy, and the threats of France and Spain: the powerful Provinces of Brabant and Flanders, with their numerous inhabitants, their strong and opulent

[5]Valenciennes MS. (Roman Catholic), quoted by Motley, vol. 1., p. 325.

[6]Laval, vol. 3., p. 143.

[7]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 250, 251.

[8]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 251. Pontus Peyen MS.-apud Motley, vol. 1., p. 325.

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cities, and their burghal militia, yielded at the first summons. Even Valenciennes surrendered while its walls were yet entire. The other cities seem to have been conquered by the very name of Noircarmes. The Romanists themselves were astonished at the readiness and abjectness of the submission. “The capture of Valenciennes,” wrote Noircarmes to Granvelle, “has worked a miracle. The other cities all come forth to meet me, putting the rope round their own neck.”[9] It became a saying, “The governor has found the keys of all the rest of the cities at Valenciennes.”[10] Cambray, Hasselt, Maseik, and Maestricht surrendered themselves, as did also Bois-le-Duc. The Reformed in Cambray had driven away the archbishop; now the archbishop returned, accompanied with a party of soldiers, and the Reformed fled in their turn. In the other towns, where hardly a single image had escaped the iconoclast tempest, the Romish worship was restored, and the Protestants were compelled to conform or leave the place. The Prince of Orange had hardly quitted Antwerp, where he had just succeeded in preventing an outbreak which threatened fearful destruction to property and life, when that commercial metropolis submitted its neck to the yoke which it seemed to have cast off with contempt, and returned to a faith whose very symbols it had so recently trampled down as the mire in the streets. Antwerp was soon thereafter honoured with a visit from the governor. Margaret signalised her coming by ordering the churches of the Protestants to be pulled down, their children to be re-baptised, and as many of the church-plunderers as could be discovered to be hanged. Her commands were zealously carried out by an obsequious magistracy.[11] It was truly melancholy to witness the sudden change which the Southern Netherlands underwent. Thousands might be seen hurrying from a shore where freedom and the arts had found a home for centuries, where proud cities had arisen, and whither were wafted with every tide the various riches of a world-wide commerce, leaving by their flight the arts to languish and commerce to die. But still more melancholy was it to see the men who remained casting themselves prostrate before altars they had so recently thrown down, and participating in rites which they had repudiated with abhorrence as magical and idolatrous.

[9]Gachard, Preface to William the Silent-apud Motley, vol. 1., p. 326.

[10]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 251.

[11]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 254.

Chapter 13: The Council of Blood

Orange’s Penetration of Philip’s Mind—Conference at Dendermonde—Resolution of Egmont—William Retires to Nassau in Germany—Persecution Increased—The Gallows Full—Two Sisters—Philip resolves to send an Army to the Netherlands—Its Command given to the Duke of Alva—His Character—His Person—His Fanaticism and Bloodthirstiness—Character of the Soldiers—An Army of Alvas—Its March—Its Morale—Its Entrance Unopposed—Margaret Retires from the Netherlands—Alva Arrests Egmont and Horn—Refugees—Death of Berghen and Montigny—The Council of Blood—Sentence of Death upon all the Inhabitants of the Netherlands—Constitution of the Blood Council—Its Terrible Work—Shrove-tide—A proposed Holocaust—Sentence of Spanish Inquisition upon the Netherlands

Picture: View of a Church in Holland

Picture: The Duke of Alva.

“Whirlwinds from the terrible land of the South”-in literal terms, edicts and soldiers from Spain—were what might now be looked for. The land had been subjugated, but it had yet to be chastised. On every side the priests lifted up the head, the burghers hung theirs in shame. The psalm pealed forth at the field-preaching rose no longer on the breeze, the orison of monk came loud and clear instead; the gibbets were filled, the piles were re-lighted, and thousands were fleeing from a country which seemed only now to be opening the dark page of its history. The future in reserve for the Low Countries was not so closely locked up in the breast of the tyrant but that the Prince of Orange could read it. He saw into the heart and soul of Philip. He had studied him in his daily life; he had studied him in the statesmen and councillors who served him; he had studied him in his public policy; and he had studied him in those secret pages in which Philip had put on record, in the depth of his own closet, the projects that he was revolving, and which, opened and read while [65] Philip slept, by the spies which William had placed around him, were communicated to this watchful friend of his country’s liberties; and all these several lines of observation had led him to one and the same conclusion, that it was Philip’s settled purpose, to be pursued through a thousand windings, chicaneries, falsehoods, and solemn hypocrisies, to drag the leading nobles to the scaffold, to hang, burn, or bury alive every Protestant in the Low Countries, to put to death every one who should hesitate to yield absolute compliance with his will, and above the grave of a murdered nation to plant the twin fabrics of Spanish and Romish despotism. That these were the purposes which the tyrant harboured, and the events which the future would bring forth, unless means were found to prevent them, William was as sure as that the revolution of the hours brings at length the night.

Accordingly he invited Horn, Egmont, Hoogstraaten, and Count Louis to all interview at Dendermonde, in order to concert the measures which it might be advisable to take when the storm, with which the air was already thick, should burst. The sight of Egmont and the other nobles unhappily was not so clear as that of William, and they refused to believe that the danger was so great as the prince represented. Count Egmont, who was not yet disenthralled from the spell of the court, nor fated ever to be till he should arrive at the scaffold, said that “far from taking part in any measure offensive to the king, he looked upon every such measure as equally imprudent and undutiful.” This was decisive. These three seigniors must act in concert or not at all. Combined, they might have hoped to make head against Philip; singly, they could accomplish nothing—nay, in all likelihood would be crushed. The Prince of Orange resigned all his offices into the hands of the regent, and retired with his family to his ancestral estate of Nassau in Germany, there to await events. Before leaving, however, he warned Count Egmont of the fate that awaited him should he remain in Flanders. “You are the bridge,” said he, “by which the Spanish army will pass into the Netherlands, and no sooner shall they have passed it than they will break it down.”[1] The warning was unheeded. The two friends tenderly embraced, and parted to meet no more on earth.

No sooner was William gone (April, 1567) than a cloud of woes descended upon the Netherlands. The disciples of the Reformation fled as best they could from Amsterdam, and a garrison entered it. At Horn, Clement Martin preached his farewell sermon a month after the departure of William, and next day he and his colleague were expelled the town. About the same time the Protestants of Enkhuizen heard their last sermon in the open air. Assemblies were held over-night in the houses of certain of the burghers, but these too were discontinued in no long time. A deep silence

- “a famine of hearing the Word of the Lord”—fell upon the land. The ministers were chased from many of the cities. The meetings held in out-of-the-way places were surprised by the soldiers; of those present at them some were cut in pieces or shot down on the spot, and others were seized and carried off to the gallows. It was the special delight of the persecutors to apprehend and hang or behead the members of the consistories. “Thus,” says Brandt, “the gallows were filled with carcases, and Germany with exiles.” The minister of Cambray first had his hand cut off, and was then hanged. At Oudenard and other towns the same fate was inflicted on the pastors. Monks, who had ceased to count beads and become heralds of the glorious Gospel rather than return to the cloister, were content to rot in dungeons or die on scaffolds. Some villages furnished as many as a hundred, and others three hundred victims.[2] A citizen of Bommel, Hubert Selkart by name, had the courage to take a Bible to the market-place, and disprove the errors of Popery in presence of the people assembled there. A night or two thereafter he was put into a sack and thrown into the river Wael. There were no more Scripture expositions in the market-place of Bommel. All the Protestant churches in course of erection were demolished, and their timbers taken for gallows to hang their builders. Two young gentlewomen of the Province of Over-Issel were sentenced to the fire. One of the sisters was induced to abjure on a promise of mercy. She thought she had saved her life by her abjuration, whereas the mercy of the placards meant only an easier death. When the day of execution arrived, the two sisters, who had not seen each other since they received their sentence, were brought forth together upon the scaffold. For the one who remained steadfast a stake had been prepared; the other saw with horror a coffin, half filled with sand, waiting to receive her corpse as soon as the axe should have severed her head from her body. “This,” said the strong sister to the weak one, “this is all you have gained by denying Him before whom you are within an hour to appear.” Conscience-stricken she fell upon her knees, and with strong cries besought pardon for her great sin.

[1]Strada, bk. 6., p. 286.

[2]Meteren, vol. 2., f. 45.

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Then rising up-a sudden calm succeeding the sudden tempest-she boldly declared herself a Protestant. The executioner, fearing the effect of her words upon the spectators, instantly stopped her by putting a gag into her mouth, and then he bound her to the same stake with her sister. A moment before, it seemed as if the two were to be parted for ever; but now death, which divides others, had united them in the bonds of an eternal fellowship:[3] they were sisters evermore.

As regarded the Netherlands, one would have thought that their cup of suffering was already full; but not so thought Philip. New and more terrible severities were in course of preparation at Madrid for the unhappy Provinces.

The King of Spain, after repeated deliberations in his council, resolved to send a powerful army under the command of the Duke of Alva, to chastise those turbulent citizens whom he had too long treated with gentleness, and exact a full measure of vengeance for that outbreak in which they had discovered an equal contempt for the true religion and the royal authority. The Duke of Alva, setting sail from Carthagena (May 10th, 1567), landed in the north of Italy, and repairing to Asti, there assembled under his standard about 10,000 picked soldiers from the army in Italy, consisting of 8,700 foot and 1,200 cavalry.[4] He now set out at the head of this host to avenge the insulted majesty of Rome and Spain, by drowning Netherland heresy in the blood of its professors. It was a holy war: those against whom it was to be waged were more execrable than Jews or Saracens; they were also greatly richer. The wealth of the world was treasured up in the cities of the Netherlands, and their gates once forced, a stream of gold would be poured into the coffers of Spain, now beginning to be partially deplenished by the many costly enterprises of Philip.

A fitter instrument for the dreadful work which Philip had now in hand than the Duke of Alva, it would have been impossible to find in all Europe. A daring and able soldier, Alva was a very great favourite with the Emperor Charles V., under whom he had served in both Europe and Africa, and some of the more brilliant of the victories that were gained by the armies of Charles were owing to his unquestionable ability, but somewhat headlong courage. He had warred against both the Turks and Lutherans, and of the two it is likely that the latter were the objects of his greatest aversion and deepest hatred. He was now sixty, but his years had neither impaired the rigour of his body nor quenched the fire of his spirit.

In person he was thin and tall, with small head, leathern face, twinkling eyes, and silvery beard.[5] He was cool, patient, cruel, selfish, vindictive, and though not greedy of wine and the pleasures to which it often incites, was inflamed with a most insatiable greed of gold.

Haughty and over-bearing, he could not tolerate a rival, and the zeal he afterwards showed in dragging Count Egmont to the scaffold is thought to have been inspired, in part at least, by the renown Egmont had acquired over the first generals of France, and which had thrown Alva somewhat into the shade, being compelled to occupy an inglorious position in the north of Italy, while his rival was distinguishing himself on a far more conspicuous theater. But the master-passion of this man’s soul was a ferocious fanaticism. Cruel by nature, he had become yet more cruel by bigotry. This overbearing passion had heated his instincts, and crazed his judgment, till in stealthy bloodthirstiness he had ceased to be the man, and become the tiger.

As was the general, so were the soldiers. The Duke of Alva was, in fact, leading an army of Alvas across the Alps. Their courage had been hardened and their skill perfected in various climes, and in numerous campaigns and battles; they were haughty, stern, and cruel beyond the ordinary measure of Spanish soldiers. Deeming themselves

[3]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 257.

[4]Strada. bk. 6., p. 29.

[5]Badovaro MS.-apud Motley, vol. 1, p. 339.

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Champions of the Cross, the holy war in which they were fighting not only warranted, but even sanctified in their eyes, the indulgence of the most vindictive and sanguinary passions against those men whom they were marching to attack, and whom they held to be worthy of death in the most terrible form in which they could possibly inflict it.

Climbing the steep sides of Mont Cenis, the duke himself leading the van, this invading host gained the summit of the pass. From this point, where nothing is visible save the little circular lake that fills the crater of a now exhausted volcano, and the naked peaks that environ it, the Spaniards descended through the narrow and sublime gorges of the mountains to Savoy. Continuing. their march, they passed on through Burgundy and Lorraine,[6] attended by two armies of observation, the French on this side and the Swiss on that, to see that they kept the straight road. Their march resembled the progress of the boa-constrictor, which, resting its successive coils upon the same spot, moves its glittering but deadly body forwards.

Where the van-guard had encamped this night, the main body of the army was to halt the next, and the rear the night following. Thus this Apollyon host went onward.

It was the middle of August when the Spaniards arrived at the frontier of the Low Countries. They found the gates open, and their entrance unopposed. Those who would have suffered the invaders

[6]Strada, bk. 6., p. 30. Le Clerq, Hist. des Provinces Unies des Pays Bas, tom. 1., livr. 2., p. 13; Amsterdam, 1723.

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to enter only over their dead bodies were in their graves; the nobles were divided or indifferent; the cities were paralysed by the triumph of the royal arms at Valenciennes; thousands, at the first rising of the tempest, had retreated into the Church of Rome as into a harbour of safety; tameness and terror reigned throughout the country, and thus the powerful Netherlands permitted Philip to put his chain upon its neck without striking a blow. The only principle which could have averted the humiliation of the present hour, and the miseries of the long years to come, had meanwhile been smitten down.

Cantoning his soldiers in the chief cities, the Duke of Alva in the end of August took up his residence in Brussels, Count Egmont riding by his side as he entered the gates of the Belgian capital. He soon showed that he had arrived with a plenitude of power; that, in fact, he was king. Margaret felt her authority over-topped by the higher authority of the duke, and resigned her office as regent. She accompanied her retirement with a piece of advice to her brother, which was to the effect that if the measures that she feared were in contemplation should be carried out, the result would be the ruin of the Netherlands. Although Philip had been as sure of the issue as Margaret was, he would have gone forward all the same. Meanwhile his representative, without a moment’s delay, opened his career of tyranny and blood. His first act was to arrest the Counts Egmont and Horn, and in manner as crafty as the deed was cruel, he invited them to his house on pretense of consulting with them respecting a citadel which he meant to erect at Antwerp. When the invitation reached these noblemen, they were seated at a banquet given by the Prior of the Knights of St. John. “Take the fleetest horse in your stable,” whispered the prior in the ear of Egmont, “and flee from this place.” The infatuated nobleman, instead of making his escape, went straight to the palace of the duke. After the business of the citadel had been discussed, the two counts were conducted into separate rooms. “Count Egmont,” said the captain of the duke’s guard, “deliver your sword; it is the will of the king.” Egmont made a motion as if he would flee. A door was thrown open, and he was shown the next apartment filled with Spanish musketeers. Resistance was vain. The count gave up his sword, saying, “By this sword the cause of the king has been oftener than once successfully defended.”[7] He was conducted upstairs to a temporary prison; the windows were closed; the walls were hung in black, and lights were burned in it night and day-a sad presage of the yet gloomier fate that awaited him. Count Horn was treated in a precisely similar way. At the end of fourteen days the two noblemen were conducted, under a strong guard, to the Castle of Ghent. At the same time two other important arrests were made—Bakkerzeel, the secretary of Egmont; and Straalen, the wealthy Burgomaster of Antwerp.[8]

These arrests spread terror over the whole country. They convinced Romanists equally with Protestants that the policy to be pursued was one of indiscriminate oppression and violence. Count Egmont had of late been, to say the least, no lukewarm friend of the Government; his secretary, Bakkerzeel, had signalised his zeal against Protestantism by spilling Protestant blood, yet now both of these men were on the road to the scaffold. The very terror of Alva’s name, before he came, had driven from the Low Countries 100,000 of their inhabitants. The dread inspired by the arrests now made compelled 20,000 more to flee. The weavers of Bruges and Ghent carried to England their art of cloth-making, and those of Antwerp that of the silk manufacture. Nor was it the disciples of the Reformation only that sought asylum beyond seas. Thomas Tillius forsook his rich Abbey of St. Bernard, in the neighbourhood of Antwerp, and repaired to the Duchy of Cleves. There he threw off his frock, married, and afterwards became pastor, first at Haarlem, and next at Delft.[9]

Every day a deeper gulf opened to the Netherlands. The death of the two Flemish envoys, the Marquis of Berghen and the Baron de Montigny, was immediately consequent on the departure of the duke for the Low Countries. The precise means and manner of their destruction can now never be known, but occurring at this moment, it combined with the imprisonment of Egmont and Horn in prognosticating times of more than usual calamity. The next measure of Alva was to erect a new tribunal, to which he gave the name of the “Council of Tumults,” but which came to be known, and ever will be known in history, by the more dreadful appellative of the “Council of Blood.” Its erection meant the overthrow of every other institution. It proscribed all the ancient charters of the Netherlands, with the rights and liberties in which they vested the citizens.

[7]Strada

[8]Bentivoglio, lib. 2., cap. 3, pp. 50, 51. Hooft, vol. 4., pp. 150, 151. Brandt, vol. 1., p. 260.

[9]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 260.

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The Council of Tumults assumed absolute and sole jurisdiction in all matters growing out of the late troubles, in opposition to all other law, jurisdiction, and authority whatsoever. Its work was to search after and punish all heretics and traitors. It set about its work by first defining what that treason was which it was to punish. This tribunal declared that “it was treason against the Divine and human Majesties to subscribe and present any petition against the new bishops, the Inquisition, or the placards; as also to suffer or allow the exercise of the new religion, let the occasion or necessity be what it would.”[10] Further, it was treason not to have opposed the image-breaking; it was treason not to have opposed the field-preachings; it was treason not to have opposed the presenting of the petition of the Confederate nobles; in fine, it was treason to have said or thought that the Tribunal of Tumults was obliged to conform itself to the ancient charters and privileges, or “to have asserted or insinuated that the king had no right to take away all the privileges of these Provinces if he thought fit, or that he was not discharged from all his oaths and promises of pardon, seeing all the inhabitants had been guilty of a crime, either of omission or of commission.” In short, the King of Spain, in this fulmination, declared that all the inhabitants of the Low Countries were guilty of treason, and had incurred the penalty of death. Or as one of the judges of this tremendous tribunal, with memorable simplicity and pithiness, put it, “the heretical inhabitants broke into the churches, and the orthodox inhabitants did nothing to hinder it, therefore they ought all of them to be hanged together.”[11]

The Council of Blood consisted of twelve judges; the majority were Spaniards, and the rest fast friends of the Spanish interest. The duke himself was president. Under the duke, and occupying his place in his absence, was Vargas, a Spanish lawyer. Vargas was renowned among his countrymen as a man of insatiable greed and measureless cruelty. He it was who proposed the compendious settlement of the Netherlands question to which we have just referred, namely, that of hanging all the inhabitants on one gallows. “The gangrene of the Netherlands,” said the Spaniards, “has need of a sharp knife, and such is Vargas.”[12] This man was well mated with another Spaniard nearly as cruel and altogether as unscrupulous, Del Rio. This council pronounced what sentences it pleased, and it permitted no appeal.

It would be both wearisome and disgusting to follow these men, step by step, in their path of blood. Their council-chamber resembled nothing so much as the lair of a wild beast, with its precincts covered with the remains of victims. It was simply a den of murder; and one could see in imagination all its approaches and avenues soaked in gore and strewn with the mangled carcases of men, women, and children. The subject is a horrible one, upon which it is not at all pleasant to dwell.

All was now ready; Alva had erected his Council of Blood, he had distributed his soldiers over the country in such formidable bodies as to overawe the inhabitants, he was erecting a citadel at Antwerp, forts in other places, and compelling the citizens to defray the cost of the instruments of their oppression; and now the Low Countries, renowned in former days for the mildness of their government and the happiness of their people, became literally an Aceldama. We shall permit the historian Brandt to summarise the horrors with which the land was now overspread. “There was nothing now,” says he, “but imprisoning and racking of all ages, sexes, and conditions of people, and oftentimes too without any previous accusation against them. Infinite numbers (and they not of the Religion neither) that had been but once or twice to hear a sermon among the Reformed, were put to death for it. The gallows, says the Heer Hooft in his history, the wheels, stakes, and trees in the highways were loaden with carcases or limbs of such as had been hanged, beheaded, or roasted, so that the air which God had made for the respiration of the living, was now become the common grave or habitation of the dead. Every day produced fresh objects of pity and mourning, and the noise of the bloody passingbell was continually heard, which by the martyrdom of this man’s cousin, or t’ other’s friend or brother, rung dismal peals in the hearts of the survivors. Of banishment of persons and confiscations of goods there was no end; it was no matter whether they had real or personal estates, free or entailed, all was seized upon without regarding the claims of creditors or others, to the unspeakable prejudice both of rich and poor, of convents, hospitals, widows and orphans, who were by knavish evasions deprived of their incomes for many years.”[13]

Bales of denunciations were sent in. These were too voluminous to be read by Alva or Vargas, and were remitted to the other councils, that still retained a nominal existence, to be read and reported

[10]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 260. Meteren, lib. 3., p. 66.

[11]Ibid., vol. 1., p. 261.

[12]Le Clerq. Hist. des Provinces Unies, etc., tom. 1., livr. 2., p. 14.

[13]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 261.

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on. They knew the sort of report that was expected from them, and took care not to disappoint the expectations of the men of the Blood Council. With sharp reiterated knell came the words, “Guilty: the gallows.” If by a rare chance the accused was said to be innocent, the report was sent back to be amended: the recommendation to death was always carried out within forty-eight hours. This bloody harvest was gathered all over the country, every town, village, and hamlet furnishing its group of victims. To-day it is Valenciennes that yields a batch of eighty-four for the stake and the gallows; a few days thereafter, a miscellaneous crowd, amounting to ninety-five, are brought in from different places in Flanders, and handed over by the Blood Council to the scaffold; next day, forty-six of the inhabitants of Malines are condemned to die; no sooner are they disposed of than another crowd of thirty-five, collected from various localities by the sleuth-hounds of the Blood Council, are ready for the fire. Thus the horrible work of atrocity went on, prosecuted with unceasing rigour and a zeal that was truly awful.

Shrovetide (1568) was approaching. The inhabitants of the Netherlands, like those of all Popish countries, were wont to pass this night in rejoicings. Alva resolved that its songs should be turned into howlings. While the citizens should be making merry, he would throw his net over all who were known to have ever been at a field-preaching, and prepare a holocaust of some thousand heads fittingly to celebrate the close of “Holy Week.” At midnight his myrmidons were sent forth; they burst open the doors of all suspected persons, and dragging them from their beds, hauled them to prison. The number of arrests, however, did not answer Alva’s expectations; some had got timely warning and had made their escape; those who remained, having but little heart to rejoice, were not so much off their guard, nor so easy a prey, as the officers expected to find them. Alva had enclosed only 500 disciples or favourers of the Gospel in his net-too many, alas! for such a fate, but too few for the vast desires of the persecuter.They were, of course, ordered to the scaffold.[14]

Terror was chasing away the inhabitants in thousands. An edict was issued threatening severe penalties against all carriers and ship-masters who should aid any subject of the Netherlands to escape, but it was quite ineffectual in checking the emigration; the cities were becoming empty, and the land comparatively depopulated. Nevertheless, the persecution went on with unrelenting fury. Even Viglius counselled a little lenity; the Pope, it is said, alarmed at the issue to which matters were tending, was not indisposed to moderation. Such advisers ought to have had weight with the King of Spain, but Philip refused to listen even to them. Vargas, whom he consulted, declared, of course, for a continuance of the persecution, telling his sovereign that in the Netherlands he had found a second Indies, where the gold was to be had without even the trouble of digging for it, so numerous were the confiscations. Thus avarice came to the aid of bigotry. Philip next submitted a “Memorial and Representation” of the state of the Low Countries to the Spanish Inquisition, craving the judgment of the Fathers upon it. After deliberating, the inquisitors pronounced their decision on the 16th of February, 1568. It was to the effect that, “with the exception of a select list of names which had been handed to them, all the inhabitants of the Netherlands were heretics or abettors of heresy, and so had been guilty of the crime of high treason.” On the 26th of the same month, Philip confirmed this sentence by a royal proclamation, in which he commanded the decree to be carried into immediate execution, without favor or respect of persons. The King of Spain actually passed sentence of death upon a whole nation. We behold him erecting a common scaffold for its execution, and digging one vast grave for all the men, and women, and children of the Low Countries. “Since the beginning of the world,” says Brandt,” men have not seen or heard any parallel to this horrible sentence.”[15]

[14]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 263.

[15]Ibid., p. 266.

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Chapter 14: William Unfurls his Standard-Execution of Egmont and Horn

William cited by the Blood Council—His Estates Confiscated—Solicited to Unfurl the Standard against Spain—Funds raised—Soldiers Enlisted—The War waged in the King’s Name—Louis of Nassau—The Invading Host Marches—Battle at Dam—Victory of Count Louis—Rage of Alva—Executions—Condemnation of Counts Egmont and Horn—Sentence intimated to them—Egmont’s Conduct on the Scaffold—Executed—Death of Count Horn—Battle of Gemmingen—Defeat of Count Louis

Picture: Count Egmont on the Scaffold before his Execution

The Prince of Orange had fled from the Netherlands, as we have already seen, and retired to his patrimonial estates of Nassau. Early in the year 1568 the Duke of Alva cited him to appear before the Council of Blood. It was promised that the greatest lenity would be shown him, should be obey the summons, but William was far too sagacious to walk into this trap. His brother Louis of Nassau, his brother-in-law Count van den Berg, and the Counts Hoogstraaten and Culemberg were summoned at the same time; thrice fourteen days were allowed them for putting in an appearance; should they fail to obey, they were, at the expiration of that period, to incur forfeiture of their estates and perpetual banishment. It is needless to say that these noblemen did not respond to Alva’s citation, and, as a matter of course, their estates were confiscated, and sentence of banishment was recorded against them.

Had they succeeded in ensnaring William of Orange, the joy of Philip and Alva would have been unbounded. His sagacity, his strength of character, and his influence with his countrymen, made his capture of more importance to the success of their designs than that of all the rest of the Flemish nobility. Their mortification, when they found that he had escaped them, was therefore extreme. His figure rose menacingly before them in their closets; he disturbed all their calculations; for while this sagacious and dauntless friend of his country’s liberties was at large, they could not be sure of retaining their hold on the Netherlands, their prey might any day be wrested from them. But though his person had escaped them, his property was within their reach, and now his numerous estates in France and the Low Countries were confiscated, their revenues appropriated for the uses of Philip, and his eldest son, Count van Buren, a lad of thirteen, and at the time a student in the University of Louvain, was seized as a hostage and carried off to Spain.

There was but one man to whom the inhabitants, in the midst of their ever-accumulating misery and despair, could look with the smallest hope of deliverance. That was the man whom we have just seen stripped of his property and declared an outlaw. The eyes of the exiles abroad were also turned to William of Orange. He began to be earnestly importuned by the refugees in England, in Germany, in Cleves and other parts, to unfurl the standard and strike for his country’s liberation. William wished to defer the enterprise in the hope of seeing Spain involved in war with some other nation, when it would be more easy to compel her to let go her hold upon the unhappy Netherlands. But the exiles were importunate, for their numbers were being daily swelled by the new horrors that were continually darkening their native country. William therefore resolved to delay no longer, but instantly to gird himself in obedience to the cry from so many countries, and the yet louder cry, though expressed only in groans, that was coming to him from the Netherlands.

His first care was to raise the necessary funds and soldiers. He could not begin the war with a less sum in hand than two hundred thousand florins. The cities of Antwerp, Haarlem, Amsterdam, and others contributed one-half of that sum; the refugee merchants in London and elsewhere subscribed largely. His brother, Count John of Nassau, gave a considerable sum; and the prince himself completed the amount needed by the sale of his plate, furniture, tapestry, and jewels, which were of great value. In this way were the funds provided.

For troops the chief reliance of William was on the Protestant princes of Germany. He represented to them the danger with which their own prosperity and liberties would be menaced, should the Netherlands be occupied by the Spaniards, and their trade destroyed by the foreign occupation of the sea-board, and the conversion of its great commercial cities into camps. The German princes were not insensible to these considerations, and not only did they advance him sums of money they winked at his levying recruits within their territories. He reckoned, [72] too, on receiving help from the Huguenots of France; nor would the Protestant Queen of England, he trusted, be lacking to him at this crisis. He could confidently reckon on the Flemish refugees scattered all over the northern countries of Europe. They had been warriors as well as traders in their own country, and he could rely on their swelling his ranks with brave and patriotic soldiers. With these resources-how diminutive when compared with the treasures and the armies of that Power to which he was throwing down the gage of battle!—William resolved on beginning his great struggle.

By a fiction of loyalty this war against the king was made in the name of the king. William unfurled his standard to drive out the Spaniards from Philip’s dominions of the Netherlands, in order that he might serve the interests of the king by saving the land from utter desolation, the inhabitants from dire slavery, the charters and privileges from extinction, and religion from utter overthrow. He gave a commission to his brother, dated Dillenburg, 6th April, 1568, to levy troops for the war to be waged for these objects. Louis of Nassau was one of the best soldiers of the age, and had the cause as much at heart as the prince himself. The count was successful in raising levies in the north of Germany. The motto of his arms was “The freedom of the nation and of conscience,” and blazoned on his banners were the words “Victory or death.”[1]

Besides the soldiers recruited in the north of Germany by Count Louis, levies had been raised in France and in the Duchy of Cleves, and it was arranged that the liberating army should enter the Netherlands at four points. One division was to march from the south and enter by Artois; a second was to descend along the Meuse from the east; Count Louis was to attack on the north; and the prince himself, at the head of the main body of liberators, was to strike at the heart of the Netherlands by occupying Brabant. The attacking forces on the south and east were repulsed with great slaughter; but the attack on the north under Count Louis was signally successful.

On the 24th April, 1568, the count entered the Provinces and advanced to Dam, on the shores of the Bay of Dollart, the site of thirty-three villages till drowned in a mighty inundation of the ocean. Troops of volunteers were daily joining his standard. Here Count Aremberg, who had been sent by Alva with a body of Spanish and Sardinian troops to oppose him, joined battle with him. The Count of Nassau’s little army was strongly posted.

On the right was placed his cavalry, under the command of his brother Count Adolphus. On the left his main army was defended by a hill, on which he had planted a strong band of musketeers. A wood and the walls of a convent guarded his rear; while in front stretched a morass full of pits from which peat had been dug. When the Spaniards came in sight of the enemy drawn up in two little squares on the eminence, they were impatient to begin battle, deeming it impossible that raw levies could withstand them for a moment. Their leader, who knew the nature of the ground, strove to restrain their ardour, but in vain; accusations of treachery and cowardice were hurled at him. “Let us march,” said Aremberg, his anger kindled, “not to victory, but to be overcome.” The soldiers rushed into the swamp, but though now sensible of their error, they could not retreat, the front ranks being pushed forward by those in the rear, till they were fairly under the enemy’s fire. Seeing the Spaniards entangled in the mud, Count Louis attacked them in front, while his brother broke in upon their flank with the cavalry. The musketeers poured in their shot upon them, and one of the squares of foot wheeling round the base of the hill took them in the rear; thus assailed on all sides, and unable to resist, the Spanish host was cut in pieces. Both Adolphus, brother of Louis of Nassau, and Aremberg, the leader of the Spaniards, fell in the battle. The artillery, baggage, and military chest of the Spaniards became the booty of the conquerors.[2]

This issue of the affair was a great blow to Alva. He knew the effect which the prestige of a first victory was sure to have in favor of William. He therefore hastened his measures that he might march against the enemy and inflict on him summary vengeance for having defeated the veteran soldiers of Spain. The first burst of the tyrant’s rage fell, however, not on the patriot army, but on those unhappy persons who were in prison at Brussels. Nineteen Confederate noblemen, who had been condemned for high treason by the Council of Blood, were ordered by Alva for immediate execution. They were all beheaded in the horse-market of Brussels. Eight died as Roman Catholics, and their bodies received Christian burial; the remaining eleven professed the Reformed faith, and their heads stuck on poles, and their bodies fastened to stakes, were left to moulder in the fields.[3] The next day four gentlemen suffered the same fate. Count Culemberg’s house at Brussels was razed

[1]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 267.

[2]Bentivoglio, lib. 2., cap. 3, p. 52. Strada, lib. 7. Brandt, vol. 1., p. 267.

[3]Strada, lib. 7.

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to the ground, and in the center of the desolated site a placard was set up, announcing that the ill-omened spot had been made an execration because the great “Beggar Confederacy” against king and Church had been concocted here. These minor tragedies but heralded a greater one.

The last hours of Counts Egmont and Horn were now come. They had lain nine months in the Castle of Ghent, and conscious of entire loyalty to the king, they had not for a moment apprehended a fatal issue to their cause; but both Philip and Alva had from the first determined that they should die. The secretary of Egmont, Bakkerzeel, was subjected to the torture, in the hope of extorting from him condemnatory matter against his master. His tormentors, however, failed to extract anything from him which they could use against Egmont, whereat Alva was so enraged that he ordered the miserable man to be pulled in pieces by wild horses. The condemnation of the unfortunate noblemen was proceeded with all the same. They were brought from Ghent to Brussels under a strong escort. Alva, taking up one of the blank slips with Philip’s signature, of which he had brought a chestful from Spain, drafted upon it the sentence of Egmont, condemning him to be beheaded as a traitor. The same formality was gone through against Count Horn. The main accusation against these noblemen was, that they had been privy to the Confederacy, which had been formed to oppose the introduction of the Inquisition and edicts; and that they had met with the Prince of Orange at Dendermonde, to deliberate about opposing the entrance of the king’s army into the Netherlands. They knew indeed of the Confederacy, but they had not been members of it; and as regarded the conference at Dendermonde, they had been present at that meeting, but they had, as our readers will remember, disapproved and opposed the proposition of Louis of Nassau to unite their endeavours against the entrance of the Spanish troops into Flanders. But innocence or guilt were really of no account to the Blood Council, when it had fixed on the victim to be sacrificed. The two counts were roused from sleep at midnight, to have the sentence of death intimated to them by the Bishop of Ypres.

At eleven o’clock of the following day (5th of May) they were led to execution. The scaffold had been erected in the center of the great square of Brussels, standing hard by if not on the identical spot where the stake of the first martyrs of the Reformation in the Netherlands had been set up. It was covered with black cloth; nineteen companies of soldiers kept guard around it; a vast assembly occupied the space beyond, and the windows of the houses were crowded with spectators, among whom was Alva himself, who had come to witness the tragedy of his own ordering. Count Egmont was the first to ascend the scaffold, accompanied by the Bishop of Ypres. He had walked thither, reciting the 51st Psalm: “In the multitude of thy compassions, O God, blot out all mine iniquities,” etc. He conducted himself with dignity upon the scaffold. It was vain to think of addressing the spectators; those he wished to reach were too far off to hear him, and his words would have fallen only on the ears of the Spanish soldiers. After a few minutes’ conversation with the bishop, who presented him with a silver cross to kiss, and gave him his benediction, the count put off his black mantle and robe of red damask, and taking the Cross of the Golden Fleece from his neck, he knelt down and put his head on the block. Joining his hands as if in the act of supplication, he cried aloud, “O Lord, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Thereupon the executioner emerged from underneath the scaffold, where till that moment he had been concealed, and at one blow severed his head from his body.

Count Horn was next led upon the scaffold. He inquired whether Egmont were already dead. His eye was directed to a black cloth, which had been hastily thrown over the trunk and severed head of that nobleman, and he was told that the remains of Egmont were underneath. “We have not met each other,” he observed, “since the day we were apprehended.” The crucifix presented to him he did not kiss; but he kneeled on the scaffold to pray. His devotions ended, he rose up, laid his head on the block, and uttering in Latin the same exclamation which Egmont had used, he received the stroke of the sword. The heads of the two counts were stuck up on iron poles on the scaffold, between burning torches, and exhibited till late in the afternoon. This horrible deed very much deepened the detestation and abhorrence in which both Philip and Alva were held by the Netherlanders.[4]

The dismal tragedy ended, Alva was at liberty to turn his attention to the war. He set out from Brussels with an army of 12,000 foot and 3,000 horse to meet Louis of Nassau. He came up with him (14th of July, 1568) in the neighborhood of Groningen. On the approach of the duke, Count Louis retreated to the small town of Gemmingen on the Ems, where he encamped. His position was not unlike that in which he had joined battle with Aremberg, being strongly defended by

[4]Strada, lib. 7. Brandt, vol. 1., p. 267.

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morasses and swamps. The soldiers under him were somewhat inferior in numbers, but far more inferior in discipline, to the troops led by Alva. But Count Louis was more in want of money than men. The pay of his soldiers was greatly in arrear, and when they saw the Spaniards approach, and knew that a battle was imminent, they refused to fight till first their arrears had been paid. Intelligence of this mutinous disposition was duly carried to Alva by spies, and he accordingly chose that moment to attack. Count Louis and the Flemish exiles fought bravely but deserted by the German mutineers, they were compelled at last to retreat. The Spanish army rushed into the camp; most of the Germans who had refused to fight were put to the sword; Count Louis, with the remains of his routed host, escaped across the river Ems, and soon thereafter, in company with Count Hoogstraaten, he set out for Germany to join his brother, the Prince of Orange.[5]

[5]Strada, lib. 7. Watson, Philip II., vol. 1., pp. 329, 330.

Chapter 15: Failure of William’s First Campaign

Execution of Widow van Dieman—Herman Schinkel—Martyrdoms at Ghent—at Bois-le-Duc—Peter van Kulen and his Maid-servant—A New Gag Invented—William Approaches with his Army—His Manifesto—His Avowal of his Faith—William Crosses the Rhine—Alva Declines Battle—William’s Supplies Fail—Flanders Refuses to Rise—William Retires—Alva’s Elation—Erects a Statue to himself—Its Inscription—The Pope sends him Congratulations, etc—Synod of the Church of the Netherlands—Presbyterian Church Government Established

Picture: Lamoral Count of Egmont

Picture: Philip Montmorency Count of Horn

From the battle-field of Gemmingen, Alva went on his way by Amsterdam and Utrecht and Bois-le-Duc to Brussels, instituting inquiries in every district through which he passed, touching those of the inhabitants who had been concerned in the late tumults, and leaving his track marked throughout by halters and stakes. At Bois-le-Duc he passed sentence on sixty refugees whom he found in that town, sending some to the gallows and others to the fire. Some noblemen and councillors of Utrecht were at the same time executed, and their estates confiscated. Many in those days perished for no other crime but that of being rich. A gentlewoman of eighty-four years, widow of Adam van Dieman, a former Burgomaster of Utrecht, and who had received under her roof for a single night the minister John Arentson, was sentenced to die. When the day came, the executioner made her sit in a chair till he should strike off her head. Being a Romanist she knew that her great wealth had as much to do with her death as the night’s lodging she had given the Reformed pastor, for when brought upon the scaffold she asked if there was no room for pardon. The officer answered, “None.” “I know what you mean,” replied the brave old lady; “the calf is fat, and must therefore be killed.” Then turning to the executioner, and jesting playfully on her great age, which ought to have procured her respect and favor, she said, “I hope your sword, is sharp, for you will find my neck somewhat tough.” The executioner struck, and her head fell.[1]

A month after (25th of September) the widow of Egbert van Broekhuissen, a wine merchant at Utrecht, was beheaded. Her sentence set forth that she had been at a conventicle, but it was strongly rumoured that her real offense was one on which the judicial record was silent. One of the commissioners of the Council of Blood was a customer of her husband’s, and was said to be deep in his debt. It would seem that the judge took this way of paying it, for when the effects of the widow were confiscated for the king’s use, the ledger in which the debt was posted could not be found.[2] About the same time three persons were hanged at Haarlem. One of them had mutilated an image; another had been a soldier of Brederode’s, the Confederate leader; the third had written a poem, styled the Eecho, satirising the Pope. This man was the father of eight children, whose mother was dead. His own mother, a woman of eighty years, earnestly interceded that he might be spared for his children’s sake. But no compassion could be shown him. His two companions had already been strangled; his own foot was on the ladder, when a sudden tumult arose round the scaffold. But the persecutors were not to be defrauded of their prey.

[1]Brandt, vol., 1., pp. 269, 270.

[2]Ibid.

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They hurried off their victim to the burgomaster’s chamber; there they tied him to a ladder, and having strangled him, they hung up his corpse on the public gallows beside the other two. At Delft, Herman Schinkel, one of the lettered printers of those days, was condemned to die for having printed the “Psalm-book, the Catechism, and the Confession of Faith,” or short confession of the Christian doctrine from the Latin of Beza. He made a powerful defence before his judges, but of what avail was it for innocence and justice to plead before such a tribunal? He composed some verses in Latin on his death, which he sent to a friend. He wrote a letter to his infant son and daughters, breathing all the tenderness of a father; and then he yielded up his life.[3]

In Brabant and Flanders the persecution was still more severe. At Ghent, Giles de Meyer, the Reformed pastor, was condemned to the gallows. But the Spaniards who lay there in garrison, deeming this too good a death for the heretical preacher, changed it to one more befitting his demerits. Putting a gag into his mouth, and throwing him in, bound hand and foot, among a stack of faggots, they set fire to the heap and burned him. Meyer was one of four ministers who all sealed their doctrine with their blood in the same diocese. In the towns and villages around Ghent, men and women were being every day hanged-some simply for having taught children to sing psalms; others for having two years before given the use of their barns for sermon. At Bois-le-Duc, on the 28th of August, 1568, 116 men and three women were cited by toll of bell. Every few days a little batch of prisoners were brought forth, and distributed between the gallows and the block, on no principle that one can see, save the caprice or whim of the executioners. Thus the altars of persecution continually smoked; and strangled bodies and headless trunks were perpetually before the eyes of the miserable inhabitants.

Peter van Kulen, a goldsmith by trade, and an elder of the congregation at Breda, was thrown into prison. He had a maid-servant, a fellow-disciple of the same Lord and Master, who ministered to him in his bonds. She brought him his daily meal in the prison; but other Bread, which the guards saw not, she also conveyed to him-namely, that destined for the food of the soul; and many a sweet and refreshing repast did he enjoy in his dungeon. His faith and courage were thereby greatly strengthened. This went on for nine months. At last the guards suspected that they had a greater heretic in the servant than in the master, and threw her also into prison. After two months both of them were condemned, and brought out to be burned. As, with cheerful and constant aspect, they were being led to the scaffold, some of their townswomen forced their way through the guards to take their last farewell of them. Van Kulen had the commiseration shown him of being first strangled, and then committed to the fire; but for his pious maid-servant the more pitiless doom was reserved of being burned alive. This woman continued to encourage her master so long as he was capable of understanding her; when her words could no longer be useful to him, she was heard by the bystanders, with invincible courage, magnifying the name of God in the midst of the flames.[4]

It was now that a more dreadful instrument than any which the quick invention of the persecutor had yet devised, was brought into play to prevent the martyrs speaking in their last moments. It was seen how memorable were words spoken in circumstances so awful, and how deep they sank into the hearts of the hearers. It had been usual to put a wooden gag or ball into the mouth of the person to be burned, but the ball would roll out at times, and then the martyr would confess his faith and glorify God. To prevent this, the following dreadful contrivance was resorted to: two small bits of metal were screwed down upon the tongue; the tip of the tongue was then seared with a red-hot iron; instant swelling ensued, and the tongue could not again be drawn out of its enclosure. The pain of burning made it wriggle to and fro in the mouth, yielding “a hollow sound,” says Brandt, “much like that of the brazen bull of the tyrant of Sicily.” “Arnold van Elp,” continues the historian, “a man of known sincerity, relates that whilst he was a spectator of the martyrdom of some who were thus tongue-tied, he heard a friar among the crowd saying to his companion, ‘Hark! how they sing: should they not dance too?’”[5]

From this horrible, though to Alva congenial, work, the viceroy was called away by intelligence that William of Orange was approaching at the head of an army to invade Brabant. To open the gates of the Netherlands to his soldiers, William issued a manifesto, setting forth the causes of the war. “There was,” he said, “no resource but arms, unless the ancient charters were to be utterly extinguished, and the country itself brought to ruin by a tyranny exercised, not by the king” (so he still affected to believe), “but by Spanish councillors in the king’s name, and to the destruction

[3]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 271.

[4]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 275.

[5]Ibid.

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of the king’s interest.” To avert this catastrophe was he now in arms. The cause, he affirmed, was that of every man in the Low Countries, and no Netherlander “could remain neutral in this struggle without becoming a traitor to his country.” In this manifesto the prince made the first public announcement of that great change which his own religious sentiments had undergone. All that is noble in human character, and heroic in human achievement, must spring from some great truth realised in the soul. William of Orange gave a forecast of his future career-his unselfish devotion, his unwearied toil, his inextinguishable hope of his country-when he avowed in this manifesto his conviction that the doctrines of the Reformed Church were more in accordance with the Word of God than were those of the Roman Church. This elevated the contest to a higher basis. Henceforward it was no longer for ancient Flemish charters alone, it was also for the rights of conscience; it allied itself with the great movement of the human soul for freedom.

The Prince of Orange, advancing from Germany, crossed the Rhine near Cologne, with an army, including horse and foot, not exceeding 20,000. The Spanish host was equal in numbers, but better furnished with military stores and provisions. William approached the banks of the Meuse, which he crossed, much to the dismay of Alva, by a bold expedient, to which Julius Caesar had had recourse in similar circumstances. He placed his cavalry in the river above the ford, and the force of the current being thus broken, the army was able to effect a passage. But Alva declined battle. He knew how slender were the finances of William, and that could he prolong the campaign till the approach of winter, the prince would be under the necessity of disbanding his army. His tactics were completely successful. Whichever way William turned, Alva followed him; always straitening him, and making it impossible for him to enter any fortified town, or to find provisions for his army in the open country. The autumn wore away in marches and counter-marches, Alva skilfully avoiding battle, and engaging only in slight skirmishes, which, barren of result to William, were profitable to the Spanish general, inasmuch as they helped to consume time. William had expected that Brabant and Flanders would rise at the sight of his standards, and shake off the Spanish yoke. Not a city opened its gates to him, or hoisted on its walls the flag of defiance to the tyrant. At last both money and provisions failed him. Of the 300,000 guilders which the Flemish Protestants at home and abroad had undertaken to furnish towards the deliverance of the country, barely 12,000 were forthcoming. His soldiers became mutinous, and the prince had no alternative but to lead back his army into Germany and there disband it. The Flemings lost far more than William did. The offer of freedom had come to their gates with the banners of William, but they failed to perceive the hour of their opportunity. With the retreating standards of the Deliverer liberty also departed, and Belgium sank down under the yoke of Spain and Rome.

The Duke of Alva was not a little elated at his success, and he set about rearing a monument which should perpetuate its fame to after-ages. He caused the cannon taken in the battle of Gemmingen to be melted, and a colossal bronze statue of himself to be cast and set up in the citadel of Antwerp. It pleased Alva to be represented in complete armor, trampling on two prostrate figures, which were variously interpreted, but from the petitions and axes which they held in their hands, and the symbolical devices of the Beggars hung round their necks, they were probably meant to denote the image-breaking Protestants and the Confederates. On the pedestal was the following inscription in Latin: “To the most faithful minister of the best of kings, Ferdinand Alvarez, Duke of Alva, Governor of the Low Countries for Philip II., King of Spain, who, after having extinguished the tumults, expelled the rebels, restored religion, and executed justice, has established peace in the nation.” A truly modest inscription! The duke, moreover, decreed himself a triumphal entry into Brussels, in the cathedral of which a Te Deum was sung for his victory. Nor was this all. Pius V. sent a special ambassador from Rome to congratulate the conqueror, and to present him with a consecrated hat and sword, as the special champion of the Roman Catholic religion. The sword was richly set, being chased with gold and precious stones, and was presented to the duke by the hands of the Bishop of Mechlin, in church after the celebration of mass. The afternoon of the same day was devoted to a splendid tournament, the place selected for the spectacle being the same square in which the bloody tragedy of the execution of Counts Egmont and Horn had so recently been enacted.[6]

It was in the midst of these troubles that the persecuted disciples of the Gospel in the Netherlands met to perfect the organisation of their Church. A synod or assembly was at this time held at Embden, at which Jasper von Heiden, then minister at Franken-deal, presided. At this synod

[6]Strada, lib. 7. Brandt, vol. 1., p. 276.

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rules were made for the holding of consistories or kirk-sessions, of classes or presbyteries, and synods. The first article of the constitution ordained for the Netherland Church was as follows:-“No Church shall have or exercise dominion over another; no minister, elder, or deacon shall bear rule over another of the same degree; but every one shall beware of his attempting or giving the least cause of suspicion of his aiming at such dominion.” “This article,” says Brandt,” was levelled chiefly at the prelatic order of Rome, as also at the episcopacy established in some of the countries of the Reformation.” The ministers assembled signed the Confession of Faith of the Church of the Netherlands, “as an evidence of their uniformity in doctrine;” as also the Confession of the Churches of France, “to show their union and conformity with them.” It was agreed that all the ministers then absent, and all who should thereafter be admitted to the office of the ministry, should be exhorted to subscribe these articles. It was also agreed that the Geneva catechism should be used in the French or Walloon congregations, and the Heidelberg catechism in those of the Dutch; but if it happened that any of the congregations made use of any other catechism agreeable to the Word of God, they were not to be required to change it.[7] While Alva was scattering and burning the Netherland Church, its members, regardless of the tyrant’s fury, were linking themselves together in the bonds of a scriptural organisation. While his motto was “Raze, raze it,” the foundations of that spiritual edifice were being laid deeper and its walls raised higher than before.

[7]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 294

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Chapter 16: The “Beggars of the Sea,” and Second Campaign of Orange

Brabant Inactive—Trials of the Blood Council—John Hassels—Executions at Valenciennes—The Year 1568—More Edicts—Individual Martyrdoms—A Martyr Saving the Life of his Persecutor—Burning of Four Converted Priests at the Hague-William enters on his Second Campaign—His Appeal for Funds—The Refugees—The “Beggars of the Sea”—Discipline of the Privateer Fleet—Plan for Collecting Funds—Elizabeth—De la Marck—Capture of Brill by the Sea Beggars—Foundations laid of the Dutch Republic—Alva’s Fury—Bossu Fails to Retake Brill—Dort and Flushing declare against Spain—Holland and Zealand declare for William—Louis of Nassau takes Mons—Alva Besieges it—The Tenth Penny—Meeting of the States of Holland—Speech of St. Aldegonde—Toleration—William of Orange declared Stadtholder of Holland

Picture: View of the Gate of Dort or Dordrecht

William, Prince of Orange, having consecrated his life to the great struggle for the rights of conscience, carried the first offer of deliverance to Brabant. Had its great and powerful cities heartily entered into his spirit, and risen at the sound of the advancing steps of the deliverer, the issue would have been far different from what it was. But Brabant saw that the struggle must be tremendous, and, rather than gird itself for so terrible a fight, preferred to lie still ingloriously in [80] its chains. Sad in heart William retired to a distance, to await what further openings it might please that great Power, to whose service he had consecrated himself, to present to him.

The night of horrors which had descended on the Low Countries continued to deepen. The triumph of Alva, instead of soothing him, made him only the more intolerant and fierce. There came new and severer edicts from Spain; there were gathered yet greater crowds of innocent men for the gallows and the stake, and the out flowing tide from that doomed shore continued to roll on. A hundred thousand houses, it is thought, were now left empty. Their inmates transported their trade and handicrafts to other nations. Wives must not correspond with their exiled husbands; and should they venture to visit them in their foreign asylum, they must not return to their native land. The youth of Flanders were forbidden to go abroad to acquire a foreign tongue, or to learn a trade, or to study in any university save that of Rome.

The carelessness with which the trials of the Blood Council were conducted was shocking. Batches were sent off to the gallows, including some whose cause had not been tried at all. When such were inquired for to take their trial, and it was found that their names had been inserted in the death-list, and that they had been sent to the gallows-a discovery which would have startled and discomposed most judges—the news was very coolly received by the men who constituted this terrible tribunal. Vargas on those occasions would console his fellow-judges by saying that “it was all the better for the souls of such that they were innocent.”

One member of the Blood Council, John Hassels by name, was accustomed on the bench to sleep through the examinations of the prisoners, and, when awakened to give his vote, he would rub his eyes and exclaim, “To the gallows! to the gallows!”[1] In Valenciennes, in the space of three days, fifty-seven citizens of good position were beheaded. But Alva wanted more than their blood. He had boasted that he would make a stream of gold, three feet in depth, flow from the Netherlands to Spain, and he proceeded to make good his words. He imposed heavier subsidies upon the inhabitants. He demanded, first, the hundredth penny of every man’s estate; secondly, the twentieth penny of all immovable property; and, thirdly, the tenth penny of all movable goods. This last was to be paid every time the goods were sold. Thus, if they changed hands five times it is clear that one-half their value had passed to the Government; and if, as sometimes happened, they changed hands ten times, their entire value was swallowed up by the Government tax. Under such a law no market could be kept open; all buying and selling must cease. The Netherlanders refused to submit to the tax, on the ground that it would bring what remained of their commerce to an utter end, and so defeat itself. After many cajoleries and threats, Alva made a virtue of necessity, and modified the tax.

Such is the melancholy record of the year 1568. Its gloom deepened as the months rolled on. First came the defeat of Count Louis, and the overcasting of the fair morning of a hoped-for deliverance for the miserable Provinces. Next were seen the scaffolds of Egmont and Horn, and of many others among the more patriotic of the Flemish nobility. Then followed the disastrous issue of the attempt of William to emancipate Brabant, and with it the loss of all his funds, and many thousands of lives, and a tightening of the tyrant’s grasp upon the country. Wherever one turned one’s eye there was a gibbet; wherever one planted one’s foot there was blood. The cities were becoming silent; the air was thick with terror and despair. But if 1568 closed in gloom, 1569 rose in a gloom yet deeper.

In the beginning of this year the sword of persecution was still further sharpened. There came a new edict, addressed to the Stadtholders of the Provinces, enjoining that “when the Host or the holy oil for extreme unction was carried to sick people, strict notice should be taken of the behavior, countenance, and words of every person, and that all those in whom any signs of irreverence were discovered should be punished; that all such dead bodies to which the clergy thought fit to deny Christian burial and the consecrated ground, should be thrown out on the gallows-field; that notice of it should be given to him (Alva), and their estates registered; and that all midwives should report every birth within twenty-four hours after the child had come into the world, to the end that it might be known whether the children were baptised after the Roman manner.”[2] The carrying out of this order necessitated the creation of a new class of agents. Spies were placed at the corners of all the streets, whose duty it was to watch the countenances of the passers-by, and pounce on those whose looks were ill-favored, and hale them to prison. These spies were nick-named the “Seven penny Men,” because the wages of their odious work was

[1]“Ad patibulum, ad patibulum.” (Brandt)

[2]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 280.

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paid them in pieces of that value. Thus the gallows and the stake continued to be fed.

The crowd of martyrs utterly defies enumeration. Many of them were of low estate, as the world accounts it, but they were rich in faith, noble in spirit, and heirs of a greater kingdom than Philip’s, though they had to pass through the fire to receive possession of it. The deaths of all were the same, yet the circumstances in which it was endured were so varied, and in many cases so peculiar and tragic, that each differs from the other. Let us give a very few examples. On the 8th of July, 1569, William Tavart was led to the place of execution in Antwerp, in order to undergo death by burning. While his executioners were binding his hands, and putting the gag into his mouth, being a man of eighty years, and infirm, he fainted in their hands. He was thereupon carried back to his prison, and drowned. Another martyr, also very aged, worn out moreover by a long imprisonment, was kneeling on the faggots in prayer before being bound to the stake. The executioner, thinking that he was spending too much time in his devotions, rushed forward to raise him up and put him into the fire. He found that the old man was dead. The martyr had offered up his life in intention, and his gracious Master, compassionating his age and frailties, had given him the crown, yet spared him the agony of the stake. Richard Willemson, of Aspern, being pursued by an officer of the Blood Council, was making his escape on the ice. The ice gave way, and the officer fell in, and would have been drowned but for the humanity of the man whom he was pursuing, who, perceiving what had happened, turned back, and stretching out his hand, at the risk of being himself dragged in, pulled out his enemy. The magnanimous act touched the heart of the officer, and he would have let his deliverer escape; but unhappily the burgomaster happened to come up at the moment, and called out sharply to him, “Fulfil your oath.” Thereupon he seized the poor man who but a moment before had saved his life, and conducted him to prison. He was condemned to the fire, and burned without the walls of Aspern, on the side next to Leerdam. While at the stake, a strong east wind springing up, the flames were blown away from the upper part of his body, leaving the lower extremities exposed to the torment of a slow fire. His cries were heard as far as Leerdam. In this fashion was he rewarded for saving his enemy’s life at the peril of his own.

About the same time, four parish priests were degraded and burned at the Hague. The bishop first clothing them with their mass-garments, and then stripping them, as is usual on such occasions, said, in the Latin tongue, “I divest you of the robe of Righteousness.” “Not so,” replied one of the four; “you divest us of the robe of Unrighteousness.” “Nor can you,” added the other three, “strip us of our salvation as you strip us of these vestments.” Whereupon the bishop, with a grave countenance, laid his hand upon his breast, and calling on God, solemnly declared that “he believed from his heart that the Romish religion was the most certain way to salvation.” “You did not always think so,” replied Arent Dirkson, a man of seventy years, and known to be learned and judicious; “you knew the truth formerly, but you have maliciously rejected it, and you must answer for it at the great Day of Judgment.” The words of the old man found a response in the conscience of the apostate. The bishop shook and trembled before his own prisoner. Nevertheless he went on with the condemnation of the four men, delivering them to the temporal arm with the usual prayer that the magistrate would deal tenderly with them. Upon this, the grey-haired pastor again burst out, “Quam pharisaice! How pharisaically do they treat us!” They were sent back to prison. The same night they celebrated the Lord’s Supper for their mutual consolation, and continued till break of day in singing psalms, in reading the Holy Scriptures, and in prayer. The hour of execution being come, the father of one of the martyrs, mingling in the crowd, waited till his son should pass to the stake, that he might whisper a few words of encouragement. “My dear son,” said he, when he saw him approach, “fight manfully for the crown of everlasting life.” The guards instantly dragged the old man away to prevent him saying more. His sister now came forward, and spoke to him with equal courage. “Brother,” cried she, “be constant; it will not last long; the gate of eternal life is open for you.” The scene made a deep impression upon the spectators.

A burgher and bargeman of Amsterdam, Gerrit Cornelison by name, was one day brought out to be burned. In prison he had twice been tortured to force him to betray his associates, but no pain could overcome his constancy. Turning to the people at the stake, he cried, “Good people, eternity is so long, and our suffering here is so short, and yet the combat is very sharp and cruel. Alas! how am I distressed! O my flesh, bear and resist for a little, for this is thy last combat.” This, his last battle, he fought courageously, and received the crown.[3]

While these humble men were dying for their

[3]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 286, 287.

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faith, Providence was preparing in high quarters for the deliverance of the country. After the close of his first unsuccessful campaign, William of Orange retired for a short time to France, and was present at the battle of Jarnac, where he witnessed the disaster which there befel the Huguenot arms. It seemed as if a thick cloud was everywhere gathering above the Protestant cause. In a few months he was recalled by his friends to Germany. Disguising himself as a peasant, and accompanied by only five attendants, he crossed the French lines, traversed Flanders in safety, and reached his principality of Nassau. He there learned all that had passed in the Netherlands during his absence. He was told that every day the tyranny of Alva waxed greater, as did also the odium in which both his person and government were held. The unhappy country had but one hope, and if that should misgive it, it must abandon itself to utter despair. That hope was himself. From all sides, from Roman Catholics as well as Protestants, from the exiles abroad and from the sufferers at home, came the most urgent appeals to him to again unfurl the standard of battle. He had consecrated his life to the defense of the Reformed religion, and the maintenance of his country’s liberties, and was ready to respond to the appeal of those who had no human help save in his wisdom and courage. But he recollected what had so largely contributed to the failure of his first attempt, and before un-sheathing the sword he set about collecting the sinews of war. William had already all but beggared himself in his attempt to break the yoke from the neck of the Netherlands; his plate and jewels and furniture had all been sold to pay his soldiers; his paternal estates were heavily burdened; he would give what remained of his possessions, together with his courage and blood, in promotion of the cause; but others also, at home and abroad, must contribute both their money and their blood, and in no stinted measure, if success was to crown their efforts. William took the first step by forming a comprehensive plan for raising the necessary funds.

The Flemish refugees in London and other parts had united together, and had fitted out a great number of armed vessels. These they sent to cruise on the English and Flemish seas, and make prize of all. Spanish ships that came in their way. Their skill and daring were rewarded by numerous rich captures. As the growing fury of Alva swelled the number of refugees in London and other cities, so did the strength of the privateering fleet continue to increase. While Alva was gathering his taxes on land, they were reaping a rich harvest at sea. They scoured the English Channel, they hovered on the coast of the Netherlands, and preyed upon the merchandise of Spain. These cruisers became renowned under the title of the “Sea Beggars.” It occurred to the Prince of Orange that these “terrible beggars” might do good service in the cause of their country’s emancipation; and it was ultimately arranged that a fifth of the value of all the prizes which they made should be given to officers appointed by William, and the sum devoted to the support of the war of liberation.

Measures were at the same time adopted to improve the morale and discipline of a fleet that was becoming the terror of Alva and the Spaniards. No one was to exercise authority in it save those to whom William himself should grant commissions. Every ship was to carry a Protestant minister on board, whose duty it was to conduct regular religious service; and no one who had ever been convicted of a crime was to be permitted to serve in the fleet. The ships of all friendly Powers were to pass untouched, and Alva and his adherents only were the Sea Beggars to regard as lawful prey.

At the same time the prince adopted another method of improving his finances in prospect of the coming war of independence. Commissions were given to the Protestant preachers, who traversed the Provinces in disguise, and collected money from all who were disaffected to the Spanish Government, or inimical to the Romish religion. None knew so well as they to whom to apply, or were so able by their eloquence to recommend the cause. William, besides, acquired by their means an intimate and accurate knowledge of the dispositions of all classes in the Netherlands. Their mission was specially successful in Holland and Zealand, where the Reformed religion had made greater progress than in the southern Provinces, and where the people, enjoying the natural defences of canals, rivers, and sea-friths, felt less the terror of the Spaniards. On these grounds, too, William resolved to seek in these northern parts a first footing for his enterprise. While these measures were being vigorously prosecuted in Holland, a trustworthy agent, Sonoy, was sent to canvass the Governments and people of Germany, adjuring them in the name of a common faith and a common liberty to put their shoulder to the great enterprise. Not a whisper of what was in preparation was wafted to the ears of Alva, although the prince’s designs must have been known to a vast number of persons, so universal was the detestation in which the tyrant was held. Alva himself unconsciously helped to prepare the way for William, and to draw down the first blow of the great conflict. [83]

It was about the end of March, 1572, and the fleet of the Beggars of the Sea was lying off Dover. Spain, smarting from the damage that these daring sea-rovers were constantly inflicting on her merchandise, complained to England that she opened her harbours to Flemish pirates, and permitted the goods stolen by them from Spanish subjects to be sold in her dominions, and so violated the treaties subsisting between the Spanish and English crowns. Elizabeth, though secretly friendly to the Flemish exiles, was yet unwilling to come to an open rupture with Philip, and accordingly she ordered their ships to quit her ports,[4] and forbade her subjects to supply provisions to their crews. The Sea Beggars instantly weighed anchor, and shot across the German Sea. Half famished they arrived off the mouth of the Meuse, and sailed up its broad channel to Brill. The fleet was under the command of Admiral de la Marck, who held a commission from William of Orange. Coming to anchor opposite Brill, De la Marck sent a herald to summon the town to surrender. “The people,” says Strada, “supposed them at first to be merchantmen cast upon their coast by storm, but before they were aware they brought war, not merchandise.”[5] Brill, though a small place, was strongly fortified, but the summons of the Beggars of the Sea, inspired such a terror that the magistrates fled, and were followed by many of the inhabitants. De la Marck’s soldiers battered open the gates, and having entered they hoisted their flag, and took possession of Brill, in the name of William of Orange. Thus on the 1st of April, 1572, were laid the foundations of the Free Protestant Holland, and thus was opened a conflict whose course of thirty years was to be marked by alternate defeats and triumphs, by the tragedies and crimes of a colossal tyranny, and the heroism and self-devotion of a not less colossal virtue and patriotism, till it should end in the overthrow of the mighty Empire of Spain, and the elevation of the little territory of Holland to a more stable prosperity, and a more enviable greatness and renown, than Philip’s kingdom could boast in its palmiest days.

Meanwhile Alva was giving reins to a fury which had risen to madness. He was burning the Prince of Orange in effigy, he was dragging his escutcheon through the streets at the tails of horses, and proclaiming William and his offspring infamous to all posterity. At the same time he was fighting with the inhabitants about “the tenth penny.” The consequences of enforcing so ruinous a tax, of which he had been warned, had now been realised: all buying and selling was suspended: the shops were shut, and the citizens found it impossible to purchase even the most common necessaries. Thousands were thrown out of employment, and the towns swarmed with idlers and beggars. Enraged at being thus foiled, Alva resolved to read the shopkeepers of Brussels a lesson which they should not soon forget. He made arrangements that when they awoke next morning they should see eighteen of the leading members of their fraternity hanged at the doors of their own shops. The hangman had the ropes and ladders prepared overnight. But morning brought with it other things to occupy Alva’s attention. A messenger arrived with the news that the great Sea Beggar, De la Marek, had made himself master of the town of Brill, and that the standard of William was floating on its walls. Alva was thunderstruck.[6] The duke instantly dispatched Count Bossu to retake the town. The Spaniards advanced to the walls of Brill and began to batter them with their cannon. A carpenter leaped into the canal, swam to a sluice and with his axe hewed it open, and let in the sea. The rising waters compelled the besiegers to remove to the south side of the town, which chanced to be that on which De la Marck had planted his largest cannon. While the Spaniards were thundering at this gate, La Marck’s men, issuing out at the opposite one, and rowing to the Spanish ships, set fire to them. When the Spaniards saw their ships beginning to blaze, and marked the waves steadily rising round them, they were seized with panic, and made a hasty retreat along the dyke. Many perished in the waves, the rest escaping to the fleet crowded into the vessels that remained unburned, weighed anchor and set sail. The inhabitants who had fled at the first surprise now returned, their names were registered, and all swore allegiance to the Prince of Orange, as Stadtholder for Philip.[7]

Misfortune continued to dog the steps of the Spaniards. Bossu led his troops toward Dort, but the inhabitants, who had heard of the capture of Brill, closed their gates against him.[8] He next took his way to Rotterdam. There too his demand for admission to a garrison in the king’s name was met with a refusal. The crafty Spaniard had recourse to a stratagem. He asked leave for his companies to pass through one by one; this was given, but no sooner had the first company entered than Bossu, regardless of his promise, made his

[4]Strada, lib. 7.

[5]Ibid.

[6]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 295.

[7]Watson, Philip II., vol. 1., pp. 426-431.

[8]Strada, lib. 7.

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soldiers keep open the gates for his whole army. The citizens attempted to close the gates, but were hewn down; and the Spaniards, giving loose to their fury, spread themselves over the city, and butchered 400 of the inhabitants. The sanguinary and brutal ravages which Bossu’s soldiers inflicted on Rotterdam had nearly as great an effect as the capture of Brill in spreading the spirit of revolt over Holland.

Flushing, an important town from its position at the mouth of the Scheldt, was the next to mount the flag of defiance to the Spaniards. They drove out the garrison of Alva, and razed the foundations of a citadel which the governor was preparing as the chain wherewith to bind them. Next day the Spanish fleet appeared in their harbour; the citizens were deliberating in the market-place when a drunken fellow proposed, for three guilders, to mount the ramparts, and fire one of the great guns upon the ships. The effect of that one unexpected shot was to strike the Spaniards with panic. They let slip their cables and stood out to sea.

Two hundred years afterwards we find Flushing commemorating its deliverance from the yoke of Alva. The minutes of the consistory inform us “that the minister, Justus Tgeenk, preached [April 5th, 1772] in commemoration of Flushing’s delivery from Spanish tyranny, which was stopped here on the 6th April, 1572, when the citizens, unassisted and unsupported by any foreign Power, drove out the Walloons and opened their gates, and laid the corner-stone of that singular and always remarkable revolution, which placed seven small Provinces in a state of independency, in despite of the utmost efforts of Philip II., then the most powerful monarch in Europe.” The Sunday after (April 12th), the Lord’s Supper was dispensed, and “at the table,” say the minutes, was used “a silver chalice,” the property of the burgomaster E. Clyver, “wherein two hundred years ago the Protestants in this town had, for the first time, celebrated the Lord’s Supper in a cellar here at the head of the Great Market, on account of the, unrelenting persecution.”[9]

In a few months all the more important towns of Holland and Zealand followed the example of Brill and Flushing, and hung out upon their walls the standard of the man in whom they recognised their deliverer.[10] Haarlem, Leyden, Gouda, Horn, Alkmaar, Enkhuizen, and many others broke their chain. No soldier of the prince, no sea-rover of De la Marck’s incited them to revolt: the movement was a thoroughly spontaneous one; it originated with the citizens themselves, the great majority of whom cherished a hatred of the Roman faith, and a detestation of Spanish tyranny. Amsterdam was the only exception that is worth noting in Holland. The flame which had been kindled spread into Friesland, and Utrecht and other towns placed their names on the distinguished list of cities that came forth at this great crisis to the help of conscience and of liberty against the mighty.

A small incident which happened at this moment was fraught with vast consequences. Count Louis of Nassau, approaching from France, made himself master of the frontier town of Mons in the south.[11] Alva was excessively mortified by this mishap, and he was bent on recovering the place. He was counselled to defer the siege of Mons till he should have extinguished the rising in the north. He was reminded that Holland and Zealand were deeply infected with heresy; that there the Prince of Orange was personally popular; that nature had fortified these Provinces by intersecting them with rivers and arms of the sea, and that if time were given the inhabitants to strengthen their canals and cities, many sieges and battles might not suffice to reduce them to their obedience. This advice was eminently wise, but Alva stopped his ear to it. He went on with the siege of Mons, and while “he was plucking this thorn out of his foot,” the conflagration in the north of the Netherlands had time to spread. He succeeded eventually in extracting the thorn that is, he took Mons-but at the cost of losing Holland.

William himself had not yet arrived in the Netherlands, but he was now on his way thither at the head of a new army well nigh 20,000 strong, which he had raised in Germany. He caused to be distributed before him copies of a declaration, in which he set forth the grounds of his taking up arms. These were, in brief, “the security of the rights and privileges of the country, and the freedom of conscience.” In the instructions which he issued to his deputy in Holland, Diedrich Sonoy, he required him, “first of all, to deliver the towns of that Province from Spanish slavery, and to restore them to their ancient liberties, rights and privileges, and to take care that the Word of God be preached and published there, but yet by no means to suffer that those of the Romish Church should be in any sort prejudiced, or that any impediment should be offered to them in the exercise of their religion.”[12]

Meanwhile, Alva was left literally without a

[9]Steven, Hist. Scottish Church, Rotterdam, p. 304.

[10]Strada, lib. 7.

[11]Bentivoglio, lib. 2., p. 54.

[12]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 298.

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penny; and, finding it hard to prosecute the siege of Mons on an empty military chest, he announced his willingness to remit the tax of the tenth penny, provided the States-General would give him “the annual twenty tuns of gold”[13] (about two millions of florins) which they had formerly promised him in lieu of the obnoxious tax; and he summoned the States of Holland to meet at the Hague, on the 15th of July, and consider the matter.

The States of Holland met on the day named, not at the Hague, but at Dort; and in obedience to the summons, not of Alva, but of William. Nor had they assembled to deliberate on the proposal of Alva, and to say whether it was the “tenth penny” or the “twenty tuns of gold” that they were henceforth to lay at his feet. The banner of freedom now floated on their walls, and they had met to devise the means of keeping it waving there. The battle was only beginning: the liberty which had been proclaimed had yet to be fought for. Of this we find their great leader reminding them. In a letter which William addressed at this time to the States of Holland, he told them, in words as plain as they were weighty, that if in a quarrel like this they should show themselves sparing of their gold, they would incur the anger of the great Ruler, they would make themselves the scorn of foreign nations, and they would bind a bloody yoke on themselves and their posterity for ever. William was not present in the assembly at Dolt, but the was ably represented by St. Aldegonde. This eloquent plenipotentiary addressed the members in a powerful speech, in which he rehearsed the efforts the Prince of Orange had already made for the deliverance of the land from Spanish cruelty; that he had embarked the whole of his fortune in the struggle; that the failure of the expedition of 1568 was owing to no fault of his, but entirely in his not being adequately supported, not a Fleming having lifted a finger in the cause; that he was again in the field with an army, and that supplies must be found if it was to be kept there, or if it was to accomplish anything for the country. “Arouse ye, then,” were the thrilling words in which St. Aldegonde concluded his oration, “awaken your own zeal and that of your sister cities. Seize Opportunity by the locks, who never appeared fairer than she does to-day.”

St. Aldegonde was further instructed by the prince to state the broad and catholic aims that he proposed to himself in the struggle which they were to wage together. If that struggle should be crowned with success, the Papist would have not less cause to rejoice than the Protestant; the two should divide the spoils. “As for religion,” said St. Aldegonde, “the desires of the prince are that liberty of conscience should be allowed as well to the Reformed as to the Roman Catholics; that each party should enjoy the public exercise of it in churches or chapels, without any molestation, hindrance, or trouble, and that the clergy should remain free and unmolested in their several functions, provided they showed no tokens of disaffection, and that all things should be continued on this footing till the States-General otherwise directed.” In these intentions the States expressed themselves as at one with the prince.

A patriotic response was made to the prince’s appeal by the Northern Netherlands. All classes girded themselves for the great struggle. The aristocracy, the guilds, the religious houses, and the ordinary citizens came forward with gifts and loans. Money, plate, jewellery, and all kinds of valuables were poured into the common treasury. A unanimous resolution of the States declared the Prince of Orange Stadtholder of Holland. The taxes were to be levied in his name, and all naval and land officers were to take an oath of obedience to him. What a contrast between the little territory and the greatness of the contest that is about to be waged! We behold the inhabitants of a small platform of earth, walled in by dykes lest the ocean should drown it, heroically offering themselves to fight the world’s battle against that great combination of kingdoms, nationalities, and armies that compose the mighty monarchy of Spain!

[13]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 298

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Chapter 17: William’s Second Campaign, and Submission of Brabant and Flanders

William’s New Levies—He crosses the Rhine—Welcome from Flemish Cities—Sinews of War—Hopes in France—Disappointed by the St. Bartholomew Massacre—Reverses—Mutiny—William Disbands his Army—Alva takes Revenge on the Cities of Brabant—Cruelties in Mons—Mechlin Pillaged—Terrible Fate of Zutphen and Naarden—Submission of the Cities of Brabant—Holland Prepares for Defence—Meeting of Estates at Haarlem—Heroic Resolution—Civil and Ecclesiastical Reorganisation of Holland—Novel Battle on the Ice—Preparations for the Siege of Haarlem

Picture: Repulse of the Spanish Soldiers at Amsterdam

William, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder and virtual King of Holland, Zealand, and Friesland, if the prayers and suffrages of an entire people can avail to invest one with that august office, was approaching the Netherlands at the head of his newly-enrolled levies. He crossed the Rhine on the 7th of July, 1572, with an army of 17,000 foot and 7,000 horse. Advancing as far as Roermonde, he halted before that town to demand a supply of provisions for his soldiers. The government of the place was in the hands of zealous Roman Catholics, and the refusal of Roermonde to comply with the request of the Liberator was rendered still more ungracious by the haughtiness and insolence with which it was accompanied. William stormed the city and took it. Unhappily his soldiers here dishonored the cause for which the prince was in arms, by putting to death certain priests and monks under circumstances of great barbarity. Germany was at that time a magazine of mercenary soldiers, from which both the Prince of Orange and Alva drew supplies, and troops of this class were but little amenable to discipline when their pay fell into arrears, as was now the case. But William felt that such excesses must be checked at all hazards, otherwise his cause would be disgraced and ultimately ruined; and accordingly he issued an order forbidding all such barbarities in future under pain of death.[1]

For some time his march was a triumphal one. The standards of William shed a gleam through the darkness that shrouded Brabant, and the spirits of its terror-stricken inhabitants for a moment revived. On the first occasion when the Deliverer approached their cities, the Flemings abode within their gates, but now they seemed as if they would rise at his call, and redeem themselves from the yoke of Spain. The important city of Mechlin declared in his favor. Louvain refused to admit a garrison of his soldiers, but sent him a contribution of 16,000 ducats. Tirlemont, Termonde,

Oudenarde, Nivelles, and many other towns and villages opened their gates to the prince; the most part spontaneously, in the eager hope of deliverance from a tyranny which threatened to cease its ravages only when nothing more should be left in the Netherlands to destroy.

A successful beginning of the great struggle had been made, but now the prince began to be in straits. The friends of the cause had not yet realised its full grandeur or its immense difficulty, and their scale of giving was totally inadequate. If the tide of bigotry and tyranny now overflowing Christendom was to be stemmed, the friends of liberty, both at home and abroad, must not be sparing either of their blood or their gold. But as yet it was hardly understood that all must be parted with if the pearl of freedom was to be won.

But if the States of Holland, and the refugees in England and other countries, were sending supplies which were disproportionate to the enormous expense to which William had been put in levying, equipping, and maintaining his troops, he had the best hopes of succours from France. The net was being then woven for the Huguenots, and their great chief, Admiral Coligny, was being caressed at the court of the Louvre. “I will fight Philip of Spain on the soil of the Netherlands,” said that consummate dissembler, Charles IX. “William of Orange shall not want for money and soldiers,” continued he, with a frankness that seemed the guarantee of a perfect sincerity. Coligny suffered himself to be persuaded of the good faith of the king, and labored to produce the same conviction in the mind of the Prince of Orange, bidding him expect him soon at the head of 15,000 Huguenots. William, believing that France was at his back, thought that the campaign could have but one issue-namely, the expulsion of the Spaniards, and the liberation of the Netherlands from their unbearable yoke. But his hopes were destined to a cruel overthrow. Instead of an army of Huguenots to help him on to victory, there came tidings that felled him to the earth. Three weeks

[1]Bor, 6. 398, 399. Strada, 7. 75; Lond., 1667.

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from the date of Coligny’s letter, William received the terrible news of the St. Bartholomew Massacre. The men who were to have emancipated the Low Countries were watering with their blood and strewing with their corpses the plains of their native land! The Prince of Orange opened his eyes on blank desolation; he saw the campaign ending in inevitable failure, and the dark night of Spanish oppression again closing in around a country which he had believed to be as good as emancipated. The shock was terrible, but the lesson was salutary. Those instruments whom Providence selects to fight the holy battles of religion and freedom need a higher training than ordinary warriors. To genius and courage heroes of this class must add faith; but this quality they can acquire only in the school of repeated disappointment. They can never learn this virtue in the midst of numerous and victorious hosts, where success is won by mere numbers, and where victory is of that ordinary and vulgar sort which the worst as well as the best of causes can command.

The fate of his second campaign had been decided at Paris when the St. Bartholomew was struck, but William still continued to prosecute the war. His attempts, however, to stem the swelling tide of Spanish tyranny were without success. First, he failed to relieve his brother, who was shut up in the city of Mons, besieged by Alva; next, he himself narrowly escaped being captured by the Spaniards in a night attack on his camp, in which 600 of his soldiers were slain. He owed his escape to a small spaniel which he kept in his bed-chamber, and which awoke him by scratching his face.[2] There followed a mutiny of his troops, provoked by the repeated disasters that had befallen them, and the arrears due to them, but which the prince was unable to discharge; they talked, indeed, of delivering him up to Alva. They soon became ashamed of having harboured so base a design, but the incident convinced William that he had no alternative but to disband his army and retire to Holland, and this course he now adopted.

The departure of the Prince of Orange was the signal for Alva to take a terrible revenge on those cities in Brabant which had hoisted the flag of the Deliverer. Mons surrendered, but the terms of the capitulation were most perfidiously violated by the Spaniards. The citizens were sent in hundreds to the gallows; murder and spoliation ran riot in its streets; the axe and the halter rested not for well-nigh a whole year, till the awful silence proclaimed that Mons was now little else than a charnel-house. Its commercial prosperity never recovered this terrible blow. Those of its merchants and artisans who had escaped the gibbet were driven away, and only beggars and idlers were left in their room-a meet population, surely, to wear the yoke of Spain.

In the eyes of Alva, the archiepiscopal city of Mechlin was a greater offender than even Mons, and he resolved to wreak upon it, if possible, a yet more terrible vengeance. Considering the strength of its Romanism, and the rank and influence of its clergy, one would have expected that it would be the last city in Brabant to open its gates to William; it was, as we have seen, the first. The conqueror resolved that it should suffer as pre-eminently as it had sinned. His regiments had recently received no pay, and Alva pointed to the rich city of the priests, and bade them seek their wages in it. The soldiers threw themselves upon the town, like a pack of hungry wolves upon their prey. Some swam the moat, others battered open the gates, while hundreds, by the help of scaling-ladders, climbed the walls, and swarmed down into the city. Along every street and lane poured a torrent of furious men, robbing, murdering, violating, without making the least distinction between friend and foe, Papist and Protestant. No age, nor sex, nor rank, nor profession had exemption from the sword, or the worse brutality of the soldiery. Blood flowed in torrents. Churches, monasteries, private dwellings, and public establishments were broken into and pillaged to the last penny. Altars were pulled down, the chalices and other rich vessels used in the mass were carried off, the very Host itself was profaned and trodden under foot by men who professed to regard it as the body and soul of Christ, and who had come from a distant land to avenge the insults which had been offered to it by others. Their rage far exceeded that of the iconoclasts, who had vented their fury on idols alone. Three days this dreadful work went on,[3] and then the soldiers of Alva collected their booty, and carrying it on board ship, sent it off to Antwerp, to be converted into money.[4] The inhabitants of the other cities which had submitted to William were permitted to redeem their lives by the payment of an enormous ransom.

Not so, however, the cities of Zutphen and Naarden. Zutphen was subjected to the same shocking barbarities which had been inflicted on Mechlin. Here the spoil to be gathered was less, for the town was not so rich as Mechlin, but the licence given to the sword was on that account

[2]Strada, 7. 76.

[3]Strada, 7. 77.

[4]Bor, 6. 409-415.

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all the greater; and when the soldiers grew weary with slaughtering, they threw their victims into the Issel, and indulged themselves in the horrid pastime of pelting the drowning men and women with missiles as they rose to the surface before finally sinking. We record the fate of Naarden last, because its doom was the most appalling of the three; for it is a series of horrors which we are thus briefly tracing to its climax. Naarden opened its gates to Don Frederic de Toledo, the son of Alva, on a promise of immunity from sack for a slight equivalent. The promise of Toledo was violated with a shocking perfidy. First the male population were put to the sword; then their wives and daughters were brutally outraged, and afterwards nearly all were massacred. The dwellings, the convents, and the hospitals were ransacked for treasure and spoil; and when the fiends had satiated to the utmost their bloodthirstiness, lust, and greed, they drove out the few miserable inhabitants that remained into the open fields, and setting fire to Naarden they burned it to the ground. A blackened spot covered with charred ruins, ashes, and the remains of human carcases marked where the city had stood. It was amid these clouds and tempests that the year 1572 closed. What a contrast to the brilliant promise with which it had opened, when city after city was hanging out the banner of William upon its walls, and men were congratulating themselves float the black night of Spanish usurpation and oppression had come to an end, and the fair morning of independence had dawned! Smitten down by the mailed hand of Alva, the cities of Brabant and Flanders are again seen creeping back into their chains.

Occupied in the siege of Mons and the reduction of the revolted towns in the Southern Netherlands, the Spanish army were compelled meanwhile to leave the Northern Provinces in peace. The leisure thus afforded them the Hollanders wisely turned to account by increasing the number of their ships, repairing the fortifications of their towns, and enrolling soldiers. They saw the terrible legions of Alva coming nearer every day, their path marked in ruins and blood; but they were not without hope that the preparations they had made, joined to the natural defences of their country, here intersected by rivers, there by arms of the sea, would enable them to make a more successful resistance than Brabant and Flanders had done. When the tyrant should ask them to bow again their necks to the yoke, they trusted to be able to say, “No,” without undergoing the terrible alternative with which Alva chastised refusal in the case of the Brabant cities-namely, halters for themselves, and horrible outrage for their families. Meanwhile they waited anxiously for the coming of William. He would breathe courage into their hearts, ready to faint at the dreaded prowess of the Spaniards.

At length William arrived in Holland; but he came alone; of the 24,000 troops which he had led into the Netherlands at the opening of his second campaign, only seventy horsemen now remained; nevertheless, his arrival was hailed with joy, for the Hollanders felt that the wisdom, patriotism, and bravery of the prince would be to them instead of an army. William met the Estates at Haarlem, and deliberated with them on the course to be taken. It was the darkest hour of the Netherlands. The outlook all round was not only discouraging, but appalling. The wealthy Flanders and Brabant were again under the heel of the haughty and cruel Spaniard. Of their populous cities, blackened ruins marked the site of some; those that existed were sitting in sullen silence with the chain around their neck; the battle for liberty of conscience had been forced back into the Northern Holland; here the last stand must be made; the result must be victory or utter extermination. The foe with whom the Hollanders were to do battle was no ordinary one; he was exasperated to the utmost degree; he neither respected an oath nor spared an enemy; if they should resist, they had in Naarden an awful monument before their eyes of what their own fate would be if their resistance were unsuccessful; and yet the alternative! Submission to the Spanish yoke! Rather ten deaths than endure a slavery so vile. The resolution of the Convention was prompt and decided: they would worship according to their consciences or die.

William now began to prepare for the great struggle. His sagacity taught him that Holland needed other defences besides ships and walls and soldiers, if it was to bear the immense strain to which it was about to be subjected. First of all, he settled the boundaries of his own power, by voluntarily agreeing to do nothing but with the consent of the States. By limiting he strengthened his influence. Next he consolidated the union of the nation by admitting twelve new cities into the Convention, and giving them the same voice in public affairs as the older towns. He next set about re-organising the civil service of the country, which had fallen into great disorder during these unsettled times. Many of the principal inhabitants had fled; numbers of the judges and officers of the revenue had abandoned their posts, to the great detriment of justice and the loss of the finances. William [90] filled up these vacancies with Protestants, deeming them the only thoroughly trustworthy persons in a contest that was to determine which of the two faiths was to be the established religion of Holland.

Before opening the campaign, the Prince of Orange took a step toward the settlement of the religious question. It was resolved that both Papists and Protestants should enjoy the public exercise of their worship, and that no one should be molested on account of his religion, provided he lived quietly, and kept no correspondence with the Spaniards.[5] In this William obeyed the wishes of the great body of the people of Holland, who had now espoused the Reformed faith, and at the same time he laid a basis for unity of action by purging out, so far as he could, the anti-national element from the public service, and took reasonable precautions against surprise and treachery when Holland should be waging its great battle for existence.

At the moment that the Hollanders were not unnaturally oppressed with grave thoughts touching the issue of the struggle for which they were girding themselves, uncertain whether their country was to become the burial-place of their liberties and their persons, or the theater of a yet higher civilisation, an incident occurred that helped to enliven their spirits, and confirm them in their resolution to resist. The one city in Holland that remained on the side of Alva was Amsterdam, and thither Toledo, after the butchery at Naarden, marched with his army. In the shallow sea around Amsterdam, locked up in the ice, lay part of the Dutch fleet. The Spanish general sent a body of troops over the frozen waters to attack the ships. Their advance was perceived, and the Dutch soldiers, fastening on their skates, and grasping their muskets, descended the ships’ sides to give battle to the Spaniards. Sweeping with the rapidity of a cloud towards the enemy, they poured a deadly volley into his ranks, and then wheeling round, they retreated with the same celerity out of reach of his fire. In this fashion they kept advancing and retreating, each time doing murderous execution upon the Spanish lines, while their own ranks remained unbroken. Confounded by this novel method of battle, the Spaniards were compelled to quit the field, leaving some hundreds of their dead upon the ice. Next day a thaw set in, which lasted just long enough to permit the Dutch fleet to escape, while the returning frost made pursuit impossible. The occurrence was construed by the Dutch as a favorable omen.

Established at Amsterdam, the Spanish sword had cut Holland in two, and from this central point it was resolved to carry that sword over North and South Holland, making its cities, should they resist, so many Naardens, and its inhabitants slaves of Alva or corpses. It was agreed to begin with Haarlem, which was some twelve English miles to the south-west of Amsterdam. Toledo essayed first of all to win over the citizens by mediation, thinking that the fate of Naarden had inspired them with a salutary terror of his arms, and that they only waited to open their gates to him. The tragic end of Naarden had just the opposite effect on the citizens of Haarlem. It showed them that those who submitted and those who resisted met the same fearful destruction. Notwithstanding, two of the magistrates, moved by terror and cowardice, secretly opened negotiations with Toledo for the surrender of Haarlem; but no sooner did this come to the ears of Ripperda, a Friesland gentleman, to whom William had committed the government of the town, than he assembled the citizens and garrison in the market-place, and warned them against entertaining the idea of submission. What have those gained, he asked, who have trusted the promise of the Spaniards? Have not these men shown that they are as devoid of faith as they are of humanity? Their assurances are only a stratagem for snatching the arms from your hands, and then they will load you with chains or butcher you like sheep. From the blood-sprinkled graves of Mechlin, of Zutphen, and of Naarden the voices of our brethren call on you to resist. Let us remember our oath to the Prince of Orange, whom we have acknowledged the only lawful governor of the Province; let us think of the righteousness of our cause, and resolve, rather than live the slaves of the Spaniards, to die with arms in our hands, fighting for our religion and our laws. This appeal was responded to by the stout-hearted citizens with enthusiastic shouts. As one man they proclaimed their resolution to resist the Spaniard to the death.

[5]Brandt, vol. 1., bk. 10., p. 298.

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Chapter 18: The Siege of Haarlem

Haarlem—Its Situation—Its Defences—Army of Amazons—Haze on the Lake—Defeat of a Provisioning Party—Commencement of the Cannonade—A Breach—Assault—Repulse of the Foe—Haarlem Reinforced by William—Reciprocal Barbarities—The Siege Renewed—Mining and Countermining-Battles below the Earth—New Breach—Second Repulse of the Besiegers—Toledo contemplates Raising the Siege—Alva Forbids him to do so—The City more Closely Blockaded—Famine—Dreadful Misery in the City—Final Effort of William for its Deliverance—It Fails—Citizens offer to Capitulate—Toledo’s Terms of Surrender—Accepted—The Surrender—Dismal Appearance of the City—Toledo’s Treachery—Executions and Massacres—Moral Victory to the Protestant Cause—William’s Inspiriting Address to the States

Picture: View of the Hotel de Ville: Middelburg.

Both sides began to prepare for the inevitable struggle. The Prince of Orange established himself at Leyden, the town nearest to Haarlem on the south, and only some ten English miles distant from it. He hoped from this point to be able to direct the defense, and forward provisions and reinforcements as the, bravo little town might need them. Alva and his son Toledo, on the other hand, when they learned that Haarlem, instead of opening its gates, had resolved to resist, were filled with rage, and immediately gave orders for the march of their troops on that presumptuous little city which had dared to throw down the gage of battle to the whole power of Spain.

Advancing along the causeway which traverses the narrow isthmus that separates the waters of the Haarlem Lake from the Zuyder Zee, the Spanish army, on the 11th of December, 1572, sat down before Haarlem. Regiment continued to arrive after regiment till the beleaguering army was swelled to 30,000,[1] and the city was now completely invested. This force was composed of Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons. The population of Haarlem did not exceed 30,000; that is, it was only equal in number to that of the host now encamped outside its walls. Its ramparts were far from strong; its garrison, even when at the highest, was not over 4,000 men[2] and it was clear that the defense of the town must lie mainly with the citizens, whom patriotism had converted into heroes. Nor did the war-spirit burn less ardently in the breasts of the wives and daughters of Haarlem than in those of their fathers and husbands. Three hundred women, all of them of unblemished character, and some of high birth, enrolled themselves in defense of the city, and donning armor, mounted the walls, or sallying from the gates, mingled with their husbands and brothers in the fierce conflicts waged with the enemy under the ramparts. This army of amazons was led by Kenau Hasselaer, a widow of forty-seven years of age, and a member of one of the first families of Haarlem.[3] “Under her command,” says Strada, “her females were emboldened to do soldiers’ duty at the bulwarks, and to sally out among the firelocks, to the no less encouragement of their own men than admiration of the enemy.”

Toledo’s preparations for the siege were favored by a thick mist which hung above the Lake of Haarlem, and concealed his operations. But if the haze favored the Spanish general, it befriended still more the besieged, inasmuch as it allowed provisions and reinforcements to be brought into the city before it was finally invested. Moving on skates, hundreds of soldiers and peasants sped rapidly past the Spanish lines unobserved in the darkness. One body of troops, however, which had been sent by William from Leyden, in the hope of being able to enter the town before its blockade, was attacked and routed, and the cannon and provisions destined for the besieged were made the booty of the Spaniards. About a thousand were slain, and numbers made prisoners and carried off to the gibbets which already bristled all round the walls, and from this time were never empty, relay after relay of unhappy captives being led to execution upon them.

Don Frederic de Toledo had fixed his head-quarters at the Gate of the Cross. This was the strongest part of the fortifications, the gate being defended by a ravelin, but Toledo held the besieged in so great contempt that he deemed it a matter of not the least consequence where he should begin his assault, whether at the weakest or at the strongest point. Haarlem, he believed, following the example of the Flemish cities, would capitulate at almost the

[1]Motley, vol. 2., p. 58.

[2]Strada, 7. 74.

[3]Strada, 7. 74.

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first sound of his cannon. He allotted one week for the capture, and another for the massacring and ravishing. This would be ample time to finish at Haarlem; then, passing on in the same fashion from city to city, he would lay waste each in its turn, till nothing but ruins should remain in Holland. With this programme of triumph for himself, and of overthrow for the Dutch, he set vigorously to work. His cannon now began to thunder against the gate and ravelin. In three days a breach was made in the walls, and the soldiers were ordered to cross the ditch and deliver the assault. Greedy of plunder, they rushed eagerly into the breach, but the Spaniards met a resistance which they little anticipated. The alarm-bell in Haarlem was rung, and men, women, and children swarmed to the wall to repel the foe. They opened their cannon upon the assailants, the musketry poured in its fire, but still more deadly was the shower of miscellaneous yet most destructive missiles rained from the ramparts on the hostile masses below. Blocks of stone, boiling pitch, blazing iron hoops, which clung to the necks of those on whom they fell, live coals, and other projectiles equally dreadful, which even Spanish ferocity could not withstand, were hurled against the invaders. After contending some time with a tempest of this sort, the attacking party had to retire, leaving 300 dead, and many officers killed or wounded.

This repulse undeceived Toledo. He saw that behind these feeble walls was a stout spirit, and that to make himself master of Haarlem would not be the easy achievement he had fancied it would prove. He now began to make his preparations on a scale more commensurate with the difficulty of the enterprise; but a whole month passed away before he was ready to renew the assault. Meanwhile, the Prince of Orange exerted himself, not unsuccessfully, to reinforce the city. The continuance of the frost kept the lake congealed, and he was able to introduce into Haarlem, over the ice, some 170 sledges, laden with munitions and provisions, besides 400, veteran soldiers. A still larger body of 2,000 men sent by the prince were attacked and routed, having lost their way in the thick mist which, in these winter days, hung almost perpetually around the city, and covered the camp of the besiegers. Koning, the second in command of this expedition, being made prisoner, the Spaniards cut off his head and threw it over the walls into the city, with an inscription which bore that “this Koning or King was on his road, with two thousand auxiliaries, to raise the siege.”

The rejoinder of the Haarlemers was in a vein of equal barbarity. They decapitated twelve of their prisoners, and, putting their heads into a cask, they rolled it down into the Spanish trenches, with this label affixed:-“The tax of the tenth penny, with the interest due thereon for delay of payment.” The Spaniards retaliated by hanging up a group of Dutch prisoners by the feet in view of their countrymen on the walls; and the besieged cruelly responded by gibbeting a number of Spanish prisoners in sight of the camp. These horrible reciprocities, begun by Alva, were continued all the while that he and his son remained in the Netherlands.

By the end of January, 1573, Toledo was ready to resume the operations of the siege. He dug trenches to protect his men from the fire of the ramparts, a precaution which he had neglected at the beginning, owing to the contempt in which he held the foe. Three thousand sappers had been sent him from the mines of Liege. Thus reinforced he resumed the cannonade. But the vigilance and heroism of the citizens of Haarlem long rendered his efforts abortive. He found it hard by numbers, however great, and skill, however perfect, to batter down walls which a patriotism so lofty defended. The besieged would sally forth at unexpected moments upon the Spanish camp, slay hundreds of the foe, set fire to his tents, seize his cannon and provisions, and return in triumph into the city. When Toledo’s artillery had made an opening in the walls, and the Spaniards crowded into the breach, instead of the instant massacre and plunder which their imaginations had pictured, and which they panted to begin, they would find themselves in presence of an inner battery that the citizens had run up, and that awaited the coming of the Spaniards to rain its murderous fire upon them. The sappers and miners would push their underground trenches below the ramparts, but when just about to emerge upon the streets of the city, as they thought, they would find their progress suddenly stopped by a counter-mine, which brought them face to face in the narrow tunnel with the citizens, and they had to wage a hand-to-hand battle with them. These underground combats were of frequent occurrence. At other times the Haarlemers would dig deeper than the Spaniards, and, undermining them, would fill the excavation with gunpowder and set fire to it. The ground would suddenly open, and vomit forth vast masses of earth, stones, mining implements, mixed horribly with the dissevered limbs of human beings.

After some days’ cannonading, Toledo succeeded in battering down the wall that extended between the Gate of the Cross and that of St. John, and now he resolved to storm the breach with all his forces. Hoping to take the citizens by surprise, he assembled [94] his troops over-night, and assigning to each his post, and particularly instructing all, he ordered them to advance. Before the sentinels on the walls were aware, several of the storming party had gained the summit of the breach, but here their progress was arrested. The bells of Haarlem rang out the alarm, and the citizens, roused from sleep, hurried en masse to the ramparts, where a fierce struggle began with the Spaniards. Stones, clubs, fire-brands, every sort of weapon was employed to repel the foe, and the contest was still going on when the day broke. After morning mass in the Spanish camp, Toledo ordered the whole of his army to advance to the walls. By the sheer force of numbers the ravelin which defended the Gate of the Cross was carried—a conquest that was to cost the enemy dear. The besiegers pressed tumultuously into the fortress, expecting to find a clear path into the city; but a most mortifying check awaited them. The inhabitants, labouring incessantly, had reared a half-moon battery behind the breached portion of the wall,[4] and instead of the various spoil of the city, for which the Spaniards were so greedily athirst, they beheld the cannon of the new erection frowning defiance upon them. The defenders opened fire upon the mass of their assailants pent up beneath, but a yet greater disaster hung over the enemy. The ravelin had been previously undermined, the citizens foreseeing its ultimate capture, and now when they saw it crowded with the besiegers they knew that the moment was come for firing it. They lighted the match, and in a few moments came the peal of the explosion, and the huge mass, with the hundreds of soldiers and officers whom it enclosed, was seen to soar into the air, and then descend in a mingled shower of stones and mangled and mutilated bodies. The Spaniards stood aghast at the occurrence. The trumpet sounded a retreat; and the patriots issuing forth, before the consternation had subsided, chased the besiegers to their encampments.[5]

Toledo saw the siege was making no progress. As fast as he battered down the old walls the citizens erected new defences; their constant sallies were taxing the vigilance and thinning the numbers of his troops; more of his men were perishing by cold and sickness than by battle; his supplies were often intercepted, and scarcity was beginning to be felt in his camp; in these circumstances he began to entertain the idea of raising the siege. Not a few of his officers concurred with him, deeming the possession of Haarlem not worth the labor and lives which it was costing. Others, however, were opposed to this course, and Toledo referred the matter to his father, the duke.

The stern Alva, not a little scandalised that his son should for a moment entertain such a thought, wrote commanding him to prosecute the siege, if he would not show himself unworthy of the stock from which he was sprung. He advised him, instead of storming, to blockade the city; but in whatever mode, he must prosecute the siege till Haarlem had fallen. If he was unwilling to go on, Alva said he would come himself, sick though he was; or if his illness should make this impossible, he would bring the duchess from Spain, and place her in command of the army. Stung by this sarcasm, Toledo, regardless of all difficulties, resumed the operations of the siege.

In the middle of February the frost went off, and the ice dissolving, the Lake of Haarlem became navigable. In anticipation of this occurrence, the Prince of Orange had constructed a number of vessels, and lading them with provisions, dispatched them from Leyden. Sailing along the lake, with a favorable wind, they entered Haarlem in safety. This was done oftener than once, and the spectre of famine was thus kept at a distance. The besieged were in good spirits; so long as they held the lake they would have bread to eat, and so long as bread did not fail them they would defend their city. Meanwhile they gave the besiegers no rest. The sallies from the town, sometimes from one quarter, sometimes from another, were of almost daily occurrence. On the 25th of March, 1,000 of the soldier-citizens threw themselves upon the outposts of Toledo’s army, drove them in, burned 300 tents, and captured cannon, standards, and many waggon-loads of provisions, and returned with them to the city. The exploit was performed in the face of 30,000 men. This attacking party of 1,000 had slain each his man nearly, having left 800 dead in the Spanish camp, while only four of their own number had fallen.[6] The citizens were ever eager to provoke the Spaniards to battle; and with this view they erected altars upon the walls in sight of the camp, and tricked them out after the Romish fashion; they set up images, and walking in procession dressed in canonicals, they derided the Popish rites, in the hope of stinging the champions of that faith into fighting. They feared the approach of famine more than they did the Spanish sword. Alva was amazed, and evidently not a little mortified, to see such valor in rebels and heretics, and was unable to withhold the expression of his astonishment. “Never was a place defended

[4]Hooft, 7. 293.

[5]Ibid.

[6]Thaunus, tom. 3., p. 218.

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with such skill and bravery as Haarlem,” said he, writing to Philip; “it was a war such as never was seen or heard of in any land on earth.”[7]

But now the tide began to turn against the heroic champions of Protestant liberty. Haarlem was more closely invested than ever, and a more terrible enemy than the Spaniards began to make its appearance, gaunt famine namely. Count Bossu, the lieutenant of Toledo, had mustered a fleet of armed vessels at Amsterdam, and entering the Lake of Haarlem, fought a series of naval battles with the ships of the Prince of Orange for the possession of that inland sea. Being a vital point, it was fiercely contested on both sides, and after much bloodshed, victory declared for the Spaniards. This stopped nearly all supplies to the city by water. On the land side Haarlem was as completely blockaded, for Alva had sent forward additional reinforcements; and although William was most assiduous in dispatching relief for the besieged, the city was so strictly watched by the enemy that neither men nor provisions could now enter it. In the end of May bread failed. The citizens sent to make William aware of their desperate straits. The prince employed a carrier pigeon as the bearer of his answer.[8] He bade them endure a little longer, and to encourage them to hold out he told them that he was assembling a force, and hoped soon to be able to throw provisions into their city. Meanwhile the scarcity became greater every day, and by the beginning of June the famine had risen to a most dreadful height. Ordinary food was no longer to be had, and the wretched inhabitants were reduced to the necessity of subsisting on the most loathsome and abominable substitutes. They devoured horses, dogs, cats, mice, and similar vermin. When these failed, they boiled the hides of animals and ate them; and when these too were exhausted, they searched the graveyards for nettles and rank grass. Groups of men, women, and children, smitten down by the famine, were seen dead in the streets. But though their numbers diminished, their courage did not abate. They still showed themselves on the walls, “the few performed the duties of many;”[9] and if a Spanish helmet ventured to appear above the earth-works, a bullet from the ramparts, shot with deadly aim, tumbled its owner into the trenches.

They again made the prince aware of the misery to which they were reduced, adding that unless succours were sent within a very short time they would be compelled to surrender. William turned his eyes to the Protestant Queen of England, and the Lutheran princes of Germany, and implored them to intervene in behalf of the heroic little city. But Elizabeth feared to break with Philip; and the tide of Jesuit reaction in Germany was at that moment too powerful to permit of its Protestants undertaking any enterprise beyond their own borders; and so the sorely beleaguered city was left wholly in the hands of the prince. He did all which it was possible for one in his circumstances to do for its deliverance. He collected an army of 5,000, chiefly burghers of good condition in the cities of Holland, and sent them on to Haarlem, with 400 waggon-loads of provisions, having first given notice to the citizens by means of carrier pigeons of their approach. This expedition William wished to conduct in person, but the States, deeming his life of more value to Holland than many cities, would not suffer him to risk it, and the enterprise was committed to the charge of Count Battenburg. The expedition set out on the evening of the 8th of July, but the pigeons that carried the letters of Orange having been shot, the plan of relief became known to the Spaniards, and their whole army was put under arms to await the coming of Battenburg. He thought to have passed their slumbering camp at midnight, but suddenly the whole host surrounded him; his fresh troops were unable to withstand the onset of those veterans; 2,000 were slain, including their leader; the rest were dispersed, and the convoy of provisions fell into the hands of the victors. William could do no more-the last hope of Haarlem was gone.[10] The patriots now offered to Surrender on condition that the town were exempt from pillage, and the garrison permitted to march out. Toledo replied that the surrender must be unconditional. The men of Haarlem understood this to mean that Toledo had devoted them to destruction. They had before them death by starvation or death by the Spaniards. The latter they regarded as by much the more dreadful alternative. The fighting men, in their despair, resolved on cutting their way, sword in hand, through the Spanish camp, in the hope that the enemy would put a curb on his ferocity

[7]Correspondance de Philippe II., 2. 1230.

[8]“They revived,” says Strada,:.” the ancient invention of carrier pigeons. For a while before they were blocked up they sent to the prince’s fleet, and to the nearest towns of their own party, some of these pigeons..By these winged posts the Prince of Orange encouraged the townsmen to hold out for the last three months; till one of them, tired with flying, lighted upon a tent, and being shot by a soldier, ignorant of the stratagem, the mystery of the letters was discovered.” (Bk, 7., p. 74,)

[9]Strada, bk. 7., p. 74.

[10]Bor, 6. 440. Hooft, 8. 312. Motley, vol. 2., p. 68. Watson, vol. 2., pp. 82, 83.

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when he found only women and children, and these emaciated and woe-struck, in the city. But the latter, terror-stricken at the thought of being abandoned, threw themselves down before their husbands and brothers, and clinging to their knees, piteously implored them not to leave them, and so melted them that they could not carry out their purpose. They next resolved to form themselves into a hollow square, and placing their wives and children in the centre, march out and conquer or die. Toledo learned the desperate attempts which the men of Haarlem were revolving; and knowing that there was nothing of which they were not capable, and that should it happen that only ruins were left him, the fruits and honors of his dearly-won victory would escape him, he straightway sent a trumpeter to say that on payment of 200,000 guilders the city would be spared and all in it pardoned, with the exception of fifty-seven persons whom he named.[11]

The exceptions were important, for those who had rendered the greatest service in the siege were precisely those who were most obnoxious to Toledo. It was with agony of mind that the citizens discussed the proposal, which would not have been accepted had not the German portion of the garrison insisted on surrender. A deputation was sent to Toledo on the 12th of July, to announce the submission of the city on the proposed terms. At the very moment that Toledo gave the solemn promise which led to this surrender, he had in his possession a letter from the Duke of Alva, commanding him to put the garrison to the sword, with the exception of the Germans, and to hang all the leading citizens of Haarlem.[12]

The first order issued to the Haarlemers after the surrender was to deposit their arms in the town-house; the second was to shut themselves up, the men in the Monastery of Zyl, and the women in the cathedral. Toledo now entered the city. Implacable, indeed, must that revenge have been which the sights of woe that now met his gaze could not extinguish. After an exposure for seven months to the Spanish cannon, the city was little better than a heap of burning ruins. The streets were blocked up with piles of rubbish, mingled with the skeletons of animals from which the flesh had been torn, and the unburied bodies of those who had fallen in the defense, or died by the famine. But of all the memorials of the siege the most affecting were the survivors. Their protruding bones, parchment skin, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes made them seem corpses that still retained the power of moving about. If they had been guilty of a crime in defying the soldiers of Spain, surely they had sufficiently atoned for their presumption.

On the third day after the surrender the Duke of Alva visited Haarlem, rode round it, and then took his departure, leaving it to his son to carry out the sequel. The treachery and barbarity of Naarden were repeated here. We shall not shock our readers with details. The fifty-seven persons excepted from the amnesty were, of course, executed; but the murders were far from ending with these. The garrison, with the exception of the Germans, were massacred; 900 citizens were hanged as if they had been the vilest malefactors; the sick in the hospitals were carried out into the courtyard and dispatched; the eloquent Ripperda, whose patriotic address, already recorded, had so largely contributed to excite the men of Haarlem to resist, was beheaded in company of several noted citizens. Several hundreds of French, English, and Scotch soldiers were butchered. Five executioners, each with a staff of assistants, were kept in constant employment several days. At last, tired of labours and sick with horrors, they took 300 victims that still remained, tied them back to back in couples, and threw them into the lake.[13] The number put to death in cold blood is estimated at about 2,300, in addition to the many thousands that perished in the siege.

So awful was the tragedy of Haarlem! It wore outwardly the guise of victory for the Spaniards and of defeat to the Hollanders; and yet, when closely examined, it is seen to be just the reverse. It had cost Alva 12,000 men; it had emptied his treasury; and, what was worse, it had broken the spell of invincibility, which lent such power to the Spanish arms. Europe had seen a little town defy the power of Philip for seven long months, and surrender at last only from pressure of famine. There was much here to encourage the other cities of Holland to stand for their liberties, and the renewed exhibition of perfidy and cruelty on the part of Toledo deepened their resolution to do so. It was clear that Spain could not accept of many such victories without eventually overthrowing her own power, and at the same time investing the cause of the adversary she was striving to crush with a moral prestige that would in the issue conduct it to triumph.

Such was the view taken by the Prince of Orange on a calm survey of all the circumstances attending

[11]Hooft, 8. 313.

[12]Correspondance de Philippe II., 2. 1253

[13]Brandt, vol. 1., p.303. Bor, 6. 441. Hooft, 8. 315, 316. Motley, vol. 2, p. 70.

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the fall of Haarlem. He saw nothing in it that should cause him to think for one moment of abandoning the prosecution of his great design, or that should shake his confidence in the ultimate triumph of his cause; and without abating a jot of courage he wrote to his deputy, Sonoy, in North Holland, to inspirit the States to resist the power of Spain to the death. “Though God,” he said, “had suffered Haarlem to fall, ought men therefore to forsake his Word? Was not their cause a righteous one? was not the Divine arm still able to uphold both it and them? Was the destruction [98] of one city the ruin of the Church? The calamities and woes of Haarlem well deserved their commiseration, but the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church, and having now had a full disclosure made to them of the character and intentions of their enemy, and that in the war he was waging for the utter extirpation of truth, he shrunk from no perfidy and cruelty, and trampled on all laws, Divine and human, they ought the more courageously to resist him, convinced that the great Ruler would in the end appear for the vindication of the cause of righteousness, and the overthrow of wickedness. If Haarlem had fallen, other and stronger towns still stood, and they had been able to put themselves into a better posture of defense from the long detention of the Spaniards under the walls of Haarlem, which had been subdued at last, not by the power of the enemy, but by the force of famine.” The prince wound up his address with a reply to a question the States had put to him touching his foreign alliances, and whether he had secured the friendship of any powerful potentate abroad, on whose aid they could rely in the war. The answer of the prince reveals the depth of his piety, and the strength of his faith. “He had made a strict alliance,” he informed the States, “with the Prince of princes for the defense of the good Christians and others of this oppressed country, who never forsook those who trusted in him, and would assuredly, at the last, confound both his and their enemies. He was therefore resolved never to forsake his dear country, but by venturing both life and fortune, to make use of those means which the Lord of Hosts had supplied him with.”[14]

[14]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 304.

Chapter 19: Siege of Alkmaar, and Recall of Alva

Alkmaar—Its Situation—Its Siege—Sonoy’s Dismay—Courageous Letter of the Prince—Savage Threats of Alva—Alkmaar Cannonaded—Breach—Stormed—Fury of the Attack—Heroism of the Repulse—What Ensign Solis saw within the Walls—The Spaniards Refuse to Storm the Town a Second Time—The Dutch Threaten to Cut the Dykes, and Drown the Spanish Camp—The Siege Raised—Amsterdam—Battle of Dutch and Spanish Fleets before it—Defeat of the Spaniards—Admiral Bossu taken Prisoner—Alva Recalled—His Manner of Leaving—Number Executed during his Government—Medina Coeli appointed Governor—He Resigns -Requesens appointed—Assumes the Guise of Moderation—Plain Warning of William—Question of Toleration of Roman Worship—Reasonings—The States at Leyden Forbid its Public Celebration—Opinions of William of Orange

The Duke of Alva soon found that if he had taken Haarlem he had crippled himself. The siege had emptied his military chest; he was greatly in arrears with his troops, and now his soldiers broke out into mutiny, and absolutely refused to march to Alkmaar and commence its siege till the sums owing them were paid. Six weeks passed away before the army was reduced to obedience, and the duke enabled to resume his programme of the war. His own prestige as a disciplinarian had also suffered immensely.

Alkmaar was situated at the extremity of the peninsula, amid the lagunes of North Holland. It was late in the season when the Spanish army, 16,000 strong, sat down before this little town, with its garrison of 800 soldiers, and its 1,300 citizens capable of bearing arms. Had it been invested earlier in the summer it must have fallen, for it was then comparatively defenceless, and its population divided between the prince and the duke; but while Alva was quelling the mutiny of his troops, Alkmaar was strengthening its defences, and William was furnishing it with provisions and garrisoning it with soldiers. The commander of the besieging army was still Toledo.

When Governor Sonoy saw the storm rolling up from the south, and when he thought of his own feeble resources for meeting it, he became somewhat despondent, and wrote to the prince expressing a hope that he had been able to ally himself with some powerful potentate, who would supply him with money and troops to resist the terrible Spaniard. William replied to his deputy, gently chiding him for his want of faith. He had indeed contracted alliance, he said, with a mighty King, who would provide armies to fight his own battles, and he bade Sonoy not grow faint-hearted, as if the arm of that King had grown weak. At the very moment that William was striving to inspirit himself and his followers, by lifting his eyes to a [99] mightier throne than any on earth, Alva was taking the most effectual means to raise up invincible defenders of Holland’s Protestantism, and so realize the expectations of the prince, and justify his confidence in that higher Power on whom he mainly leaned. The duke took care to leave the people of Alkmaar in no doubt as to the fate in reserve for them should their city be taken. He had dealt gently with Haarlem; he had hanged only 900 of its citizens; but he would wreak a full measure of vengeance on Alkmaar. “If I take Alkmaar,” he wrote to Philip, “I am resolved not to leave a single creature alive; the knife shall be put to every throat. Since the example of Haarlem has proved of no use, perhaps an example of cruelty will bring the other cities to their senses.”[1] Alva thought that he was rendering certain the submission of the men over whose heads he hung that terrible threat: he was only preparing discomfiture for himself by kindling in their breasts the flame of an unconquerable courage.

Toledo planted a battery on the two opposite sides of the town, in the hope of dividing the garrison. After a cannonade of twelve hours he had breached the walls. He now ordered his troops to storm. They advanced. in overwhelming numbers, confident of victory, and rending the air with their shouts as if they had already won it. They dashed across the moat, they swarmed up the breach, but only to be grappled with by the courageous burghers, and flung headlong into the ditch below. Thrice were the murderous hordes of Alva repulsed, thrice did they return to the assault. The rage of the assailants was inflamed with each new check, but Spanish fury, even though sustained by Spanish discipline, battled in vain against Dutch intrepidity and patriotism. The round-shot of the cannon ploughed long vacant lines in the beleaguering masses; the musketry poured in its deadly volleys; a terrible rain of boiling oil, pitch, and water, mingled with tarred burning hoops, unslaked lime, and great stones, descended from the fortifications; and such of the besiegers as were able to force their way up through that dreadful tempest to the top of the wall, found that they had scaled the ramparts only to fall by the daggers of their-defenders. The whole population of the town bore its part in the defense. Not only the matrons and virgins of Alkmaar, but the very children, were constantly passing between the arsenal and the walls, carrying ammunition and missiles of all sorts to their husbands, brothers, and fathers, careless of the shot that was falling thick around them. The apprehension of those far more terrible calamities that were sure to follow the entrance of the Spaniards, made them forgetful of every other danger. It is told of Ensign Solis, that having mounted the breach he had a moment’s leisure to survey the state of matters within the city, before he was seized and flung from the fortifications. Escaping with his life, he was able to tell what that momentary glance had revealed to him within the walls. He had beheld no masses of military, no men in armor; on the streets of the beleaguered town he saw none but plain men, the most of whom wore the garb of fishermen. Humiliating it was to the mailed chivalry of Spain to be checked, flung back, and routed by “plain men in the garb of fishermen.” The burghers of Alkmaar wore their breastplates under their fisherman’s coat-the consciousness, namely, of a righteous cause.

The assault had commenced at three of the afternoon; it was now seven o’clock of the evening, and the darkness was closing in. It was evident that Alkmaar would not be taken that day. A thousand Spaniards lay dead in the trenches,[2] while of the defenders only thirteen citizens and twenty-four of the garrison had fallen. The trumpet sounded a recall for the night.

Next morning the cannonade was renewed, and after some 700 shot had been discharged against the walls a breach was made. The soldiers were again ordered to storm. The army refused to obey. It was in vain that Toledo threatened this moment and cajoled the next, not a man in his camp would venture to approach those terrible ramparts which were defended, they gravely believed, by invisible powers. The men of Alkmaar, they had been told, worshipped the devil, and the demons of the pit fought upon the walls of their city, for how otherwise could plain burghers have inflicted so terrible a defeat upon the legions of Spain? Day passed after day, to the chagrin of Toledo, but still the Spaniards kept at a safe distance from those dreaded bulwarks on which invisible champions kept watch and ward. The rains set in, for the season was now late, and the camping-ground became a marsh. A yet more terrible disaster impended over them, provided they remained much longer before Alkmaar, and of this they had certain information. The Dutch had agreed to cut their dykes, and bury the country round Alkmaar, and the Spanish camp with it, at the bottom of the ocean. Already two sluices had been opened, and the waters of the North Sea, driven by a strong north-west wind, had rushed in and partially inundated the land; this

[1]Correspondance de Philippe II., 2. 1264.

[2]Hooft, 8. 324. Bor, 6. 453. Watson, 2. 95, 96.

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was only a beginning: the Hollanders had resolved to sacrifice, not only their crops, but a vast amount of property besides, and by piercing their two great dykes, to bring the sea over Toledo and his soldiers. The Spaniards had found it hard to contend against the burghers of Alkmaar, they would find it still harder to combat the waves of the North Sea. Accordingly Don Frederic de Toledo summoned a council of his officers, and after a short deliberation it was resolved to raise the siege, the council having first voted that it was no disgrace to the Spanish army to retire, seeing it was fleeing not before man, but before the ocean.

The humiliations of Alva did not stop here. To reverses on land were added disasters at sea. To punish Amsterdam for the aid it had given the Spaniards in the siege of Haarlem, North Holland fitted out a fleet, and blockaded the narrow entrance of the Y which leads into the Zuyder Zee. Shut out from the ocean, the trade of the great commercial city was at an end. Alva felt it incumbent on him to come to the help of a town which stood almost alone in Holland in its adherence to the Spanish cause. He constructed a fleet of still larger vessels, and gave the command of it to the experienced and enterprising Count Bossu. The two fleets came to a trial of strength, and the battle issued in the defeat of the Spaniards. Some of their ships were taken, others made their escape, and there remained only the admiral’s galley. It was named the Inquisition, and being the largest and most powerfully armed of all in the fleet, it offered a long and desperate resistance before striking its flag. It was not till of the 300 men on board 220 were killed, and all the rest but fifteen were wounded, that Bossu surrendered himself prisoner to the Dutch commander.[3] Well aware that it was of the last consequence for them to maintain their superiority at sea, the Dutch hailed this victory with no common joy, and ordered public thanks to be offered for it in all the churches of Holland.

With the turn in the tide of Spanish successes, the eyes of Philip began to open. Alva, it is true, in all his barbarities had but too faithfully carried out the wishes, if not the express orders, of his master, but that master now half suspected that this policy of the sword and the gallows was destined not to succeed. Nor was Philip alone in that opinion. There were statesmen at Madrid who were strongly counselling the monarch to make trial of more lenient measures with the Netherlanders. Alva felt that Philip was growing cold toward him, and alleging that his health had sustained injury from the moist climate, and the fatigues he had undergone, he asked leave to retire from the government of the Low Countries. The king immediately recalled him, and appointed the Duke de Medina Coeli, governor in his room. Alva’s manner of taking leave of Amsterdam, where he had been staying some time, was of a piece with all his previous career. He owed vast sums to the citizens, but had nothing wherewith to pay. The duke, however, had no difficulty in finding his way out of a position which might have been embarrassing to another man. He issued a proclamation, inviting his creditors to present their claims in person on a certain day. On the night previous to the day appointed, the duke attended by his retinue quitted Amsterdam, taking care that neither by tuck of drum nor salvo of cannon should he make the citizens aware that he was bidding them adieu. He traveled to Spain by way of Germany, and boasted to Count Louis van Koningstein, the uncle of the prince, at whose house he lodged a night, that during his government of five and a half years he had caused 18,000 heretics to be put to death by the hands of the executioner, besides a much greater number whom he had slain with the sword in the cities which he besieged, and in the battles he had fought.[4]

When the Duke de Medina Coeli arrived in the Netherlands, he stood aghast at the terrible wreck his predecessor had left behind him. The treasury was empty, the commerce of the country was destroyed, and though the inhabitants were impoverished, the taxes which were still attempted to be wrung from them were enormous. The cry of the land was going up to heaven, from Roman Catholic as well as Protestant. The cautious governor, seeing more difficulty than glory in the administration assigned to him, “slipped his neck out of the collar,” says Brandt, and returned to Spain. He was succeeded by Don Luis de Requesens and Cuniga, who had been governor at Milan. The Netherlanders knew little of their new ruler, but they hoped to find him less the demon, and more the man, than the monstrous compound of all iniquity who for five years had revelled in their blood and treasure. They breathed more freely for a little space. The first act of the new governor was to demolish the statue which Alva had erected of himself in the citadel of Antwerp; Requesens wished the Netherlanders to infer from this beginning that the policy of Alva had been disavowed

[3]Thaunus, lib. 4., sec. 7. Meteren, p. 25. Watson, vol. 2., p. 99.

[4]Hooft, lib. 8. 332. Brandt, vol. 1., p. 306.

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at head-quarters, and that from this time forward more lenient measures would be pursued. William was not to be imposed upon by this shallow device. Fearing that the lenity of Requesens might be even more fatal in the end than the ferocity of Alva, he issued an address to the States, in which he reminded them that the new deputy was still a Spaniard-a name of terrific import in Dutch ears-that he was the servant of a despot, and that not one Hollander could Requesens slay or keep alive but as Philip willed; that in the Cabinet of Madrid there were abysses below abysses; that though it might suit the monarch of Spain to wear for a moment the guise of moderation, they might depend upon it that his aims were fixed and unalterable, and that what he sought, and would pursue to the last soldier in his army, and the last hour of his earthly existence, was the destruction of Dutch liberty, and the extermination of the Protestant faith; that if they stopped where they were-in the middle of the conflict-all that they had already suffered and sacrificed, all the blood that had been shed, the tens of thousands of their brethren hanged on gibbets, burned at stakes, or slain in battle, their mothers, wives, and daughters subjected to horrible outrage and murder, all would have been endured in vain. If their desire of peace should reduce them into a compromise with the tyrant, it would assuredly happen that the abhorred yoke of Spain would yet be riveted upon their necks. The conflict, it was true, was one of the most awful that nation had ever been called to wage, but the part of wisdom was to fight it out to the end, assured that, come when it might, the end would be good; the righteous King would crown them with victory. These words, not less wise than heroic, revived the spirits of the Dutch.

At this stage of the struggle (1573) a question of the gravest kind came up for discussion-namely, the public toleration of the Roman worship. In the circumstances of the Netherlanders the delicacy of this question was equal to its difficulty. It was not proposed to proscribe belief in the Romish dogmas, or to punish any one for his faith; it was not proposed even to forbid the celebration in private of the Romish rites; all that was proposed was to forbid their public exercise. There were some who argued that their contest was, at bottom, a contest against the Roman faith; the first object was liberty, but they sought liberty that their consciences might be free in the matter of worship; their opponents were those who professed that faith, and who sought to reduce them under its yoke, and it seemed to them a virtual repudiation of the justness of their contest to tolerate what in fact was their real enemy, Romanism. This was to protect with the one hand the foe they were fighting against with the other. It was replied to this that the Romanist detested the tyranny of Alva not less than the Protestant, that he fought side by side on the ramparts with his Protestant fellow-subject, and that both had entered into a confederacy to oppose a tyrant, who was their common enemy, on condition that each should enjoy liberty of conscience.

Nevertheless, not long after this, the States of Holland, at an assembly at Leyden, resolved to prohibit the public exercise of the Romish religion. The Prince of Orange, when the matter was first broached, expressed a repugnance to the public discussion of it, and a strong desire that its decision should be postponed; and when at last the resolution of the States was arrived at, he intimated, if not his formal dissent, his non-concurrence in the judgment to which they had come. He tells us so in his Apology, published in 1580; but at the same time, in justification of the States, he adds, “that they who at the first judged it for the interest and advantage of the country, that one religion should be tolerated as well as the other, were afterwards convinced by the bold attempts, cunning devices, and treacheries of the enemies, who had insinuated themselves among the people, that the State was in danger of inevitable destruction unless the exercise of the Roman religion were suspended, since those who professed it (at least the priests) had sworn allegiance to the Pope, and laid greater stress on their oaths to him than to any others which they took to the civil magistrate.” The prince, in fact, had come even then to hold what is now the generally received maxim, that no one ought to suffer the smallest deprivation of his civil rights on account of his religious belief; but at the same time he felt, what all have felt who have anxiously studied to harmonize the rights of conscience with the safety of society, that there are elements in Romanism that make it impossible, without endangering the State, to apply this maxim in all its extent to the Papal religion. The maxim, so just in itself, is applicable to all religions, and to Romanism among the rest, so far as it is a religion; but William found that it is more than a religion, that it is a government besides; and while there may be a score of religions in a country, there can be but one government in it. The first duty of every government is to maintain its own unity and supremacy; and when it prosecutes any secondary end-and the toleration of conscience is to a government but a secondary end-when, we say, it prosecutes any secondary object, to the parting in [102] twain of the State, it contravenes its own primary end, and overthrows itself. The force with which this consideration pressed itself upon the mind of William of Orange, tolerant even to the measure of the present day, is seen from what he says a little farther on in his Apology. “It was not just,” he adds, “that such people should enjoy a privilege by the means of which they endeavored to bring the land under the power of the enemy; they sought to betray the lives and fortunes of the subjects by depriving them not of one, two, or three privileges, but of all the rights and liberties which for immemorial ages had been preserved and defended by their predecessors from generation to generation.”[5]

From this time forward the Reformed religion as taught in Geneva and the Palatinate was the one faith publicly professed in Holland, and its worship alone was practiced in the national churches. No Papist, however, was required to renounce his faith, and full liberty was given him to celebrate his worship in private. Mass, and all the attendant ceremonies, continued to be performed in private houses for a long while after. To all the Protestant bodies in Holland, and even to the Anabaptists, a full toleration was likewise accorded. Conscience may err, they said, but it ought to be left free. Should it invade the magistrate’s sphere, he has the right to repel it by the sword; if it goes astray within its own domain, it is equally foolish and criminal to compel it by force to return to the right road; its accountability is to God alone.

[5]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 307, 308.

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Chapter 20: Third Campaign of William, and Death of Count Louis of Nassau

Middelburg—Its Siege—Capture by the Sea Beggars—Destruction of One-half of the Spanish Fleet—Sea-board of Zealand and Holland in the hands of the Dutch—William’s Preparations for a Third Campaign—Funds—France gives Promises, but no Money—Louis’s Army—Battle of Mook—Defeat and Death of Louis—William’s Misfortunes—His Magnanimity and Devotion—His Greatness of the First Rank—He Retires into Holland—Mutiny in Avila’s Army—The Mutineers Spoil Antwerp—Final Destruction of Spanish Fleet—Opening of the Siege of Leyden—Situation of that Town—Importance of the Siege—Stratagem of Philip—Spirit of the Citizens

Picture: Action between the Spanish Fleet and the Ships of the Sea Beggars

The only town in the important island of Walcheren that now held for the King of Spain was Middelburg. It had endured a siege of a year and a half at the hands of the soldiers of the Prince of Orange. Being the key of the whole of Zealand, the Spaniards struggled as hard to retain it as the patriots did to gain possession of it. The garrison of Middelburg, reduced to the last extremity of famine, were now feeding on horses, dogs, rats, and other revolting substitutes for food, and the Spanish commander Mondrogon, a brave and resolute man, had sent word to Requesens, that unless the town was succored ill a very few days it must necessarily surrender. Its fall would be a great blow to the interests of Philip, and his Governor of the Low Countries exerted himself to the utmost to throw supplies into it, and enable it to hold out. He collected, a fleet of seventy-five sail at Bergen-op-Zoom, another of thirty ships at Antwerp, and storing them with provisions and military equipments, he ordered them to steer for Middelburg and relieve it. But unhappily for Requesens, and the success of his project, the Dutch were masters at sea. Their ships were manned by the bravest and most skillful sailors in the world; nor were they only adventurous seamen, they were firm patriots, and ready to shed the last drop of their blood for their country and their religious liberties.

They served not for wages, as did many in the land armies of the prince, which being to a large extent made up of mercenaries, were apt to mutiny when ordered into battle, if it chanced that their pay was in arrears; the soldiers of the fleet were enthusiastic in the cause for which they fought, and accounted that to beat the enemy was sufficient reward for their valor and blood.

The numerous fleet of Requesens, in two squadrons, was sailing down the Scheldt (27th January, 1574), on its way to raise the siege of Middelburg, when it sighted near Romerswael, drawn up in battle array, the ships of the Sea Beggars. The two fleets closed in conflict. After the first broadside, ship grappled with ship, and the Dutch leaping on board the Spanish vessels, a hand-to-hand combat with battle-axes, daggers, and pistols, was commenced on the deck of each galley. The admiral’s [104] ship ran foul of a sand-bank, and was then set fire to by the Zealanders; the other commander, Romers, hastened to his relief, but only to have the flames communicated to his own ship. Seeing his galley about to sink, Romers jumped overboard and saved his life by swimming ashore. The other ships of the Spanish fleet fared no better. The Zealanders burnt some, they sunk others, and the rest they seized. The victory was decisive. Twelve hundred Spaniards, including the Admiral De Glimes, perished in the flames of the burning vessels, or fell in the fierce struggles that raged on their decks. Requesens himself, from the dyke of Zacherlo, had witnessed, without being able to avert, the destruction of his fleet, which he had constructed at great expense, and on which he built such great hopes. When the second squadron learned that the ships of the first were at the bottom of the sea, or in the hands of the Dutch, its commander instantly put about and made haste to return to Antwerp. The surrender of Middelburg, which immediately followed, gave the Dutch the command of the whole sea-board of Zealand and Holland.

Success was lacking to the next expedition undertaken by William. The time was come, he thought, to rouse the Southern Netherlands, that had somewhat tamely let go their liberties, to make another attempt to recover them before the yoke of Spain should be irretrievably riveted upon their neck. Accordingly he instructed his brother, Count Louis, to raise a body of troops in Germany, where he was then residing, in order to make a third invasion of the Central Provinces of the Low Countries. There would have been no lack of recruits had Louis possessed the means of paying them; but his finances were at zero; his brother’s fortune, as well as his own, was already swallowed up, and before enlisting a single soldier, Louis had first of all to provide funds to defray the expense of the projected expedition. He trusted to receive some help from the German princes, he negotiated loans from his own relations and friends, but his main hopes were rested on France. The court of Charles IX. was then occupied with the matter of the election of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of Poland, and that monarch was desirous of appearing friendly to a cause which, but two years before, he had endeavored to crush in the St. Bartholomew Massacre; and so Count Louis received from France as many promises as would, could he have coined them into gold, have enabled him to equip and keep in the field ten armies; but of sterling money he had scarce so much as to defray the expense of a single battalion. He succeeded, however, in levying a force of some 4,000 horse and 7,000 foot[1] in the smaller German States, and with these he set out about the beginning of February, 1575, for Brabant. He crossed the Rhine, and advanced to the Meuse, opposite Maestricht, in the hope that his friends in that town would open its gates when they saw him approach. So great was their horror of the Spaniards that they feared to do so; and, deeming his little army too weak to besiege so strongly fortified a place, he continued his march down the right bank of the river ill he came to Roeremonde. Here, too, the Protestants were overawed. Not a single person durst show himself on his side. He continued his course along the river-banks, in the hope of being joined by the troops of his brother, according to the plan of the campaign; the Spanish army, under Avila, following him all the while on a parallel line on the opposite side of the river. On the 13th of April, Louis encamped at the village of Mock, on the confines of Cleves; and here the Spaniards, having suddenly crossed the Meuse and sat down right in his path, offered him battle. He knew that his newly-levied recruits would fight at great disadvantage with the veteran soldiers of Spain, yet the count had no alternative but to accept the combat offered him. The result was disastrous in the extreme. After a long and fierce and bloody contest the patriot army was completely routed. Present on that fatal field, along with Count Louis, were his brother Henry, and Duke Christopher, son of the Elector of the Palatinate; and repeatedly, during that terrible day, they intrepidly rallied their soldiers and turned the tide of battle, but only to be overpowered in the end. When they saw that the day was lost, and that some 6,000 of their followers lay dead around them, they mustered a little band of the survivors, and once more, with fierce and desperate courage, charged the enemy. They were last seen fighting in the melee. From that conflict they never emerged, nor were their dead bodies ever discovered; but no doubt can be entertained of their fate. Falling in the general butchery, their corpses would be undistinguishable in the ghastly heap of the slain, and would receive a common burial with the rest of the dead.

So fell Count Louis of Nassau. He was a brilliant soldier, an able negotiator, and a firm patriot. In him the Protestant cause lost an enthusiastic and enlightened adherent, his country’s liberty a most devoted champion, and his brother, the prince, one who was “his right hand” as regarded the prompt and able execution of his plans. To Orange

[1]Thaunus, lib. 4. Meteren, p. 133.

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the loss was irreparable, and was felt all the more at this moment, seeing that St. Aldegonde, upon whose sagacity and patriotism Orange placed such reliance, was a captive in the Spanish camp. This was the third brother whom William had lost in the struggle against Spain. The repeated deaths in the circle of those so dear to him, as well as the many other friends, also dear though not so closely related, who had fallen in the war, could not but afflict him with a deep sense of isolation and loneliness. To abstract his mind from his sorrows, to forget the graves of his kindred, the captivity and death of his friends, the many thousands of his followers now sleeping their last sleep on the battle-field, his own ruined fortune, the vanished splendor of his home, where a once princely affluence had been replaced by something like penury, his escutcheon blotted, and his name jeered at-to rise above all these accumulated losses and dire humiliations, and to prosecute with unflinching resolution his great cause, required indeed a stout heart, and a firm faith. Never did the prince appear greater than now. The gloom of disaster but brought out the splendor of his virtues and the magnanimity of his soul. The burden of the great struggle now lay on him alone. He had to provide funds, raise armies, arrange the plan of campaigns, and watch over their execution. From a sick-bed he was often called to direct battles, and the siege or defense of cities. Of the friends who had commenced the struggle with him many were now no more, and those who survived were counseling submission; the prince alone refused to despair of the deliverance of his country. Through armies foiled, and campaigns lost, through the world’s pity or its scorn, he would march on to that triumph which he saw in the distance. When friends fell, he stayed his heart with a sublime confidence on the eternal Arm. Thus stripped of human defenses, he displayed a pure devotion to country and to religion.

It was this that placed the Prince of Orange in the first rank of greatness. There have been men who have been borne to greatness upon the steady current of continuous good fortune; they never lost a battle, and they never suffered check or repulse. Their labours have been done, and their achievements accomplished, at the head of victorious armies, and in the presence of admiring senates, and of applauding and grateful nations. These are great; but there is an order of men who are greater still. There have been a select few who have rendered the very highest services to mankind, not with the applause and succour of those they sought to benefit, but in spite of their opposition, amid the contempt and scorn of the world, and amid ever-blackening and ever-bursting disasters, and who lifting their eyes from armies and thrones have fixed them upon a great unseen Power, in whose righteousness and justice they confided, and so have been able to struggle on till they attained their sublime object. These are the peers of the race, they are the first magnates of the world. In this order of great men stands William, Prince of Orange. On receiving the melancholy intelligence of the death of his brother on the fatal field of Mook, William retreated northward into Holland. He expected that the Spaniards would follow him, and improve their victory while the terror it inspired was still recent; but Avila was prevented pursuing him by a mutiny that broke out in his army. The pay of his soldiers was three years in arrears, and instead of the barren pursuit of William, the Spanish host turned its steps in the direction of the rich city of Antwerp, resolved to be its own paymaster. The soldiers quartered themselves upon the wealthiest of the burghers. They took possession of the most sumptuous mansions, they feasted on the most luxurious dishes, and daily drank the most delicate wines. At the end of three weeks the citizens, wearied of seeing their substance thus devoured by the army, consented to pay 400,000 crowns, which the soldiers were willing to receive as part payment of the debt due to them. The mutineers celebrated their victory over the citizens by a great feast on the Mere, or principal street of Antwerp. They were busy carousing, gambling, and masquerading when the boom of cannon struck upon their ears. William’s admiral had advanced up the Scheldt, and was now engaged with the Spanish fleet in the river. The revelers, leaving their cups and grasping their muskets, hurried to the scene of action, but only to be the witnesses of the destruction of their ships. Some were blazing in the flames, others were sinking with their crews, and the patriot admiral, having done his work, was sailing away in triumph. We have recorded the destruction of the other division of Philip’s fleet; this second blow completed its ruin, and thus the King of Spain was as far as ever from the supremacy of the sea, without which, as Requesens assured him, he would not be able to make himself master of Holland.

Another act of the great drama now opened. We have already recorded the fall of Haarlem, after unexampled horrors. Though little else than a city of ruins and corpses when it fell to the Spaniards, its possession gave them great advantages. It was an encampment between North and South Holland, [106] and cut the country in two. They were desirous of strengthening their position by adding Leyden to Haarlem, the town next to it on the south, and a place of yet greater importance. Accordingly, it was first blockaded by the Spanish troops in the winter of 1574; but the besiegers were withdrawn in the spring to defend the frontier, attacked by Count Louis. After his defeat, and the extinction of the subsequent mutiny in the Spanish army, the soldiers returned to the siege, and Leyden was invested a second time on the 26th of May, 1574. The siege of Leyden is one of the most famous in history, and had a most important bearing on the establishment of Protestantism in Holland. Its devotion and heroism in the cause of liberty and religion have, like a mighty torch, illumined other lands besides Holland, and fired the soul of more peoples than the Dutch.

Leyden is situated on a low plain covered with rich pastures, smiling gardens, fruitful orchards, and elegant villas. It is washed by an arm of the Rhine, that, on approaching its walls, parts into an infinity of streamlets which, flowing languidly through the city, fill the canals that traverse the streets, making it a miniature of Venice. Its canals are spanned by 150 stone bridges, and lined by rows of limes and poplars, which soften and shade the architecture of its spacious streets, that present to the view public buildings and sumptuous private mansions, churches with tall steeples, and universities and halls with imposing facades. At the time of the siege the city had a numerous population, and was defended by a deep moat and a strong wall flanked with bastions. The city was a prize well worth all the ardour displayed both in its attack and defense. Its standing or falling would determine the fate of Holland.

When the citizens saw themselves a second time shut in by a beleaguering army of 8,000 men, and a bristling chain of sixty-four redoubts, they reflected with pain on their neglect to introduce provisions and reinforcements into their city during the two months the Spaniards had been withdrawn to defend the frontier. They must now atone for their lack of prevision by relying on their own stout arms and bold hearts. There were scarce any troops in the city besides the burghal guard. Orange told them plainly that three months must pass over them before it would be possible by any efforts of their friends outside to raise the siege; and he entreated them to bear in mind the vast consequences that must flow from the struggle on which they were entering, and that, according as they should bear themselves in it with a craven heart or with an heroic spirit, so would they transmit to their descendants the vile estate of slavery or the glorious heritage of liberty.

The defense of the town was entrusted to Jean van der Does, Lord of Nordwyck. Of noble birth and poetic genius, Does was also a brave soldier, and an illustrious patriot. He breathed his own heroic spirit into the citizens. The women as well as men worked day and night upon the walls, to strengthen them against the Spanish guns. They took stock of the provisions in the city, and arranged a plan for their economical distribution. They passed from one to another the terrible words, “Zutphen,” “Naarden,” names suggestive of horrors not to be mentioned, but which had so burned into the Dutch the detestation of the Spaniards, that they were resolved to die rather than surrender to an enemy whose instincts were those of tigers or fiends.

It was at this moment, when the struggle around Leyden was about to begin, that Philip attempted to filch by a stratagem the victory which he found it so hard to win by the sword. Don Luis de Requesens now published at Brussels, in the king’s name, a general pardon to the Netherlanders, on condition that they went to mass and received absolution from a priest,[2] Almost all the clergy and many of the leading citizens were excepted from this indemnity. “Pardon!” exclaimed the indignant Hollanders when they read the king’s letter of grace; “before we can receive pardon we must first have committed offense. We have suffered the wrong, not done it; and now the wrongdoer comes, not to sue for, but to bestow forgiveness! How grateful ought we to be!” As regarded going to mass, Philip could not but know that this was the essence of the whole quarrel, and to ask them to submit on this point was simply to ask them to surrender to him the victory. Their own reiterated vows, the thousands of their brethren martyred, their own consciences-all forbade. They would sooner go to the halter. There was now scarcely a native Hollander who was a Papist; and speaking in their name, the Prince of Orange declared, “As long as there is a living man left in the country, we will contend for our liberty and our religion.”[3] The king’s pardon had failed to open the gates of Leyden, and its siege now went forward.

[2]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 310.

[3]Archives de la Maison d’Orangc, 5:27-apud Motley, vol. 2., p. 122.

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Chapter 21: The Siege of Leyden

Leyden—Provisions Fail—William’s Sickness—His Plan of Letting in the Sea—The Dykes Cut—The Waters do not Rise—The Flotilla cannot be Floated—Dismay in Leyden—Terrors of the Famine—Pestilence—Deaths—Unabated Resolution of the Citizens—A Mighty Fiat goes forth—The Wind Shifts—The Ocean Overflows the Dykes—The Flotilla Approaches—Fights on the Dykes—The Fort Lammen—Stops the Flotilla—Midnight Noise—Fort Lainmen Abandoned—Leyden Relieved—Public Solemn Thanksgiving—Another Prodigy—The Sea Rolled Back

Picture: View of Porte Rabot: Ghent

For two months the citizens manned their walls, and with stern courage kept at bay the beleaguering host, now risen from 10,000 to three times that number. At the end of this period provisions failed them. For some days the besieged subsisted on malt-cake, and when that was consumed they had recourse to the flesh of dogs and horses. Numbers died of starvation, and others sickened and perished through the unnatural food on which the famine had thrown them. Meanwhile a greater calamity even than would have been the loss of Leyden seemed about to overtake them.

Struck down by fever, the result of ceaseless toil and the most exhausting anxiety, William of Orange lay apparently at the point of death. The illness of the prince was carefully concealed, lest the citizens of Leyden should give themselves up altogether to despair. Before lying down, the prince had arranged the only plan by which, as it appeared to him, it was possible to drive out the Spaniards and raise the siege; and in spite of his illness he issued from his sick-bed continual orders respecting the execution of that project. No force at his disposal was sufficient to enable him to break through the Spanish lines, and throw provisions into the starving city, in which the suffering and misery had now risen to an extreme pitch. In this desperate strait he thought of having recourse to a more terrible weapon than cannon or armies. He would summon the ocean against the Spaniards. He would cut the dykes and sink the country beneath the sea. The loss would be tremendous; many a rich meadow, many a fruitful orchard, and many a lovely villa would be drowned beneath the waves; but the loss, though great, would be recoverable: the waves would again restore what they had swallowed up; whereas, should the country be overwhelmed lay the power of Spain, never again would it be restored: the loss would be eternal. What the genius and patriotism of William had dared his eloquence prevailed upon the States to adopt. Putting their spades into the great dyke that shielded their land, they said, “Better a drowned country than a lost country.” Besides the outer and taller rampart, within which the Hollanders had sought safety from their enemy the sea, there rose concentric lines of inner and lower dykes, all of which had to be cut through before the waves could flow over the country. The work was executed with equal alacrity and perseverance, but not with the desired result. A passage had been dug for the waters, but that ocean which had appeared but too ready to overwhelm its barriers when the inhabitants sought to keep it out, seemed now unwilling to overflow their country, as if it were in league with the tyrant from whose fury the Dutch besought it to cover them. Strong north-easterly winds, prevailing that year longer than usual, beat back the tides, and lowering the level of the German Sea, prevented the ingress of the waters. The flood lay only a few inches in depth on the face of Holland; and unless it should rise much higher, William’s plan for relieving Leyden would, after all, prove abortive. At great labor and expense he had constructed a flotilla of 200 fiat-bottomed vessels at Rotterdam and Delft; these he had mounted with guns, and manned with 800 Zealanders, and stored with provisions to be thrown into the famine-stricken city, so soon as the depth of water, now slowly rising over meadow and corn-field, should enable his ships to reach its gates. But the flotilla lay immovable. The expedition was committed to Admiral Boisot; the crews were selected from the fleet of Zealand, picked veterans, with faces hacked and scarred with wounds which they had received in their, former battles with the Spaniards; and to add to their ferocious looks they wore the Crescent in their caps, with the motto, “Turks rather than Spaniards.” Ships, soldiers, and victuals-all had William provided; but unless the ocean should cooperate all had been provided in vain.

Something like panic seized on the besiegers when they beheld this new and terrible power advancing to assail them. Danger and death in every conceivable form they had been used [108] to meet, but they never dreamt of having to confront the ocean. Against such an enemy what could their or any human power avail? But when they saw that the rise of the waters was stayed, their alarm subsided, and they began to jeer and mock at the stratagem of the prince, which was meant to be grand, but had proved contemptible. He had summoned the ocean to his aid, but the ocean would not come. In the city of Leyden despondency had taken the place of elation. When informed of the expedient of the prince for their deliverance they had rung their bells for very joy; but when they saw the ships, laden with that bread for lack of which some six or eight thousand of their number had already died, after entering the gaps in the outer dyke, arrested in their progress to their gates, hope again forsook them. Daily they climbed the steeples and towers, and scanned with anxious eyes the expanse around, if haply the ocean was coming to their aid. Day after day they had to descend with the same depressing report: the wind was still adverse; the waters refused to rise, and the ships could not float. The starvation and misery of Leyden was greater even than that which Haarlem had endured. For seven weeks there had not been a morsel of bread within the city. The vilest substitutes were greedily devoured; and even these were now almost exhausted. To complete their suffering, pestilence was added to famine. Already reduced to skeletons, hundreds had no strength to withstand this new attack. Men and women every hour dropped dead on the streets. Whole families were found to be corpses when the doors of their houses were forced open in the morning, and the survivors had hardly enough strength left to bury them. The dead were carried to their graves by those who to-morrow would need the same office at the hands of others. Amid the awful reiteration of these dismal scenes, one passion still survived-resistance to the Spaniards. Some few there were, utterly broken down under this accumulation of sorrows, who did indeed whisper the word “surrender,” deeming that even Spanish soldiers could inflict nothing more terrible than they were already enduring. But these proposals were instantly and indignantly silenced by the great body of the citizens, to whom neither famine, nor pestilence, nor death appeared so dreadful as the entrance of the Spaniards. The citizens anew exchanged vows of fidelity with one another and with the magistrates, and anew ratified their oaths to that Power for whose truth they were in arms. Abandoned outside its walls, as it seemed, by all: pressed within by a host of terrible evils: succour neither in heaven nor on the earth, Leyden nevertheless would hold fast its religion and its liberty, and if it must perish, it would perish free. It was the victory of a sublime faith over despair.

At last heaven heard the cry of the suffering city, and issued its fiat to the ocean. On the 1st of October, the equinoctial gales, so long delayed, gave signs of their immediate approach. On that night a strong wind sprung up from the north-west, and the waters of the rivers were forced back into their channels. After blowing for some hours from that quarter, the gale shifted into the south-west with increased fury. The strength of the winds heaped up the waters of the German Ocean upon the coast of Holland; the deep lifted up itself; its dark flood driven before the tempest’s breath with mighty roar, like shout of giant loosed from his fetters and rushing to assail the foe, came surging onwards, and poured its tumultuous billows over the broken dykes. At midnight on the 2nd of October the flotilla of Boisot was afloat, and under weigh for Leyden, on whose walls crowds of gaunt, famished, almost exanimate men waited its coming. At every short distance the course of the ships was disputed by some half-submerged Spanish fort, whose occupants were not so much awed by the terrors of the deep which had risen to overwhelm them as to be unable to offer battle. But it was in vain. Boisot’s fierce Zealanders were eager to grapple with the hated Spaniards; the blaze of canon lighted up the darkness of that awful night, and the booming of artillery, rising above the voice of the tempest, told the citizens of Leyden that the patriot fleet was on its way to their rescue. These naval engagements, on what but a few days before had been cornland or woodland, but was now ocean-a waste of water blackened by the scowl of tempest and the darkness of night-formed a novel as well as awful sight. The Spaniards fought with a desperate bravery, but everywhere without success. The Zealanders leaped from their fiat-bottomed vessels and pursued them along the dykes, they fired on them from their boats, or, seizing them with hooks fixed to the ends of long poles, dragged them down from the causeway, and put them to the sword. Those who escaped the daggers and harpoons of the Zealanders, were drowned in the sea, or stuck fast in the mud till overtaken and dispatched. In that flight some 1,500 Spaniards perished.

Boisot’s fleet had now advanced within two miles of the walls of Leyden, but here, at about a mile’s distance from the gates, rose the strongest of all the Spanish forts, called Lammen, blocking up the way, and threatening to render all that had been gained without avail. The admiral reconnoitered it; it stood high above the water; it was of great [109] strength and full of soldiers; and he hesitated attacking it. The citizens from the walls saw his fleet behind the fort, and understood the difficulty that prevented the admiral’s nearer approach. They had been almost delirious with joy at the prospect of immediate relief. Was the cup after all to be dashed from their lips! It was arranged by means of a carrier-pigeon that a combined assault should take place upon the fort of Lammen at dawn, the citizens assailing it on one side, and the flotilla bombarding it on the other Night again fell, and seldom has blacker night descended on more tragic scene, or the gloom of nature been more in unison with the anxiety and distress of man. At midnight a terrible crash was heard. What that ominous sound, so awful in the stillness of the night, could be, no one could conjecture. A little after came a strange apparition, equally inexplicable. A line of lights was seen to issue from Lammen and move over the face of the deep. The darkness gave terror and mystery to every occurrence. All waited for the coming of day to explain these appearances. At last the dawn broke; it was now seen that a large portion of the city walls of Leyden had fallen over-night, and hence the noise that had caused such alarm. The Spaniards, had they known, might have entered the city at the last hour and massacred the inhabitants; instead of this, they were seized with panic, believing these terrible sounds to be those of the enemy rushing to attack them, and so, kindling their torches and lanterns, they fled when no man pursued. Instead of the cannonade which was this morning to be opened against the formidable Lammen, the fleet of Boisot sailed under the silent guns of the now evacuated fort, and entered the city gates. On the morning of the 3rd of October, Leyden was relieved.

The citizens felt that their first duty was to offer thanks to that Power to whom exclusively they owed their deliverance. Despite their own heroism and Boisot’s valor they would have fallen, had not God, by a mighty wind, brought up the ocean and overwhelmed their foes. A touching procession of haggard but heroic forms, headed by Admiral Boisot and the magistrates, and followed by the Zealanders and sailors, walked to the great church, [110] and there united in solemn prayer. A hymn of thanksgiving was next raised, but of the multitude of voices by which its first notes were pealed forth, few were able to continue singing to the close. Tears choked their voices, and sobs were mingled with the music. Thoughts of the awful scenes through which they had passed, and of the many who had shared the conflict with them, but had not lived to join in the hymn of victory, rushed with overmastering force into their minds, and compelled them to mingle tears with their praises.

A letter was instantly dispatched to the Prince of Orange with the great news. He received it while he was at worship in one of the churches of Delft, and instantly handed it to the minister, to be read from the pulpit after sermon. That moment recompensed him for the toil and losses of years; and his joy was heightened by the fact that a nation rejoiced with him. Soon thereafter, the States assembled, and a day of public thanksgiving was appointed.

This series of wonders was to be fittingly closed by yet another prodigy. The fair hind of Holland lay drowned at the bottom of the sea. The whole vast plain from Rotterdam to Leyden was under water. What time, what labor and expense would it require to recover the country, and restore the fertility and beauty which had been so sorely marred! The very next day, the 4th of October, the wind shifted into the north-east, and blowing with great violence, the waters rapidly assuaged, and in a few days the land was bare again. He who had brought up the ocean upon Holland with his mighty hand rolled it back.

Chapter 22: March of the Spanish Army Through the Sea-Sack of Antwerp

The Darkest Hour Passed—A University Founded in Leyden—Its Subsequent Eminence—Mediation—Philip Demands the Absolute Dominancy of the Popish Worship—The Peace Negotiations Broken off—The Islands of Zealand—The Spaniards March through the Sea—The Islands Occupied—The Hopes that Philip builds on this—These Hopes Dashed—Death of Governor Requesens—Mutiny of Spanish Troops—They Seize on Alost—Pillage the Country around—The Spanish Army Join the Mutiny—Antwerp Sacked—Terrors of the Sack—Massacre, Rape, Burning—The “Antwerp Fury”—Retribution

Picture: William the Silent: Prince of Orange

The night of this great conflict was far from being at an end, but its darkest hour had now passed. With the check received by the Spanish Power before the walls of Leyden, the first streak of dawn may be said to have broken; but cloud and tempest long obscured the rising of Holland’s day.

The country owed a debt of gratitude to that heroic little city which had immolated itself on the altar of the nation’s religion and liberty, and before restarting the great contest, Holland must first mark in some signal way its sense of the service which Leyden had rendered it. The distinction awarded Leyden gave happy augury of the brilliant destinies awaiting that land in years to come. It was resolved to found a university within its walls. Immediate effect was given to this resolution. Though the Spaniard was still in the land, and the strain of armies and battles was upon William, a grand procession was organized on the 5th of February, 1575, at which symbolic figures, drawn through the streets in triumphal cars, were employed to represent the Divine form of Christianity, followed by the fair train of the arts and sciences. The seminary thus inaugurated was richly endowed; men of the greatest learning were sought for to fill its chairs, their fame attracted crowds of students from many countries; and its printing presses began to send forth works which have instructed the men of two centuries. Thus had Leyden come up from the “seas devouring depths” to be one of the lights of the world.[1]

There came now a brief pause in the conflict. The Emperor Maximilian, the mutual friend of Philip of Spain and William of Orange, deemed the moment opportune for mediating between the parties, and on the 3rd of March, 1575, a congress assembled at Breda with the view of devising a basis of peace. The prince gave his consent that the congress should meet, although he had not the slightest hope of fruit from its labours. On one condition alone could peace be established in Holland, and that condition, he knew, was one which Philip

[1]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 312, 313

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would never grant, and which the States could never cease to demand-namely, the free and open profession of the Reformed religion. When the commissioners met it was seen that William had judged rightly in believing the religious difficulty to be insurmountable. Philip would agree to no peace unless the Roman Catholic religion were installed in sole and absolute dominancy, leaving professors of the Protestant faith to convert their estates and goods into money, and quit the country. In that case, replied the Protestants, duly grateful for the wonderful concessions of the Catholic king, there will hardly remain in Holland, after all the heretics shall have left it, enough men to keep the dykes in repair, and the country had better be given back to the ocean at once. The conference broke up without accomplishing anything, and the States, with William at their head, prepared to resume the contest, in the hope of conquering by their own perseverance and heroism what they despaired ever to obtain from the justice of Philip.

The war was renewed with increased exasperation on both sides. The opening of the campaign was signalised by the capture of a few small Dutch towns, followed by the usual horrors that attended the triumph of the Spanish arms. But Governor Requesens soon ceased to push his conquests in that direction, and turned his whole attention to Zealand, ‘where Philip was exceedingly desirous of acquiring harbors, in order to the reception of a fleet which he was building in Spain. This led to the most brilliant of all the feats accomplished by the Spaniards in the war.

In the sea that washes the north-east of Zealand are situated three large islands-Tolen, Duyveland, and Schowen. Tolen, which lies nearest the mainland, was already in the hands of the Spaniards; and Requesens, on that account, was all the more desirous to gain possession of the other two. He had constructed a flotilla of fiat-bottomed boats, and these would soon have made him master of the coveted islands; but he dared not launch them on these waters, seeing the estuaries of Zealand were swept by those patriot buccaneers whose bravery suffered no rivals on their own element. Requesens, in his great strait, bethought him of another expedient, but of such a nature that it might well seem madness to attempt it. The island of Duyveland was separated from Tolen, the foothold of the Spaniards, by a strait of about five miles in width; and Requesens learned from some traitor Zealanders that there ran a narrow fiat of sand from shore to shore, on which at ebb-tide there was not more than a depth of from four to five feet of water. It was possible, therefore, though certainly extremely hazardous, to traverse this submarine ford. The governor, however, determined that his soldiers should attempt it. He assigned to 3,000 picked men the danger and the glory of the enterprise. At midnight, the 27th September, 1575, the host descended into the deep, Requesens himself witnessing its departure from the shore, “and with him a priest, praying for these poor souls to the Prince of the celestial militia, Christ Jesus.”[2] A few guides well acquainted with the ford led the way; Don Osorio d’Uiloa, a commander of distinguished courage, followed; after him came a regiment of Spaniards, then a body of Germans, and lastly a troop of Walloons, followed by 200 sappers and miners. The night was dark, with sheet, lightning, which bursting out at frequent intervals, shed a lurid gleam upon the face of the black waters. At times a moon, now in her fourth quarter, looked forth between the clouds upon this novel midnight march. The soldiers walked two and two; the water at times reached to their necks, and they had to hold their muskets above their head to prevent their being rendered useless. The path was so narrow that a single step aside was fatal, and many sank to rise no more. Nor were the darkness and the treacherous waves the only dangers that beset them. The Zealand fleet hovered near, and when its crews discerned by the pale light of the moon and the fitful lightning that the Spaniards were crossing the firth in this meet extraordinary fashion, they drew their ships as close to the ford as the shallows would permit, and opened their guns upon them. Their fire did little harm, for the darkness made the aim uncertain. Not so, however, the harpoons and long hooks of the Zealanders; their throw caught, and numbers of the Spaniards were dragged down into the sea. Nevertheless, they pursued their dreadful path, now struggling with the waves, now fighting with their assailants, and at last, after a march of six hours, they approached the opposite shore, and with ranks greatly thinned, emerged from the deep.[3]

Wearied by their fight with the sea and with the enemy, the landing of the Spaniards might have been withstood, but accident or treachery gave them possession of the island. At the moment that they stepped upon the shore, the commander of the Zealanders, Charles van Boisot, fell by a shot-whether from one of his own men, or from the enemy, cannot now be determined. The incident caused a panic among the patriots. The

[2]Strada, bk. 8., p. 11.

[3]Bor, lib, 8., pp. 648-650. Strada, bk. 8., pp. 11,12.

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strangeness of the enemy’s advance-for it seemed as if the sea had miraculously opened to afford them passage-helped to increase the consternation. The Zealanders fled in all directions, and the invading force soon found themselves in possession of Duyveland.

So far this most extraordinary and daring attempt had been successful, but the enterprise could not be regarded as completed till the island of Schowen, the outermost of the three, had also been occupied. It was divided from Duyveland by a narrow strait of only a league’s width. Emboldened by their success, the Spaniards plunged a second time into the sea, and waded through the firth, the defenders of the island fleeing at their approach, as at that of men who had conquered the very elements, and with whom, therefore, it was madness to contend. The Spanish commander immediately set about the reduction of all the forts and cities on the island, and in this he was successful, though the work occupied the whole Spanish army not less than nine months.[4] Now fully master of these three islands (June, 1576), though their acquisition had cost all immense expenditure of both money and lives, Requesens hoped that he had not only cut the communication between Holland and Zealand, but that he had secured a rendezvous for the fleet which he expected from Spain, and that it only remained that he should here fix the head-quarters of his power, and assemble a mighty naval force, in order from this point to extend his conquests on every side, and reconquer Holland and the other Provinces which had revolted from the scepter of Philip and the faith of Rome. He seemed indeed in a fair way of accomplishing all this; the sea itself had parted to give him a fulcrum on which to rest the lever of this great expedition, but an incident now fell out which upset his calculations and dashed all his fondest hopes. Holland was never again to own the scepter of Philip.

Vitelli, Marquis of Cetona, who was without controversy the ablest general at that time in the Netherlands, now died. His death was followed in a few days by that of Governor Requesens. These two losses to Philip were quickly succeeded by a third, and in some respects greater, a formidable mutiny of the troops. The men who had performed all the valorous deeds we have recited, had received no pay. Philip had exhausted his treasury in the war he was carrying on with the Turk, and had not a single guelden to send them. The soldiers had been disappointed, moreover, in the booty they expected to reap from the conquered towns of Schowen. These laborers were surely worthy of their hire. What dark deed had they ever refused to do, or what enemy had they ever refused to face, at the bidding of their master? They had scaled walls, and laid fertile provinces waste, for the pleasure of Philip and the glory of Spain, and now they were denied their wages. Seeing no help but in becoming their own paymasters, they flew to arms, depose their officers, elected a commander-in-chief from among themselves, and taking an oath of mutual fidelity over the Sacrament, they passed over to the mainland, and seizing on Alost, in Flanders, made it their head-quarters, intending to sally forth in plundering excursions upon the neighboring towns. Thus all the labor and blood with which their recent conquests had been won were thrown away, and the hopes which the King of Spain had built upon them were frustrated at the very moment when he thought they were about to be realized.

As men contemplate the passage of a dark cloud charged with thunder and destruction through the sky, so did the cities of Brabant and Flanders watch the march of this mutinous host. They knew it held pillage and murder and rape in its bosom, but their worst fears failed to anticipate the awful vengeance it was destined to inflict. The negotiators sent to recall the troops to obedience reminded them that they were tarnishing the fame acquired by years of heroism. What cared these mutineers for glory? They wanted shoes, clothes, food, money. They held their way past the gates of Mechlin, past the gates of Brussels, and of other cities; but swarming over the walls of Alost, while the inhabitants slept, they had now planted themselves in the center of a rich country, where they promised themselves store of booty. No sooner had they hung out their flag on the walls of Alost than the troops stationed in other parts of the Netherlands caught the infection. By the beginning of September the mutiny was universal; the whole Spanish army in the Netherlands were united in it, and all the forts and citadels being in their hands, they completely dominated the land, plundered the citizens, pillaged the country, and murdered at their pleasure. The State Council, into whose hands the government of the Netherlands had fallen on the sudden death of Requesens, were powerless, the mutineers holding them prisoners in Brussels; and though the Council prevailed on Philip to issue an edict against his revolted army, denouncing them as rebels, and empowering any one to slay this rebellious host, either singly or in whole, the soldiers paid as little respect to the edict of their king as to the exhortations of the Council. Thus the instrument

[4]Strada, bk. 8., pp. 13, 14.

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of oppression recoiled upon the hands that were wielding it. War now broke out between the Flemings and the army. The State Council raised bands of militia to awe the proscribed and lawless troops, and bloody skirmishes were of daily occurrence between them. The carnage was all on one side, for the disciplined veterans routed at little cost the peasants and artisans who had been so suddenly transformed into soldiers, slaughtering them in thousands. The rich cities, on which they now cast greedy eyes, began to feel their vengeance, but the awful calamity which overtook Antwerp has effaced the memory of the woes which at their hands befell some of the other cities.

Antwerp, since the beginning of the troubles of the Netherlands, had had its own share of calamity; its cathedral and religious houses had been sacked by the image-breakers, and its warehouses and mansions had been partially pillaged by mutinous troops; but its vast commerce enabled it speedily to surmount all these losses, and return to its former flourishing condition. Antwerp was once more the richest city in the world. The ships of all nations unloaded in its harbor, and the treasures of all climes were gathered into its warehouses. Its streets were spacious and magnificent; its shops were stored with silver and gold and precious stones, and the palaces of its wealthy merchants were filled with luxurious and costly furniture, and embellished with precious ornaments, beautiful pictures, and fine statues. This nest of riches was not likely to escape the greedy eyes and rapacious hands of the mutineers.

Immediately outside the walls of Antwerp was the citadel, with its garrison. The troops joined the mutiny, and from that hour Antwerp was doomed. The citizens, having a presentiment of the ruin that hung above their heads, took some very ineffectual measures to secure themselves and their city against it, which only drew it the sooner upon them. The mutineers in the citadel were joined by the rebellious troops from Alost, about 3,000 in number, who were so eager to begin the plundering that they refused even to refresh themselves after their march before throwing themselves upon the ill-fated city. It was Sunday, the 4th of November, and an hour before noon the portals of Alva’s citadel were opened, and 6,000 men-at-arms rushed forth. They swept along the esplanade leading to the city. They crashed through the feeble barrier which the burghers had reared to protect them from the apprehended assault. They chased before them the Walloons and the militia, who had come out to withstand them, as the furious tempest drives the cloud before it. In another minute they were over the walls into the city. From every street and lane poured forth the citizens to defend their homes; but though they fought with extraordinary courage it was all in vain. The battle swept along the streets, the Spanish hordes bearing down all before them, and following close on the rear of the vanquished, till they reached the magnificent Place de Mere, where stood the world-renowned Exchange, in which 7,000 merchants were wont daily to assemble. Here an obstinate combat ensued. The citizens fought on the street, or, retreating to their houses, fired from their windows on the Spaniards. The carnage was great; heaps of corpses covered the pavement, and the kennels ran with blood; but courage availed little against regular discipline, and the citizens were broken a second time. The battle was renewed with equal obstinacy in the Grand Place. Here stood the Guildhall, accounted the most magnificent in the world. Torches were brought and it was set fire to and burned to the ground. The flames caught the surrounding buildings, and soon a thousand houses, the finest in the city, were ablaze, their conflagration lighting up the pinnacles and the unrivaled spire of the neighboring cathedral, and throwing its ruddy gleam on the combatants who were struggling in the area below. The battle had now spread over all the city. In every street men were fighting and blood was flowing. Many rushed to the gates and sought to escape, but they found them locked, and were thrown back upon the sword and fire. The battle was going against the citizens, but their rage and hatred of the Spaniards made them continue the fight. Goswyn Verreyek, the margrave of the city, combated the foe with the burgomaster lying dead at his feet, and at last he himself fell, adding his corpse to a heap of slain, composed of citizens, soldiers, and magistrates. While the fire was devouring hundreds of noble mansions and millions of treasure, the sword was busy cutting off the citizens. The Spaniard made no distinction between friend and foe, between Papist and Protestant, between poor and rich. Old men, women, and children; the father at the hearth, the bride at the altar, and the priest in the sanctuary-the blood of all flooded the streets of their city on that terrible day.

Darkness fell on this scene of horrors, and now the barbarities of the day were succeeded by the worse atrocities of the night. The first object of these men was plunder, and one would have thought there was now enough within their reach to content the most boundless avarice. Without digging into the earth or crossing the sea, they could gather the treasures of all regions, which a thousand ships had [114] carried thither, and stored up in that city of which they were now masters. They rifled the shops, they broke into the warehouses, they loaded themselves with the money, the plate, the wardrobes, and the jewels of private citizens; but their greed, like the grave, never said it was enough. They began to search for hidden treasures, and they tortured their supposed possessors to compel them to reveal what often did not exist. These crimes were accompanied by infamies of so foul and revolting a character, that by their side murder itself grows pale. The narrators of the “Antwerp Fury,” as it has come to be styled, have recorded many of these cruel and shameful deeds, but we forbear to chronicle them. For three days the work of murdering and plundering went on, and when it had come to an end, how awful the spectacle which that city, that three days before had been the gayest and wealthiest upon earth, presented! Stacks of blackened ruins rising where marble palaces had stood; yawning hovels where princely mansions had been; whole streets laid in ashes; corpses, here gathered in heaps, there lying about, hacked, mutilated, half-burned-some naked, others still encased in armor! Eight thousand citizens, according to the most trustworthy accounts, were slain. The value of the property consumed by the fire was estimated at £4,000,000, irrespective of the hundreds of magnificent edifices that were destroyed. An equal amount was lost by the pillage, not reckoning the merchandise and jewelry appropriated in addition by the Spaniards. Altogether the loss to the mercantile capital of Brabant was incalculable; nor was it confined to the moment, for Antwerp never recovered the prosperity it had enjoyed before the bloody and plundering hand of the Spaniard was laid upon it.[5]

But this awful calamity held in its bosom a great moral. During fifty years the cry had been going up to heaven, from tens of thousands of scaffolds, where the axe was shedding blood like water; from prisons, where numberless victims were writhing on the rack; from stakes, where the martyr was consuming amid the flames; from graveyards, where corpses were rotting above-ground; from trees and door-posts and highway gibbets, where human bodies were dangling in the air; from graves which had opened to receive living men and women; from sacked cities; from violated matrons and maidens; from widows and orphans, reared in affluence but now begging their bread; from exiles wandering desolate in foreign lands-from all, these had the cry gone up to the just Judge, and now here was the beginning of vengeance. The powerful cities of the Netherlands, Antwerp among the rest, saw all these outrages committed, and all these men and women dragged to prison, to the halter, to the stake, but they “forbore to deliver,” they” hid themselves from their own flesh.” A callous indifference on the part of a nation to the wrongs and sufferings of others is always associated with a blindness to its own dangers, which is at once the consequence and the retribution of its estranging itself from the public cause of humanity and justice. Once and again and a third time had the Southern Netherlands manifested this blindness to the mighty perils that menaced them on the side of Spain, and remained deaf to the call of patriotism and religion. When the standards of William first approached their frontier, they were unable to see the door of escape from the yoke of a foreign tyrant thus opened to them. A tithe of the treasure and blood which were lost in the “Antwerp Fury” would have carried the banner of William in triumph from Valenciennes to the extreme north of Zealand; but the Flemings cared not to think that the hour had come to strike for liberty. A second time the Deliverer approached them, but the ease-loving Netherlanders understood not the offer now made to them of redemption from the Spanish yoke. When Alva and his soldiers-an incarnated ferocity and bigotry-entered the Low Countries, they sat still: not a finger did they lift to oppose the occupation. When the cry of Naarden, and Zutphen, and Haarlem was uttered, Antwerp was deaf. Wrapt in luxury and ease, it had seen its martyrs burned, the disciples of the Gospel driven away, and it returned to that faith which it had been on the point of abandoning, and which, by retaining the soul in vassalage to Rome, perpetuated the serfdom of the Spanish yoke; and yet Antwerp saw no immediate evil effects follow. The ships of all nations continued to sail up its river and discharge their cargoes on its wharves. Its wealth continued to increase, and its palaces to grow in splendor. The tempests that smote so terribly the cities around it rolled harmlessly past its gates. Antwerp believed that it had chosen at once the easier and the better part; that it was vastly preferable to have the Romish faith, with an enriching commerce and a luxurious ease, than Protestantism with battles and loss of goods; till one day, all suddenly, when it deemed calamity far away, a blow, terrible as the bolt of heaven, dealt it by the champions of Romanism, laid it in the dust, together with the commerce, the wealth, and the splendor for the sake of which it had parted with its Protestantism.

[5]Bor, 9:728-732. Hooft, 11:460-465. Meteren,

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Chapter 23: The “Pacification of Ghent,” and Toleration

William of Orange more than King of Holland—The “Father of the Country”—Policy of the European Powers—Elizabeth—France—Germany—Coldness of Lutheranism—Causes—Hatred of German Lutherans to Dutch Calvinists—Instances—William’s New Project—His Appeal to all the Provinces to Unite against the Spaniards—The “Pacification of Ghent “—Its Articles—Toleration—Services to Toleration of John Calvin and William the Silent

The great struggle which William, Prince of Orange, was maintaining on this foot-breadth of territory for the religion of Reformed Christendom, and the liberty of the Netherlands, had now reached a well-defined stage. Holland and Zealand were united under him as Stadtholder or virtual monarch. The fiction was still maintained that Philip, as Count of Holland, was the nominal monarch of the Netherlands, but this was nothing more than a fiction, and to Philip it must have appeared a bitter satire; for, according to this fiction, Philip King of the Netherlands was making war on Philip King of Spain. The real monarch of the United Provinces of Holland and Zealand was the Prince of Orange. In his hands was lodged the whole administrative power of the country, as also well-nigh the whole legislative functions. He could make peace and he could make war. He appointed to all offices; he disposed of all affairs; and all the revenues of the kingdom were paid to him for national uses, and especially for the prosecution of the great struggle in which he was engaged for the nation’s independence. These revenues, given spontaneously, were larger by far than the sums which Alva by all his taxation and terror had been able to extort from the Provinces. William, in fact, possessed more than the powers of a king. The States had unbounded trust in his wisdom, his patriotism, and his uprightness, and they committed all into his hands. They saw in him a sublime example of devotion to his country, and of abnegation of all ambitions, save the one ambition of maintaining the Protestant religion and the freedom of Holland. They knew that he sought neither title, nor power, nor wealth, and that in him was perpetuated that order of men to which Luther and Calvin belonged-men not merely of prodigious talents, but what is infinitely more rare, of heroic faith and magnanimous souls; and so “King of Holland” appeared to them a weak title-they called him the “Father of their Country.”

The great Powers of Europe watched, with an interest bordering on amazement, this gigantic struggle maintained by a handful of men, on a diminutive half-submerged territory, against the greatest monarch of his day. The heroism of the combat challenged their admiration, but its issues awakened their jealousies, and even alarms. It was no mere Dutch quarrel; it was no question touching only the amount of liberty and the kind of religion that were to be established on this sandbank of the North Sea that was at issue; the cause was a world-wide one, and yet none of the Powers interfered either to bring aid to that champion who seemed ever on the point of being overborne, or to expedite the victory on the powerful side on which it seemed so sure to declare itself; all stood aloof and left these two most unequal combatants to fight out the matter between them. There was, in truth, the same play of rivalries around the little Holland which there had been at a former era around Geneva. This rivalry reduced the Protestant Powers to inaction, and prevented their assisting Holland, just as the Popish Powers had been restrained from action in presence of Geneva. In the case of the little city on the shores of the Leman, Providence plainly meant that Protestantism should be seen to triumph in spite of the hatred and opposition of the Popish kingdoms; and so again, in the case of the little country on the shores of the North Sea, Providence meant to teach men that Protestantism could triumph independently of the aid and alliance of the Powers friendly to it. The great ones of the earth stood aloof, but William, as he told his friends, had contracted a firm alliance with a mighty Potentate, with him who is King of kings; and seeing this invisible but omnipotent Ally, he endured in the awful conflict till at last his faith was crowned with a glorious victory.

In England a crowd of statesmen, divines, and private Christians followed the banners of the Prince of Orange with their hopes and their prayers. But nations then had found no channel for the expression of their sympathies, other than the inadequate one of the policy of their sovereign; and Elizabeth, though secretly friendly to [117] William and the cause of Dutch independence, had to shape her conduct so as to balance conflicting interests. Her throne was surrounded with intrigues, and her person with perils. She had to take account of the pretensions and partisans of the Queen of Scots, of the displeasure of Philip of Spain, and of the daggers of the Jesuits, and these prevented her supporting the cause of Protestantism in Holland with arms or, to any adequate extent, with money. But if she durst not accord it public patronage or protection, neither could she openly declare against it; for in that case France would have made a show of aiding William, and Elizabeth would have seen with envy the power of her neighbor and rival considerably extended, and the influence of England, as a Protestant State, proportionately curtailed and weakened.

France was Roman Catholic and Protestant by turns. At this moment the Protestant fit was upon it: a peace had been made with the Huguenots which promised them everything but secured them nothing, and which was destined to reach the term of its brief currency within the year. The protaean Medici-Valois house that ruled that country was ready to enter any alliance, seeing it felt the obligation to fidelity in none; and the Duke of Anjou, to spite both Philip and Elizabeth, might have been willing to have taken the title of King of the Netherlands, and by championing the cause of Dutch Protestantism for an hour ruined it for ever. This made France to William of Orange, as well as to Elizabeth, an object of both hope and fear; but happily the fear predominating, for the horror of the St. Bartholomew had not yet left the mind of William, he was on his guard touching offers of help from the Court of the Louvre.

But what of Germany, with which the Prince of Orange had so many and so close relationships, and which lay so near the scene of the great conflict, whose issues must so powerfully influence it for good or for ill? Can Germany fail to see that it is its own cause that now stands at bay on the extreme verge of the Fatherland, and that could the voice of Luther speak from the tomb in the Schloss-kirk of Wittemberg, it would summon the German princes and knights around the banner of William of Orange, as it formerly summoned them to the standard of Frederick of Saxony? But since Luther was laid in the grave the great heart of Germany had waxed cold. Many of its princes seemed to be Protestant for no other end but to be able to increase their revenues by appropriations from the lands and hoards of the Roman establishment, and it was hardly to be expected that Protestants of this stamp would feel any lively interest in the great struggle in Holland. But the chief cause of the coldness of Germany was the unhappy jealousy that divided the Lutherans from the Reformed. That difference had been widening since the evil day of Marburg. Luther on that occasion had been barely able to receive Zwingle and his associates as brethren, and many of the smaller men who succeeded Luther lacked even that small measure of charity; and in the times of William of Orange to be a Calvinist was, in the eyes of many Lutherans, to be a heretic. When the death of Edward VI. compelled the celebrated John Alasco, with his congregation, to leave England and seek asylum in Denmark, West-phalus, a Lutheran divine, styled the wandering congregation of Alasco “the martyrs of the devil;” whilst another Lutheran, Bugenhagius, declared that “they ought not to be considered as Christians;” and they received intimation from the king that he would “sooner suffer Papists than them in his dominions;” and they were compelled, at a most inclement season, to embark for the north of Germany, where the same persecutions awaited them, the fondness for the dogma of con-substantiation on the part of the Lutheran ministers having almost stifled in their minds the love of Protestantism.[1] But William of Orange was an earnest Calvinist, and the opinions adopted by the Church of Holland on the subject of the Sacrament were the same with those received by the Churches of Switzerland and of England, and hence the coldness of Germany to the great battle for Protestantism on its borders.

William, therefore, seeing England irresolute, France treacherous, and Germany cold, withdrew his eyes from abroad, in seeking for allies and aids, and fixed them nearer home. Might he not make another attempt to consolidate the cause of Protestant liberty in the Netherlands themselves? The oft-recurring outbreaks of massacre and rapine were deepening the detestation of the Spanish rule in the minds of the Flemings, and now, if he should try, he might find them ripe for joining with their brethren of Holland and Zealand in an effort to throw off the yoke of Philip. The chief difficulty, he foresaw, in the way of such a confederacy was the difference of religion. In Holland and Zealand the Reformed faith was now the established religion, whereas in the other fifteen Provinces the Roman was the national faith. Popery had had a marked revival of late in the Netherlands, the date

[1]Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 213.

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of this second growth being that of their submission to Alva; and now so attached were the great body of the Flemings to the Church of Rome, that they were resolved “to die rather than renounce their faith.” This made the patriotic project which William now contemplated the more difficult, and the negotiation in favor of it a matter of great delicacy, but it did not discourage him from attempting it. The Flemish Papist, not less than the Dutch Calvinist, felt the smart of the Spanish steel, and might be roused to vindicate the honour of a common country, and to expel the massacring hordes of a common tyrant. It was now when Requesens was dead, and the government was for the time in the hands of the State Council, and the fresh atrocities of the Spanish soldiers gave added weight to his energetic words, that he wrote to the people of the Netherlands to the effect that “now was the time when they might deliver themselves for ever from the tyranny of Spain. By the good providence of God, the government had fallen into their own hands. It ought to be their unalterable resolve to hold fast the power which they possessed, and to employ it in delivering their fellow-citizens from that intolerable load of misery under which they had so long groaned. The measure of the calamities of the people, and of the iniquity of the Spaniards, was now full. There was nothing worse to be dreaded than what they had already suffered, and nothing to deter them from resolving either to expel their rapacious tyrants, or to perish in the glorious attempt.”[2] To stimulate them to the effort to which he called them, he pointed to what Holland and Zealand single-handed had done; and if “this handful of cities” had accomplished so much, what might not the combined strength of all the Provinces, with their powerful cities, achieve?

This appeal fell not to the ground. In November, 1576, a congress composed of deputies from all the States assembled at Ghent, which re-echoed the patriotic sentiments of the prince; the deliberations of its members, quickened and expedited by the Antwerp Fury, which happened at the very time the congress was sitting, ended in a treaty termed the “Pacification of Ghent.” This “Pacification” was a monument of the diplomatic genius, as well as patriotism, of William the Silent. In it the prince and the States of Holland and Zealand on the one side, and the fifteen Provinces of the Netherlands on the other, agreed to bury all past differences, and to unite their arms in order to effect the expulsion of the Spanish soldiers from their country. Their soil cleared of foreign troops, they were to call a meeting of the States-General on the plan of that great assembly which had accepted the abdication of Charles V. By the States-General all the affairs of the Confederated Provinces were to be finally regulated, but til it should meet it was agreed that the Inquisition should be for ever abolished; that the edicts of Philip touching heresy and the tumults should be suspended; that the ancient forms of government should be revived; that the Reformed faith should be the religion of the two States of Holland and Zealand, but that no Romanist should be oppressed on account of his opinion; while in the other fifteen Provinces the religion then professed, that is the Roman, was to be the established worship, but no Protestant was to suffer for conscience sake. In short, the basis of the treaty, as concerned religion, was toleration.[3]

A great many events were crowded upon this point of time. The Pacification of Ghent, which united all the Provinces in resistance to Spain, the Antwerp Fury, and the recovery of that portion of Zealand which the Spaniards by their feats of daring had wrested from William, all arrived contemporaneously to signalize this epoch of the struggle.

This was another mile-stone on the road of the Prince of Orange. In the Pacification of Ghent he saw his past efforts beginning to bear fruit, and he had a foretaste of durable and glorious triumphs to be reaped hereafter. It was an hour of exquisite gladness in the midst of the sorrow and toil of his great conflict. The Netherlands, participating in the prince’s joy, hailed the treaty with a shout of enthusiasm. It was read at the market-crosses of all the cities, amid the ringing of bells and the blazing of bonfires.

But the greatest gain in the Pacification of Ghent, and the matter which the Protestant of the present day will be best pleased to contemplate, is the advance it notifies in the march of toleration. Freedom of conscience was the basis on which this Pacification, which foreshadowed the future Dutch Republic, was formed. Calvin, twenty years before, had laid down the maxim that no one is to be disturbed for his religious opinions unless they are expressed in words or acts that are inimical to the State, or prejudicial to social order. William of Orange, in laying the first foundations of the Batavin Republic, placed them on the principle of

[2]Watson, Philip II vol 2., p. 180. See also Letter to States of Brabant, in Bor, lib. 9., p. 695

[3]Bor, lib. 9, pp. 738-741. Brandt, vol. 1, pp. 327, 328. Sir William Temple, United Provinces of the Netherlands, p.33; Edin., 1747. Watson, Philip II., vol. 2., pp.193-195

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toleration, as his master Calvin had defined it. To these two great men-John Calvin and William the Silent-we owe, above most, this great advance on the road of progress and human freedom. The first had defined and inculcated the principle in his writings; the second had embodied and given practical effect to it in the new State which his genius and patriotism had called into existence.

Chapter 24: Administration of Don John, and First Synod of Dort

Little and Great Countries—Their respective Services to Religion and Liberty—The Pacification of Ghent brings with it an Element of Weakness—Divided Counsels and Aims—Union of Utrecht—The new Governor Don John of Austria—Asked to Ratify the Pacification of Ghent—Refuses—At last Consents—“The Perpetual Edict”—Perfidy meditated—A Martyr—Don John Seizes the Castle of Namur—Intercepted Letters—William made Governor of Brabant—His Triumphal Progress to Brussels—Splendid Opportunity of achieving Independence—Roman Catholicism a Dissolvent—Prince Matthias—His Character—Defeat of the Army of the Netherlands—Bull of the Pope—Amsterdam—Joins the Protestant Side—Civic Revolution—Progress of Protestantism in Antwerp, Ghent, etc—First National Synod—Their Sentiments on Toleration—” Peace of Religion “—The Provinces Disunite—A Great Opportunity Lost—Death of Don John

Picture: View of the Belfry: Ghent

Picture: View on the Canal: Ghent.

Picture: View of the Church of St. Laurence: Rotterdam.

Picture: Don John of Austria

Picture: The Prince of Orange in his Barge on his way to Brussels

The great battles of religion and liberty have, as a rule, been fought not by the great, but by the little countries of the world. History supplies us with many striking examples of this, both in ancient and in modern times. The Pacification of Ghent is one of these. It defined the territory which was to be locked in deadly struggle with Spain, and greatly enlarged it. By the side of the little Holland and Zealand it placed Brabant and Flanders, with their populous towns and their fertile fields. With this vast accession of strength to the liberal side, one would have expected that henceforth the combat would be waged with greater vigor, promptitude, and success. But it was not so, for from this moment the battle began to languish. William of Orange soon found that if he had widened the area, he had diminished the power of the liberal cause. An element of weakness had crept in along with the new territories. How this happened it is easy to explain. The struggle on both sides was one for religion Philip had made void all the charters of ancient freedom, and abolished all the privileges of the cities, that he might bind down upon the neck of the Netherlands the faith and worship of Rome. On the other hand, William and the States that were of his mind strove to revive these ancient charters, and immemorial privileges, that under their shield they might enjoy freedom of conscience, and be able to profess the Protestant religion. None but Protestants could be hearty combatants in such a battle; religion alone could kindle that heroism which was needed to bear the strain and face the perils of so great and so prolonged a conflict. But the fifteen Provinces of the Southern Netherlands were now more Popish than at the abdication of Charles V. The Protestants whom they contained at that era had since been hanged, or burned, or chased away, and a reaction had set in which had supplied their places with Romanists; and therefore the Pacification, which placed Brabant alongside of Holland in the struggle against Spain, and which gave to the Dutch Protestant as his companion in arms the Popish Fleming, was a Pacification that in fact created two armies, by proposing two objects or ends on the liberal side. To the Popish inhabitants of the Netherlands the yoke of Spain would in no long time be made easy enough; for the edicts, the Inquisition, and the bishops were things that could have no great terrors to men who did not need their coercion to believe, or at least profess, the Romish dogmas. The professors of the Romish creed, not feeling that wherein lay the sting of the Spanish yoke, could not be expected therefore to make other than half-hearted efforts to throw it off. But far different was it with the other and older combatants. They felt that sting in all its force, and therefore could not stop half-way in their great struggle, but must necessarily press on till they had plucked out that which was the root of the whole Spanish tyranny. Thus William found that the Pacification of Ghent had introduced among the Confederates divided counsels, dilatory action, and uncertain aims; and three years after (1579) the Pacification had to be rectified by the “Union [120] of Utrecht,” which, without dissolving the Confederacy of Ghent, created an inner alliance of seven States, and thereby vastly quickened the working of the Confederacy, and presented to the world the original framework or first constitution of that Commonwealth which has since become so renowned under the name of the “United Provinces.”

Meanwhile, and before the Union of Utrecht had come into being, Don John of Austria, the newly-appointed governor, arrived in the Low Countries. He brought with him an immense prestige as the son of Charles V., and the hero of Lepanto. He had made the Cross to triumph over the Crescent in the bloody action that reddened the waters of the Lepantine Gulf; and he came to the Netherlands with the purpose and in the hope of making the Cross triumphant over heresy, although it should be by dyeing the plains of the Low Countries with a still greater carnage than that with which he, had crimsoned the Greek seas. He arrived to find that the seventeen Provinces had just banded themselves together to drive out the Spanish army, and to re-assert their independence; and before they would permit him to enter they demanded of him an oath to execute the Pacification of Ghent. This was a preliminary which he did not relish; but finding that he must either accept the Pacification or else return to Spain, he gave the promise, styled the “Perpetual Edict,” demanded of him (17th February, 1577), and entered upon his government by dismissing all the foreign troops, which now returned into Italy.[1] With the departure of the soldiers the brilliant and ambitious young governor seemed to have abandoned all the great hopes which had lighted him to the Netherlands. There were now great rejoicings in the Provinces: all their demands had been conceded.

But Don John trusted to recover by intrigue what he had surrendered from necessity. No sooner was he installed at Brussels than he opened negotiations with the Prince of Orange, in the hope of drawing him from “the false position” in which he had placed himself to Philip, and winning him to his side. Don John had had no experience of such lofty spirits as William, and could only see the whims of fanaticism, or the aspirings of ambition, in the profound piety and grand aims of William. He even attempted, through a malcontent party that now arose, headed by the Duke of Aerschot, to

[1]Strada, bk.9., p. 32.

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work the Pacification of Ghent so as to restore the Roman religion in exclusive dominancy in Holland and Zealand, as well as in the other Provinces. But these attempts of Don John were utterly futile. William had no difficulty in penetrating the true character and real design of the viceroy. He knew that, although the Spanish troops had been sent away, Philip had still some 15,000 German mercenaries in the Provinces, and held in his hands all the great keys of the country. William immovably maintained his attitude of opposition despite all the little arts of the viceroy. Step by step Don John advanced to his design, which was to restore the absolute dominancy at once of Philip and of Rome over all the Provinces. His first act was to condemn to death Peter Panis, a tailor by trade, and a man of most exemplary life, and whose only crime had been that of hearing a sermon from a Reformed minister in the neighborhood of Mechlin. The Prince of Orange made earnest intercession for the martyr, imploring the governor “not again to open the old theaters of tyranny, which had occasioned the shedding of rivers of blood;”[2] notwithstanding the poor man was beheaded by the order of Don John. The second act of the viceroy, which was to seize on the Castle of Namur, revealed his real purpose with even more flagrancy. To make himself master of that stronghold he had recourse to a stratagem. Setting out one morning with a band of followers,

[2]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 333

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attired as if for the chase, but with arms concealed under their clothes, the governor and his party took their way by the castle, which they feigned a great desire to see. No sooner were they admitted by the castellan than they drew their swords, and Don John at the same instant winding his horn, the men-at-arms, who lay in ambush in the surrounding woods, rushed in, and the fortress was captured.[3] As a frontier citadel it was admirably suited to receive the troops which the governor expected soon to return from Italy; and he remarked, when he found himself in possession of the castle, that this was the first day of his regency: it might with more propriety have been called the first day of those calamities that pursued him to the grave.

Intercepted letters from Don John to Philip II. fully unmasked the designs of the governor, and completed the astonishment and alarm of the States. These letters urged the speedy return of the Spanish troops, and dilating on the inveteracy of that disease which had fastened on the Netherlands, the letters said, “the malady admitted of no remedies but fire and sword.” This discovery of the viceroy’s baseness raised to the highest pitch the admiration of the Flemings for the sagacity of William, who had given them early warning of the duplicity of the governor, and the cruel designs he was plotting. There upon the Provinces a third time threw off their obedience to Philip II., declaring that Don John was no longer Stadtholder or legitimate Governor of the Provinces.[4] Calling the Prince of Orange to Brussels, they installed him as Governor of Brabant, a dignity which had been bestowed hitherto only on the Viceroys of Spain. As the prince passed along in his barge from Antwerp to Brussels, thousands crowded to the banks of the canal to gaze on the great patriot and hero, oil whose single shoulder rested the weight of this struggle with the mightiest empire then in existence. The men of Antwerp stood on this side of the canal, the citizens of Brussels lined the opposite bank, to offer their respectful homage to one greater than kings. They knew the toils he had borne, the dangers he had braved, the princely fortune he had sacrificed, and the beloved brothers and friends he had seen sink around him in the contest; and when they saw the head on which all these storms had burst still erect, and prepared to brave tempests not less fierce in the future, rather than permit the tyranny of Spain to add his native country to the long roll of unhappy kingdoms which it had already enslaved and crushed, their admiration and enthusiasm knew no bounds, and they saluted him with the glorious appellations of the Father of his Country, and the guardian of its liberties and laws.[5]

This was the third time that liberty had offered herself to the Flemings; and as this was to be the last, so it was the fairest opportunity the Provinces ever had of placing their independence on a firm and permanent foundation, in spite of the despot of the Escorial. The Spanish soldiers were withdrawn, the king’s finances were exhausted, the Provinces were knit together in a bond for the prosecution of their common cause, and they had at their head a man of consummate ability, of incorruptible patriotism, and they lacked nothing but hearty co-operation and union among themselves to guide the struggle to a glorious issue. With liberty, who could tell the glories and prosperities of that future that awaited Provinces so populous and rich? But, alas! it began to be seen what a solvent Romanism was, and of how little account were all these great opportunities in the presence of so disuniting and dissolving a force. The Roman Catholic nobles grew jealous of William, whose great abilities and pre-eminent influence threw theirs into the shade. They affected to believe that liberty was in danger from the man who had sacrificed all to vindicate it, and that so zealous a Calvinist must necessarily persecute the Roman religion, despite the efforts of his whole life to secure toleration for all creeds and sects. In short, the Flemish Catholics would rather wear the Spanish yoke, with the Pope as their spiritual father, than enjoy freedom under the banners of William the Silent. Sixteen of the grandees, chief among whom was the Duke of Aerschot, opened secret negotiations with the Archduke Matthias, brother of the reigning emperor, Rudolph, and invited him to be Governor of the Netherlands. Matthias, a weak but ambitious youth, greedily accepted the invitation; and without reflecting that he was going to mate himself with the first politician of the age, and to conduct a struggle against the most powerful monarch in Christendom, he departed from Vienna by night, and arrived in Antwerp, to the astonishment of those of the Fleimgs who were not in the intrigue.[6] The archduke owed the permission given him to enter the Provinces to the man he had come to supplant. William of Orange, so far from taking offense and abandoning his post, continued to consecrate his great powers to the liberation of his country. He accepted Matthias, though forced upon

[3]Bentivoglio, lib. 10., pp. 192-195

[4]Bor, lib, 11., p. 916.

[5]Watson, Philip II., vol. 2., p. 221

[6]Bor, lib. 11., p. 900. Strada, bk. 9., p. 38.

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him by an intrigue; he prevailed upon the States to accept him, and install him in the rank of Governor of the Netherlands, he himself becoming his lieutenant-general. Matthias remained a puppet by the side of the great patriot, nevertheless his presence did good; it sowed the seeds of enmity between the German and Spanish branches of the House of Austria, and it made the Roman Catholic nobles, whose plot it was, somewhat obnoxious in the eyes both of Don John and Philip. The cause of the Netherlands was thus rather benefited by it. And moreover, it helped William to the solution of a problem which had occupied his thoughts for some time past-namely, the permanent form which he should give to the government of the Provinces. So far as the matter had shaped itself in his mind, he purposed that a head or Governor should be over the Netherlands, and that under this virtual monarch should be the States-General or Parliament, and under it a State Council or Executive; but that neither the Governor nor the State Council should have power to act without the concurrence of the States-General. Such was the programme, essentially one of constitutionalism, that William had sketched in his own mind for his native land. Whom he should make Governor he had not yet determined: most certainly it would be neither himself nor Philip of Spain; and now an intrigue of the Roman Catholic nobles had placed Matthias of Austria in the post, for which William knew not where to find a suitable occupant.

But first the country had to be liberated; every other work must be postponed for this.

The Netherlands, their former Confederacy ratified (December 7th, 1577) in the “New Union” of Brussels-the last Confederacy that was ever to be formed by the Provinces-had thrown down the gauntlet to Philip, and both sides prepared for war. The Prince of Orange strengthened himself by an alliance with England. In this treaty, formed through the Marquis of Havree, the States ambassador, Elizabeth engaged to aid the Netherlanders with the loan of 100,000 pounds sterling, and a force of 5,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, their commander to have a seat in the State Council. Nor was Don John idle He had collected a considerable army from the neighboring Provinces, and these were joined by veteran troops from Italy and Spain, which Philip had ordered Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, to lead back into the Netherlands. The States army amounted to about 10,000; that of Spain to 15,000; the latter, if superior in numbers, were still more superior in discipline. On joining battle at Gemblours the army of the Netherlands encountered a terrible overthrow, a result which the bulk of the nation attributed to the cabals and intrigues of the Roman Catholic nobles.

At this stage the two great antagonistic principles which were embodied in the respective policies of Philip and William, and whose struggles with one another made themselves audible in this clash of arms, came again to the front. The world was a new taught that it was a mortal combat between Rome and the Reformation that was proceeding on the theater of the Netherlands. The torrents of blood that were being poured out were shed not to revive old charters, but to rend the chains from conscience, and to transmit to generations unborn the heritage of religious freedom. In this light did Pope Gregory XIII. show that he regarded the struggle when he sent, as he did at this time, a bull in favor of all who should fight under the banner of Don John, “against heretics, heretical rebels, and enemies of the Romish faith.” The bull was drafted on the model of those which his predecessors had been wont to fulminate when they wished to rouse the faithful to slaughter the Saracens and Turks; it offered a plenary indulgence and remission of sins to all engaged in this new crusade in the Low Countries. The bull further authorised Don John to impose a tax upon the clergy for the support of the war, “as undertaken for the defense of the Romish religion.” The banners of the Spanish general were blazoned with the sign of the cross, and the following motto: In hoc signo vici Turcos: in hoc signo vincam hereticos (“Under this sign I have vanquished the Turks: under this sign I will vanquish the heretics”). And Don John was reported to have said that “the king had rather be lord only of the ground, of the trees, shrubs, beasts, wolves, waters, and fishes of this country, than suffer one single person who has taken up arms against him, or at least who has been polluted with heresy, to live and remain in it.”[7]

On the other side Protestantism also lifted itself up. Amsterdam, the capital of Protestant Holland, still remained in the hands of the Romanists. This state of matters, which weakened the religious power of the Northern States, was now rectified. Mainly by the mediation of Utrecht, it was agreed on the 8th of February, 1578, that Amsterdam should enroll itself with the States of Holland, and swear allegiance to the Prince of Orange as its Stadtholder, on condition that the Roman faith were the only one publicly professed in the city, with right to all Protestants to practice their own worship, without molestation, outside the

[7]Braudt, vol. 1., p. 333

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walls, and privilege of burying their dead in unconsecrated but convenient ground, provided that neither was psalm sung, nor prayer offered, nor any religious act performed at the grave, and that the corpse was followed to the tomb by not more than twenty-six persons. To this was added a not less important concession-namely, that all who had been driven away on account of difference of religious opinion should have liberty to return to Amsterdam, and be admitted to their former rights and privileges.[8] This last stipulation, by attracting back crowds of Protestant exiles, led to a revolution in the government of the city. The Reformed faith had now a vast majority of the citizens-scarcely were there any Romanists in Amsterdam save the magistrates and the friars-and a plot was laid, and very cleverly executed, for changing the Senate and putting it in harmony with the popular sentiment. On the 26th May, 1578, the Stadthouse was surrounded by armed citizens, and the magistrates were made prisoners. All the monks were at the same time secured by soldiers and others dispersed through the city. The astonished senators, and the not less astonished friars, were led through the streets by their captors, the crowd following them and shouting, “To the gallows! to the gallows with them, whither they have sent so many better men before them!” The prisoners trembled all over, believing that they were being conducted to execution. They were conveyed to the river’s edge, the magistrates were put on board one boat, and the friars, along with a few priests who had also been taken into custody, were embarked in another, and both were rowed out into deep water. Their pallid faces, and despairing adieus to their relations, bespoke the apprehensions they entertained that the voyage on which they had set out was destined to be fatal. The vessels that bore them would, they believed, be scuttled, and give them burial in the ocean. No such martyrdom, however, awaited them; and the worst infliction that befell them was the terror into which they had been put of a watery death. They were landed in safety on St. Anthony’s Dyke, and left at liberty to go wherever they would, with this one limitation, that if ever again they entered Amsterdam they forfeited their lives. Three days after these melodramatic occurrences a body of new senators was elected and installed in office, and all the churches were closed during a week. They were then opened to the Reformed by the magistrates, who, accompanied by a number of carpenters, had previously visited them and removed all their images. Thus, without the effusion of a drop of blood, was Protestantism established in Amsterdam. The first Reformed pastors in that capital were John Reuchelin and Peter Hardenberg.[9] The Lutherans and Anabaptists were permitted to meet openly for their worship, and the Papists were allowed the private exercise of theirs.

With this prosperous gale Protestantism made way in the other cities of Holland and of Brabant. This progress, profoundly peaceful in the majority of cases, was attended with tumult in one or two instances. In Haarlem the Protestants rose on a Communion Sunday, and coming upon the priests in the cathedral while in the act of kindling their tapers and unfurling their banners for a grand procession, they dispossessed them of their church. In the tumult a priest was slain, but the soldier who did the deed had to atone for it with his life; the other rioters were summoned by tuck of drum to restore the articles they had stolen, and the Papists were assured, by a public declaration, of the free exercise of their religion.[10] The presence of the Prince of Orange in Brussels, and the Pacification of Ghent, which shielded the Protestant worship from violence, had infused new courage into the hearts of the Reformed in the Southern Netherlands. From their secret conventicles in some cellar or dark alley, or neighboring wood, they came forth and practiced their worship in the light of day. In Flanders and Brabant the Protestants were increasing daily in numbers and courage. On Sunday, the 16th of May, in the single city of Antwerp, Protestant sermons were preached in not less than sixteen places, and the Sacrament dispensed in fourteen. In Ghent it was not uncommon for Protestant congregations to convene in several places, of four, five, and six hundred persons, and all this in spite of the Union of Brussels (1577), which trenched upon the toleration accorded in the Pacification of Ghent.[11]

The first National Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church met at Dort on the 2nd of June, 1578. This body, in a petition equally distinguished for the strength of its reasonings and the liberality of its sentiments, urged the States-General to make provision for the free exercise of the Reformed religion, as a measure righteous in itself, and the surest basis for the peace of the Provinces. How truly catholic were the Dutch Calvinists, and how much the cause of toleration owes to them, can be seen only from their own words, addressed to the Archduke Matthias and the Council of State. After having proved that the cruelties practiced upon them had led only to an increase of their numbers, with the

[8]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 334.

[9]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 338.

[10]Ibid., p. 339

[11]Ibid., p. 339.

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loss nevertheless of the nation’s welfare, the desolation of its cities, the banishment of its inhabitants, and the ruin of its trade and prosperity, they go on to say that the refusal of the free exercise of their religion reduced them to this dilemma, “either that they must live without any religion, or that they themselves must force a way to the public exercise of it.” They object to the first alternative as leading to an epicurean life, and the contempt of all laws human and divine; they dread the second as tending to a breach in the union of the Provinces, and possibly the dissolution of the present Government. But do they therefore ask exclusive recognition or supremacy? Far from it. “Since the experience of past years had taught them,” they say, “that by reason of their sins they could not all be reduced to one and the same religion, it was necessary to consider how both religions could be maintained without damage or prejudice to each other. As for the objection,” they continue, “that two religions are incompatible, in the same country, it had been refuted by the experience of all ages. The heathen emperors had found their account more in tolerating the Christians, nay, even in using their service in their wars, than in persecuting them. The Christian emperors had also allowed public churches to those who were. of a quite different opinion from them in religious matters, as might be seen in the history of Constantine, of his two sons, of Theodosius, and others. The Emperor Charles V. found no other expedient to extricate himself from the utmost distress than by consenting to the exercise of both religions.” After citing many other examples they continue thus: “France is too near for us to be ignorant that the rivers of blood with which that kingdom is; overflowed can never be dried up but by a toleration of religion. Such a toleration formerly produced peace there; whereas being interrupted the said kingdom was immediately in a flame, and in danger of being quite consumed. We may likewise learn from the Grand Seignior, who knows how to tyrannise as well as any prince, and yet tolerates both Jews and Christians in his dominions without apprehending either tumults or defections, though there be more Christians in his territories who never owned the authority of the Pope, than there are in Europe that acknowledge it.” And they concluded by craving “that both religions might be equally tolerated till God should be pleased to reconcile all the opposite notions that reigned in the land.”[12]

In accordance with the petition of the Synod of Dort, a scheme of “Religious Peace,” drafted by the Prince of Orange and signed by Matthias, was presented to the States-General for adoption. Its general basis was the equal toleration of both religions throughout the Netherlands. In Holland and Zealand, where the Popish worship had been suppressed, it was to be restored in all places where a hundred resident families desired it. In the Popish Provinces an equivalent indulgence was to be granted wherever an equal number of Protestant families resided. Nowhere was the private exercise of either faith to be obstructed; the Protestants were to be eligible to all offices for which they were qualified, and were to abstain from all trade and labor on the great festivals of the Roman Church. This scheme was approved by the States-General, under the name of the “Peace of Religion.” William was overjoyed to behold his most ardent hopes of a united Fatherland, and the vigorous prosecution of its great battle against a common tyranny, about to be crowned.

But these bright hopes were only for a moment. The banner of toleration, bravely uplifted by William, had been waved over the Netherlands only to be furled again. The Roman Catholic nobles, with Aerschot and Champagny at their head, refused to accept the “Peace of Religion.” In their immense horror of Protestantism they forgot their dread of the Spaniard, and rather than that heresy should defile the Fatherland, they were willing that the yoke of Philip should be bound down upon it. Tumults, violences, and conflicts broke out in many of the Provinces. Revenge begat revenge, and animosity on the one side kindled an equal animosity on the other. Something like a civil war raged in the Southern Netherlands, and the sword that ought to have been drawn against the common foe was turned against each other. These strifes and bigotries wrought at length the separation of the Walloon Provinces from the rest, and in the issue occasioned the loss of the greater part of the Netherlands. The hour for achieving liberty had passed, and for three centuries nearly these unwise and unhappy Provinces were not to know independence, but were to be thrown about as mere political make-weights, and to be the property now of this master and now of that.

Meanwhile the two armies lay inactive in the presence of each other. Both sides had recently

[12]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 339-341.-Motley in his great history, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, when speaking of the intolerance and bigotry of the religious bodies of the Netherlands, specially emphasises the

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received an augmentation of strength. The Netherlands army had been increased to something like 30,000, first by an English levy led by John Casimir, and next by a French troop under the command of the Duke of Alencon, for the Netherlands had become the pivot on which the rival policies of England and France at this moment revolved. The sinews of war were lacking on both sides, and hence the pause in hostilities. The scenes were about to shift in a way that no one anticipated. Struck down by fever, Don John lay a corpse in the Castle of Namur. How different the destiny he had pictured for himself when he entered this fatal land! Young, brilliant, and ambitious, he had come to the Netherlands in the hope of adding to the vast renown he had already won at Lepanto, and of making for himself a great place in Christendom-of mounting, it might be, one of its thrones. But a mysterious finger had touched the scene, and suddenly changed its splendours into blackness, and transformed the imagined theater of triumph into one of misfortune and defeat. Fortune forsook her favourite the moment his foot touched this charmed soil. Withstood and insulted by the obstinate Netherlanders, outwitted and baffled by the great William of Orange, suspected by his jealous brother Philip II., by whom he was most inadequately supported with men and money, all his hours were embittered by toil, disappointment, and chagrin. The constant dread in which he was kept by the perils and pitfalls that surrounded him, and the continual circumspection which he was compelled to exercise, furrowed his brow, dimmed his eye sapped his strength, and broke his spirit. At last came fever, and fever was followed by delirium. He imagined himself upon the battle-field: he shouted out his orders: his eye now brightened, now faded, as he fancied victory or defeat to be [127] [128] attending his arms. Again came a lucid interval,[13] but only to fade away into the changeless darkness of death. He died before he had reached his thirtieth year. Another hammer, to use Beza’s metaphor, had been worn out on the anvil of the Church.[14]

[13]Strada, bk. 10., p. 16

[14]Of the transport of his body through France, and its presentation to Philip II. in the Escorial, Strada (bk. 10.) gives a minute but horrible account. “To avoid those vast expenses and ceremonious contentions of magistrates and priests at city gates, that usually waylay the progress of princes whether alive or dead, he caused him to be taken in pieces, and the bones of his arms, thighs, legs, breast, and head (the brains being taken out), with other the severed parts, filling three mails, were brought safely into Spain; where the bones being set again, with small wires, they easily rejointed all the body, which being filled with cotton, armed, and richly habited, they presented Don John entire to the king as if he stood only resting himself upon his commander’s-staff, looking as if he lived and breathed.” On presenting himself thus before Philip, the monarch was graciously pleased to permit Don John to retire to his grave, which he had wished might be beside that of his father, Charles V., in the Escorial.

Chapter 25: Abjuration of Philip, and Rise of the Seven United Provinces

Alexander, Duke of Parma—His Character—Divisions in the Provinces—Siege of Maestricht—Defection of the Walloons—Union of Utrecht—Bases of Union—Germ of the United Provinces—Their Motto—Peace Congress at Cologne—Its Grandeur—Philip makes Impossible Demands—Failure of Congress—Attempts to Bribe William—His Incorruptibility—Ban Fulminated against him—His “Apology “—Arraignment of Philip—The Netherlands Abjure Philip II. as King—Holland and Zealand confer their Sovereignty on William—Greatness of the Revolution—Its Place in the History of Protestantism

Picture: Alexander Farnese: Duke of Parma

Don John having on his death-bed nominated Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, to succeed him, and the choice having soon afterwards been ratified by Philip II., the duke immediately took upon him the burden of that terrible struggle which had crushed his predecessor. If brilliant abilities could have commanded corresponding success, Parma would have speedily re-established the dominion of Spain throughout the whole of the Netherlands. His figure was finely moulded, and his features were handsome, despite that the lower part of his face was buried in a bushy beard, and that his dark eye had a squint which warned the spectator to be on his guard. His round compact head was one which a gladiator might have envied; his bearing was noble; he was temperate, methodical in business, but never permitted its pressure to prevent his attendance on morning mass; his coolness on the battle-field gave confidence to his soldiers; and while his courage and skill fitted him to cope with his antagonists in war, his wisdom, and cunning, and patience won for him not a few victories in the battles of diplomacy. His conduct and valor considerably retrieved at the beginning the affairs of Philip, but the mightier intellect with which he was confronted, and the destinies of the cause against which he did battle, attested in the end their superiority over all the great talents and dexterous arts of Alexander of Parma, seconded by the powerful armies of Spain. After the toil and watchfulness of years, and after victories gained with much blood, to yield not fruit but ashes, he too had to retire from the scene disappointed, baffled, and vanquished.

A revived bigotry had again split up the lately united Fatherland, and these divisions opened an entrance for the arts and the arms of Parma. Gathering up the wreck of the army of Don John, and reinforcing the old battalions by new recruits, Parma set vigorously to work to reduce the Provinces, and restore the supremacy of both Philip and Rome. Sieges and battles signalised the opening of the campaign; in most of these he was successful, but we cannot stay to give them individual narration, for our task is to follow the footsteps of that Power which had awakened the conflict, and which was marching on to victory, although through clouds so dark and tempests so fierce that a few only of the Netherlanders were able to follow it. The first success that rewarded the arms of Parma was the capture of Maestricht. Its massacre of three days renewed the horrors of former sieges. The cry of its agony was heard three miles off; and when the sword of the enemy rested, a miserable remnant (some three or four hundred, say the old chroniclers)[1] was all that was spared of its thirty-four thousand

[1]Bor, lib. 13., p. 65; Hooft, lib. 15., p. 633

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inhabitants. Crowds of idlers from the Walloon country flocked to the empty city; but though it was easy to repeople it, it was found impossible to revive its industry and prosperity. Nothing besides the grass that now covered its streets would flourish in it but vagabondism. The loss which the cause of Netherland liberty sustained in the fall of Maestricht was trifling, compared with the injury inflicted by another achievement of Parma, and which he gained not by arms, but by diplomacy. Knowing that the Walloons were fanatically attached to the old religion, he opened negotiations, and ultimately prevailed with them to break the bond of common brotherhood and form themselves upon a separate treaty. It was a masterly stroke. It had separated the Roman from the Batavian Netherlands. William had sought to unite the two, and make of them one nationality, placing the key-stone of the arch at Ghent, the capital of the Southern Provinces, and the second city in the Netherlands. But the subtle policy of Parma had cut the Fatherland in twain, and the project of William fell to the ground.

The Prince of Orange anxiously considered how best to parry the blow of Parma, and neutralise its damaging effects. The master-stroke of the Spaniard led William to adopt a policy equally masterly, and fruitful beyond all the measures he had yet employed; this was the “Union of Utrecht.” The alliance was formed between the States of Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Guelder-land, Zutphen, Overyssel, and Groningen. It was signed on the 23rd of January, 1579, and six days thereafter it was proclaimed at Utrecht, and hence its name. This “Union” constituted the first foundation-stone in the subsequently world-renowned Commonwealth of the United Provinces of the Low Countries. The primary and main object of the Confederated States was the defense of their common liberty; for this end they resolved to remain hereafter and for ever united as one Province-without prejudice, however, to the ancient privileges and the peculiar customs of each several State. As regarded the business of religion, it was resolved that each Province should determine that question for itself-with this proviso, that no one should be molested for his opinion. The toleration previously enacted by the Pacification of Ghent was to rule throughout the bounds of the Confederacy.[2] When the States contrasted their own insignificance with the might of their great enemy, seven little Provinces banding themselves against an aggregate of nearly twice that number of powerful Kingdoms, they chose as a fitting representation of their doubtful fortunes, a ship laboring amid the waves without sail or oars, and they stamped his device upon their first coins, with the words Incertum quo fata ferant[3] (“We know not whither the fates shall bear us”). Certainly no one at that hour was sanguine or bold enough to conjecture the splendid future awaiting these seven adventurous Provinces.

This attitude on their part made the King of Spain feign a desire for conciliation. A Congress was straightway assembled at Cologne to make what was represented as a hopeful, and what was certainly a laudable, attempt to heal the breach. On the Spanish side it was nothing more than a feint, but on that account it wore externally all the greater pomp and stateliness. In these respects nothing was lacking that could make it a success. The first movers in it were the Pope and the emperor. The deputies were men of the first rank in the State and the Church; they were princes, dukes, bishops, and the most renowned doctors in theology and law. Seldom indeed have so many mitres, and princely stars, and ducal coronets graced any assembly as those that shed their brilliance on this; and many persuaded themselves, when they beheld this union of rank and office with skill in law, in art, and diplomacy, that the Congress would give birth to something correspondingly magnificent. It met in the beginning of May, 1579, and it did not separate till the middle of November of the same year. But the six months during which it was in session were all too short to enable it to solve the problem which so many conventions and conferences since the breaking out of the Reformation had attempted to solve, but had failed-namely, how the absolute demands of authority are to be reconciled with the equally inflexible claims of conscience. There were only two ideas promulgated in that assembly; so far the matter was simple, and the prospect of a settlement hopeful; but these two ideas were at opposite poles, and all the stars, coronets, and mitres gathered there could not bridge over the gulf between them. The two ideas were those to which we have already referred-Prerogative and Conscience.

The envoys of the Netherland States presented fourteen articles, of which the most important was the one referring to religion. Their proposal was that “His Majesty should be pleased to tolerate the exercise of the Reformed religion and the Confession of Augsburg in such towns and places where the same were at that time publicly professed. That the States should also on their part, presently after

[2]See Articles of Union in full in Brandt; Sir W. Temple; Watson, Philip II.; Motley, Dutch RepubIic, etc..

[3]Temple, United Provinces, etc.., chap. 1., p. 38.

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the peace was declared, restore the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion in all the aforesaid towns and places, upon certain equitable conditions which should be inviolably preserved.” “The Christian religion,” said the envoys in supporting their proposal, “was a great mystery, in promoting of which God did not make use of impious soldiers, nor of the sword or bow, but of his own Spirit and of the ministry of pastors, or shepherds sent by him. That the dominion over souls and consciences belonged to God only, and that he only was the righteous Avenger and Punisher of the abuses committed in matters of religion. They insisted particularly upon the free exercise of religion.”[4]

The deputies on the king’s side refused to listen to this proposal. They would agree to nothing as a basis of peace, save that the Roman Catholic religion-all others excluded-should be professed in all the Provinces; and as regarded such as might refuse to return to the Roman faith, time would be given them to settle their affairs, and retire from the country[5] Half the citizens well-nigh would have had to exile themselves if this condition had been accepted. Where so large a body of emigrants were to find new seats, or how the towns left empty by their departure were to be re-peopled, or by what hands the arts and agriculture of the country were to be carried on, does not seem to have been provided for, or even thought of, by the Congress.

William of Orange had from the first expected nothing from this Conference. He knew Philip never would grant what only the States could accept-the restoration, namely, of their charters, and the free exercise of their Protestant faith; he knew that to convene such an assembly was only to excite hopes that could not possibly be fulfilled, and so to endanger the cause of the Provinces; he knew that mitres and ducal coronets were not arguments, nor could render a whit more legitimate the claims of prerogative; that ingenious and quirky expedients, and long and wordy discussions, would never bring the two parties one hair’s-breadth nearer to each other; and as he had foreseen, so did it turn out. When the Congress ended its sitting of six months, the only results it had to show were the thousands of golden guilders needed for its expenses, and the scores of hogsheads of Rhenish wine which had been consumed in moistening its dusty deliberations and debates.

Contemporaneously with this most august and most magnificent, yet most resultless Congress, attempts were made to detach the Prince of Orange from his party and win him over to the king’s side. Private overtures were made to him, to the effect that if he would forsake the cause of Netherland independence and retire to a foreign land, he had only to name his “price” and it should be instantly forthcoming, in honour, or in money, or in both. More particularly he was promised the payment of his debts, the restitution of his estates, reimbursement of all the expenses he had incurred in the war, compensation for his losses, the liberation of his son the Count of Buren, and should William retire into Germany, his son would be placed in the Government of Holland and Utrecht, and he himself should be indemnified, with a million of money as a gratuity. These offers were made in Philip’s name by Count Schwartzenburg, who pledged his faith for the strict performance of them.

This was a mighty sum, but it could not buy William of Orange. Not all the honors which this monarch of a score of kingdoms could bestow, not all the gold which this master of the mines of Mexico and Peru could offer, could make William sell himself and betray his country. He was not to be turned aside from the lofty, the holy object he had set before him the glory of redeeming from slavery a people that confided in him, and of kindling the lamp of a pure faith in the land which he so dearly loved. If his presence were an obstacle to peace on the basis of his country’s liberation, he was ready to go to the ends of the earth, or to his grave; but he would be no party to a plot which had only for its object to deprive the country of its head, and twine round it the chain of a double slavery.[6]

The gold of Philip had failed to corrupt the Patriot: the King of Spain next attempted to gain his end by another and a different stratagem. The dagger might rid him of the man whom armies could not conquer, and whom money could not buy. This “evil thought” was first suggested by Cardinal Granvelle, who hated the prince, as the vile hate the upright, and it was eagerly embraced by Philip, of whose policy it was a radical principle that “the end justifies the means.” The King of Spain fulminated a ban, dated 15th March, 1580, against the Prince of Orange, in which he offered “thirty thousand crowns, or so, to any one who should deliver him, dead or alive.” The preamble of the ban set forth at great length, and with due

[4]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 366.

[5]Bor, lib. 13., pp. 58, 59. Brandt, vol. 1., p. 366

[6]Reidanus, ann. 2., 29. Gachard, Correspondance de Guillaume le Tacit, vol. 4., Preface. Bor, lib. 13., p. 95.

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formality, the “crimes,” in other words the services to liberty, which had induced his patient and loving sovereign to set a price upon the head of William, and make him a mark for all the murderers in Christendom. But the indignation of the virtuous king can be adequately understood only by perusing the words of the ban itself. “For these causes,” said the document, “we declare him traitor and miscreant, enemy of ourselves and of the country. As such we banish him perpetually from all our realms, forbidding all our subjects..... to administer to him victuals, drink, fire, or other necessaries......We expose the said William as an enemy of the human race, giving his property to all who may seize it. And if any one of our subjects, or any stranger, should be found sufficiently generous of heart to rid us of this pest, delivering him to us, dead or alive, or taking his life, we will cause to be furnished to him, immediately after the deed shall have been done, the sum of twenty-five thousand crowns of gold. If he have committed any crime, however heinous, we promise to pardon him; and if he be not already noble we will ennoble him for his valor.”

The dark, revengeful, cowardly, and bloodthirsty nature of Philip II. appears in every line of this proclamation. In an evil hour for himself had the King of Spain launched this fulmination. It fixed the eyes of all Europe upon the Prince of Orange, it gave him the audience of the whole world for his justification; and it compelled him to bring forward facts which remain an eternal monument of Philip’s inhumanity, infamy, and crime. The Vindication or “Apology” of William, addressed to the Confederated, States, and of which copies were sent to all the courts of Europe, is one of the most precious documents of history, for the light it throws on the events of the time, and the exposition it gives of the character and motives of the actors, and more especially of himself and Philip. It is not so much a Defence as an Arraignmnent, which, breaking in a thunder-peal of moral indignation, must have made the occupant of the throne over which it rolled to shake and tremble on his lofty seat. After detailing his own efforts for the emancipation of the down-trodden Provinces, he turns to review the acts, the policy, and the character of the man who had fulminated against him this ban of assassination and murder. He charges Philip with the destruction, not of one nor of a few of those liberties which he had sworn to maintain, but of all of them; and that not once, but a thousand times; he ridicules the idea that a people remain bound while the monarch has released himself from every promise, and oath, and law; he hurls contempt at the justification set up for Philip’s perjuries-namely, that the Pope had loosed him from his obligations-branding it as adding blasphemy to tyranny, and adopting a principle which is subversive of faith among men; he accuses him of having, through Alva, concerted a plan with the French king to extirpate from France and the Netherlands all who favored the Reformed religion, giving as his informant the French king himself. He pleads guilty of having disobeyed Philip’s orders to put certain Protestants to death, and of having exerted himself to the utmost to prevent the barbarities and cruelties of the “edicts.” He boldly charges Philip with living in adultery, with having contracted an incestuous marriage, and opening his way to this foul couch by the murder “of his former wife, the mother of his children, the daughter and sister of the kings of France.” He crowns this list of crimes, of which he accuses Philip, with a yet more awful deed-the murder of his son, the heir of his vast dominions, Don Carlos.

With withering scorn he speaks of the King of Spain’s attempt to frighten him by raising against him “all the malefactors and criminals in the world.” “I am in the hand of God,” said the Christian patriot, “he will dispose of me as seems best for his glory and my salvation.” The prince concludes his Apology by dedicating afresh what remained of his goods and life to the service of the States. If his departure from the country would remove an impediment to a just peace, or if his death could bring an end to their calamities, Philip should have no need to hire assassins and poisoners: exile would be sweet, death would be welcome. He was at the disposal of the States. They had only to speak-to issue their orders, and he would obey; he would depart, or he would remain among them, and continue to toil in their cause, till death should come to release him, or liberty to crown them with her blessings.[7]

This Apology was read in a meeting of the Confederated Estates at Delft, the 13th of December, 1580, and their mind respecting it was sufficiently declared by the step they were led soon thereafter to adopt. Abjuring their allegiance to Philip, they installed the Prince of Orange in his room. Till this time Philip had remained nominal sovereign of the Netherlands, and all edicts and deeds were passed in his name, but now this formality was dropped. The Prince of Orange had before this been earnestly entreated by the States

[7]The Apology is given at nearly full length in Watson, Philip II., vol. 3., Appendix

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to assume the sovereignty, but he had persistently declined to allow himself to be clothed with this office, saying that he would give no ground to Philip or to any enemy to say that he had begun the war of independence to obtain a crown, and that the aggrandisement of his family, and not the liberation of his country, was the motive which had prompted him in all his efforts for the Low Countries. Now, however (5th July, 1581), the dignity so often put aside was accepted conditionally, the prince assuming, at the solemn request of the States of Holland and Zealand, the “entire authority, as sovereign and chief of the land, as long as the war should continue.”[8]

This step was finally concluded on the 26th of July, 1581, by an assembly of the States held at the Hague, consisting of deputies from Brabant, Guelderland, Zutphen, Flanders, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Overyssel, and Friesland. The terms of their “Abjuration” show how deeply the breath of modern constitutional liberty had entered the Low Countries in the end of the sixteenth century; its preamble enunciates truths which must have shocked the adherents of the doctrine of Divine right. The “Abjuration” of the States declared “that the people were not created by God for the sake of the prince, and only to submit to his commands, whether pious or impious, right or wrong, and to serve him and his slaves; but that, on the contrary, the prince was made for the good of the people, in order to feed, preserve, and govern them according to justice and equity, as a father his children, and a shepherd his flock: that whoever in opposition to these principles pretended to rule his subjects as if they were his bondmen, tought to be deemed a tyrant, and for that reason might be rejected or deposed, especially by virtue of the resolution of the States of the nation, in case the subjects, after having made use of the most humble supplications and prayers, could find no other means to divert him from his tyrannical purposes, nor to secure their own native rights.”[9]

They next proceed to apply these principles. They fill column after column with a history of Philip’s reign over the Low Countries, in justification of the step they had taken in deposing him. The document is measured and formal, but the horrors of these flaming years shine through its dry technicalities and its cold phraseology. If ever there was a tyrant on the earth, it was Philip II. of Spain; and if ever a people was warranted in renouncing its allegiance, it was the men who now came forward with this terrible tale of violated oaths, of repeated perfidies, of cruel wars, of extortions, banishments, executions, martyrdoms, and massacrings, and who now renounced solemnly and for ever their allegiance to the prince who was loaded with all these crimes.

The act of abjuration was carried into immediate execution. Philip’s seal was broken, his arms were torn down, his name was forbidden to be used in any letters-patent, or public deed, and a new oath was administered to all persons in public office and employment.

This is one of the great revolutions of history. It realized in fact, and exhibited for the first time to the world, Representative Constitutional Government. This revolution, though enacted on a small theater, exemplified principles of universal application, and furnished a precedent to be followed in distant realms and by powerful kingdoms. It is important to remark that this is one of the mightiest of the births of Protestantism. For it was Protestantism that inspired the struggle in the Low Countries, and that maintained the martyr at the stake and the hero in the field till the conflict was crowned with this ever-memorable victory. The mere desire for liberty, the mere reverence for old charters and municipal privileges, would not have carried the Netherlanders through so awful and protracted a combat; it was the new force awakened by religion that enabled them to struggle on, sending relay after relay of martyrs to die and heroes to fight for a free conscience and a scriptural faith, without which life was not worth having. In this, one of the greatest episodes of the great drama of the Reformation, we behold Protestantism, which had been proceeding step by step in its great work of creating a new society-a new world-making another great advance. In Germany it had produced disciples and churches; in Geneva it had moulded a theocratic republic; in France it had essayed to set up a Reformed throne, but, failing in this, it created a Reformed Church so powerful as to include well-nigh half the nation. Making yet another essay, we see it in the Netherlands dethroning Philip of Spain, and elevating to his place William of Orange. A constitutional State, summoned into being by Protestantism, is now seen amid the despotisms of Christendom, and its appearance was a presage that in the centuries to follow, Protestantism would, in some cases by its direct agency, in others by its reflex influence, revolutionise all the governments and effect a transference of all the crowns of Europe.

[8]Bor, lib. 15., pp. 181-185

[9]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 383

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Chapter 26: Assassination of William the Silent

What the United Provinces are to become—The Walloons Return to Philip—William’s Sovereignty—Brabant and the Duke of Anjou—His Entry into the Netherlands—His Administration a Failure—Matthias Departs—The Netherlands offer their Sovereignty to William—He Declines—Defection of Flanders—Attempt on William’s Life—Anastro, the Spanish Banker—The Assassin—He Wounds the Prince—Alarm of the Provinces—Recovery of William—Death of his Wife—Another Attempt on William’s Life—Balthazar Gerard—His Project of Assassinating the Prince—Encouraged by the Spanish Authorities—William’s Murder—His Character

The Seven United Provinces-the fair flower of Netherland Protestantism-had come to the birth. The clouds and tempests that overhung the cradle of the infant States were destined to roll away, the sun of prosperity and power was to shine forth upon them, and for the space of a full century the number of their inhabitants, the splendor of their cities, the beauty of their country, the vastness of their commerce, the growth of their wealth, the number of their ships, the strength of their armies, and the glory of their letters and arts, were to make them the admiration of Europe, and of the [134] world. Not, however, till that man who had helped above all others to find for Protestantism a seat where it might expand into such a multiform magnificence, had gone to his grave, was this stupendous growth to be, beheld by the world. We have now to attend to the condition in which the dissolution of Philip’s sovereignty left the Netherlands.

In the one land of the Low Countries, there were at this moment three communities or nations. The Walloons, yielding to the influence of a common faith, had returned under the yoke of Spain. The Central Provinces, also mostly Popish, had ranged themselves under the sovereignty of the Duke of Anjou, brother of Henry III. of France. The Provinces of Holland and Zealand had elected (1581), as we have just seen, the Prince of Orange as their king.[1] His acceptance of the dignity was at first provisional. His tenure of sovereignty was to last only during the war; but afterwards, at the earnest entreaty of the States, the prince consented that it should be perpetual. His lack of ambition, or his exceeding sense of honour, made him decline the sovereignty of the Central Provinces, although this dignity was also repeatedly pressed upon him; and had he accepted it, it may be that a happier destiny would have been in store for the Netherlands. His persistent refusal made these Provinces cast their eyes abroad in search of a chief, and in an evil hour their choice lighted upon a son of Catherine de Medici. The Duke of Anjou, the elect of the Provinces, inherited all the vices of the family from which he was sprung. He was treacherous in principle, cruel in disposition, profuse in his habits, and deeply superstitious in his faith; but his true character had not then been revealed; and the Prince of Orange, influenced by the hope of enlisting on the side of the Netherlands the powerful aid of France, supported his candidature. France had at that moment, with its habitual vacillation, withdrawn its hand from Philip II. and given it to the Huguenots, and this seemed to justify the prince in indulging the hope that this great State would not be unwilling to extend a little help to the feeble Protestants of Flanders. It was rumoured, moreover, that Anjou was aspiring to the hand of Elizabeth, and that the English queen favoured his suit; and to have the husband of the Queen of England as King of the Netherlands, was to have a tolerable bulwark against the excesses of the Spanish Power. But all these prudent calculations of bringing aid to Protestantism were destined to come to nothing. The duke made his entry (February, 1582) into the Netherlands amid the most joyous demonstrations of the Provinces;[2] and to gratify him, the public exercise of the Popish religion, which for some time had been prohibited in Antwerp, was restored in one of the churches. But a cloud soon overcast the fair morning of Anjou’s sovereignty ill the Netherlands. He quickly showed that he had neither the principle nor the ability necessary for so difficult a task as he had undertaken. Bitter feuds sprang up between him and his subjects, and after a short administration, which neither reflected honour on himself nor conferred benefit on the Provinces, he took his departure, followed by the reproaches and accusations of the Flemings. The cause of Protestantism was destined to owe nothing to a son of Catherine de Medici. Matthias, who had dwindled in William’s overshadowing presence into a nonentity, and had done neither good nor evil, had gone home some time before. Through neither of these men had the intrigues of the Romanists borne fruit, except to the prejudice of the cause they were intended to further.

The Duke of Anjou being gone, the States of Brabant and Flanders came to the Prince of Orange (August, 1583) with an offer of their crown; but no argument could induce him to accept the scepter they were so anxious to thrust into his hand. He took the opportunity, however, which his declinature offered, of tendering them some wholesome advice. They must, he said, bestir themselves, and contribute more generously, if they wished to speed in the great conflict in which they had embarked. As for himself, he had nothing now to give but his services, and his blood, should that be required. All else he had already parted with for the cause: his fortune he had given; his brothers he had given. He had seen with pleasure, as the fruit of his long struggles for the Fatherland and freedom of conscience, the fair Provinces of Holland and Zealand redeemed from the Spanish yoke. And to think that now these Provinces were neither oppressed by Philip, nor darkened by Rome, was a higher reward than would be ten crowns, thought they could place them upon his head. He would never put it in the power of Philip of Spain to say that William of Orange had sought other recompense than that of rescuing his native land from slavery.[3]

William, about this time, was deeply wounded by the defection of some friends in whom he had reposed confidence as sincere Protestants and good

[1]Bor, lib. 15., pp. 185, 186

[2]Bor, lib. 17., pp. 297-301. Hooft, lib. 19., p. 295

[3]Message of William to the States-General, MS.-apud Motley, vol. 2., p. 437

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patriots, and he was not less mortified by the secession of Flanders, with its powerful capital, Ghent, from the cause of Netherland independence to the side of Parma. Thus one by one the Provinces of the Netherlands, whose hearts had grown faint in the struggle, and whose “strength was weakened in the way,” crept back under the shadow of Spain, little dreaming what a noble heritage they had forfeited, and what centuries of insignificance, stagnation, and serfdom spiritual and bodily awaited them, as the result of the step they had now taken. The rich Southern Provinces, so stocked with cities, so finely clothed, so full of men, and so replenished with commercial wealth, fell to the share of Rome: the sand-banks of Holland and Zealand were given to Protestantism, that it might convert the desert into a garden, and rear on this narrow and obscure theater an empire which, mighty in arms and resplendent in arts, should fill the world with its light.

The ban which Philip had fulminated against the prince began now to bear fruit. Wonderful it would have been if there had not been found among the malefactors and murderers of the world some one bold enough to risk the peril attendant on grasping the golden prize which the King of Spain held out to them. A year only had elapsed since the publication of the ban, and now an attempt was made to destroy the man on whose head it had set a price. Gaspar Anastro, a Spanish banker in Antwerp, finding himself on the verge of bankruptcy, bethought him of earning Philip’s reward, and doing the world a service by ridding it of so great a heretic, and helping himself, at the same time, by retrieving his ruined fortunes. But lacking courage to do the bloody deed with his own hand, he hired his servant to execute it. This man, having received from a priest absolution of his sins, and the assurance that the doors of paradise stood open to him, repaired to the mansion of the prince, and waited an opportunity to commit the horrible act. As Orange was crossing the hall, from the dinner-table, the miscreant approached him on pretence of handing him a petition, and putting his pistol, loaded with a single bullet, close to his head, discharged it at the prince. The ball, entering a little below the right ear, passed out through the left jaw, carrying with it two teeth. The wound bled profusely, and for some weeks the prince’s life was despaired of, and vast crowds of grief-stricken citizens repaired to the churches to beseech, with supplications and tears, the Great Disposer to interpose his power, and save from death the Father of his Country. The prayer of the nation was heard. William recovered to resume his burden, and conduct another stage on the road to freedom the two Provinces which he had rescued from the paws of the Spanish bear. But if the husband survived, the wife fell by the murderous blow of Philip. Charlotte de Bourbon, so devoted to the prince, and so tenderly beloved by him, worn out with watching and anxiety, fell ill of a fever, and died. William sorely missed from his side that gentle but heroic spirit, whose words had so often revived him in his hours of darkness and sorrow.

The two years that now followed witnessed the progressive disorganisation of the Southern Netherlands, under the combined influence of the mismanagement of the Duke of Anjou, the intrigues of the Jesuits, and the diplomacy and arms of the Duke of Parma. Despite all warnings, and their own past bitter experience, the Provinces of Brabant and Flanders again opened their ear to the “cunning charmers” of Spain and the “sweet singers” of Rome, and began to think that the yoke of Philip was not so heavy and galling as they had accounted it, and that the pastures of “the Church” were richer and more pleasant than those of Protestantism. Many said, “Beware!” and quoted the maxim of the old Book: “They who wander out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.” But the Flemings turned away from these counsellors. Divisions, distractions, and perpetual broils made them fain to have peace, and, to use the forcible metaphor of the Burgomaster of Antwerp, “they confessed to a wolf, and they had a wolf’s absolution.”

It was in the Northern Provinces only, happily under the scepter of William, who had rescued them from the general shipwreck of the Netherlands, that order prevailed, and that anything like steady progress could be traced. But now the time was come when these States must lose the wisdom and courage to which they owed the freedom they already enjoyed, and the yet greater degree of prosperity and power in store for them. Twenty years had William the Silent “judged” the Low Countries: now the tomb was to close over him. He had given the labours of his life for the cause of the Fatherland: he was now to give his blood for it. Not fewer than five attempts had been made to assassinate him. They had failed; but the sixth was to succeed. Like all that had preceded it, this attempt was directly instigated by Philip’s proscription. In the summer of 1584, William was residing at Delft, having married Louisa de Coligny, the daughter of the admiral, and the widow of Teligny, who perished, as we have seen, in the St. Bartholomew. A young Burgundian, who hid great duplicity and some talent under a [136] mean and insignificant exterior, had that spring been introduced to the prince, and had been employed by him in some business, though of small moment. This stranger professed to be a zealous Calvinist, the son of a French Protestant of the name of Guion, who had died for his faith. His real name was Balthazar Gerard, and being a fanatical Papist, he had long wished to “serve God and the king” by taking off the arch-heretic. He made known his design to the celebrated Franciscan, Father Gery of Tournay, by whom he was “much comforted and strengthened in his determination.” He revealed his project also to Philip’s Governor of the Low Countries. The Duke of Parma, who had at that time four ruffians lurking in Delft on the same business, did not dissuade Gerard from his design, but he seems to have mistrusted his fitness for it; although afterwards, being assured on this point, he gave him some encouragement and a little money. The risk was great, but so too were the inducements-a fortune, a place in the peerage of Spain, and a crown in paradise.

It was Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584. The prince was at dinner with his wife, his sister (the Princess of Schwartzenberg), and the gentlemen of his suite. In the shadow of a deep arch in the wall of the vestibule, stood a mean-looking personage with a cloak cast round him. This was Balthazar Gerard. His figure had caught the eye of Louisa de Coligny as, leaning on her husband’s arm, she passed through the hall to the dining-room, and his pale, agitated, and darkly sinister countenance smote her with a presentiment of evil. “He has come for a passport,” said the prince, calming her alarm, and passed into the dining-hall. At table, the prince, thinking nothing of the muffled spectre in the ante-chamber, was cheerful as usual. The Burgomaster of Leeuwarden was present at the family dinner, and William, eager to inform himself of the religious and political condition of Friesland, talked much, and with great animation, with his guest. At two o’clock William rose from table, and crossed the vestibule on his way to his private apartments above. His foot was already on the second step of the stairs, which he was ascending leisurely, when the assassin, rushing from his hiding-place, fired a pistol loaded with three balls, one of which passed through the prince’s body, and struck the wall opposite. On receiving the shot, William exclaimed: “O my God, have mercy on my soul! O my God, have mercy on this poor people!”[4] He was carried into the dining-room, laid upon a couch, and in a few minutes he breathed his last. He had lived fifty-one years and sixteen days. On the 3rd of August he was laid in his tomb at Delft, mourned, not by Holland and Zealand only, but by all the Netherlands-the Walloons excepted-as a father is mourned.[5]

So closed the great career of William the Silent. It needs not that we paint his character: it has portrayed itself in the actions of his life which we have narrated. Historians have done ample justice to his talents, so various, so harmonious, and each so colossal, that the combination presents a character of surpassing intellectual and moral grandeur such as has rarely been equalled, and yet more rarely excelled. But as the ancient tree of Netherland liberty never could have borne the goodly fruit that clothed its boughs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries unless the shoot of Protestantism had been grafted upon it, and new sap infused into the old decaying charters, so the talents of William of Orange, varied, beautiful, and brilliant though they were, unless linked with something diviner, could not have evolved that noble character and done those great deeds which have made the name of William the Silent one of the brightest on the page of history. Humanity, however richly endowed with genius, is a weak thing in itself; it needs to be grafted with a higher Power in order to reach the full measure of greatness. In the case of William of Orange it was so grafted. It was his power of realising One unseen, whose will he obeyed, and on whose arm he leaned, that constituted the secret of his strength. He was the soldier, the statesman, the patriot; but before all he was the Christian. The springs of his greatness lay in his faith. Hence his lofty aims, which, rising high above fame, above power, above all the ordinary objects of ambition, aspired to the only and supreme good. Hence, too, that inflexible principle which enabled him, without turning to the right or to the left, to go straight on through all the intricacies of his path, making no compromise with falsehood, never listening to the solicitations of self-interest, and alive only to the voice of duty. Hence, too, that unfaltering perseverance and undying hope that upheld him in the darkest hour, and amid the most terrible calamities, and made him confident of ultimate victory where

[4]“Mon Dieu, ayez pitie de mon ame! mon Dieu, ayez pitie de ce pauvre peuple! “

[5]The original authority from which the historians Bor, Meteren, Hooft, and others have drawn their details of the assassination of William of Orange is the “Official Statement,” compiled by order of the States-General, of which there is a copy in the Royal Library at the Hague.

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another would have abandoned the conflict as hopeless. William of Orange persevered and triumphed where a Caesar or a Napoleon would have despaired and been defeated. The man and the country are alike: both are an epic. Supremely tragic outwardly is the history of both. It is defeat succeeding defeat; it is disaster heaped upon disaster, and calamity piled upon calamity, till at last there stands personified before us an Iliad of woes. But by some marvellous touch, by some transforming fiat, the whole scene is suddenly changed: the blackness kindles into glorious light, the roar of the tempest subsides into sweetest music, and defeat grows into victory. The man we had expected to see prostrate beneath the ban of Philip, rises up greater than kings, crowned with the wreath of a deathless sovereignty; and the little State which Spain had thought to consign to an eternal slavery, rends the chain from her neck; and from her seat amid the seas, she makes her light to circulate along the shores of the islands and continents of the deep, and her power to be felt, and her name reverenced, by the mightiest kingdoms on the earth.

Chapter 27: Order and Government of the Netherland Church

The Spiritual Movement beneath the Armed Struggle—The Infant Springs—Gradual Development of the Church of the Netherlands—The “Forty Ecclesiastical Laws “—Their Enactments respecting the Election of Ministers—Examination and Admission of Pastors—Care for the Purity of the Pulpit—The “Fortnightly Exercise “—Yearly Visitation—Worship and Schools—Elders and Deacons—Power of the Magistrate in the Church—Controversy respecting it—Efforts of the States to Compose these Quarrels—Synod at Middelburg—It Completes the Constitution of the Dutch Church

Picture: Death of William the Silent: Prince of Orange.

The development of the religious principle is somewhat overshadowed by the struggle in arms which Protestantism had to maintain in the Low Countries. But the well-defined landing-place at which we have arrived, permits us to pause and take a closer view of the inner and spiritual conflict. Amid the armies that are seen marching to and fro over the soil of the Netherlands; amid the battles that shake it from side to side; amid the blaze of cities kindled by the Spaniard’s torch, and fields drowned in blood by the Spanish sword, we can recognize the silent yet not inefficacious presence of a great power. It is here that we find the infant springs of a movement that to the outward eye seems so very martial and complex. It is in closets where the Bible is being read; it is in little assemblies gathered in cellar or thicket or cave, where prayer is being offered up and the Scriptures are being searched; it is in the prison where the confessor languishes, and at, the stake where the martyr is expiring, that we find the beginnings of that impulse which brought a nation into the field with arms in its hands, and raised up William of Orange to withstand the power of Spain. It was not the old charters that kindled the fire in the Netherlands. These were slowly and silently returning to dust, and the Provinces were sinking with them into slavery, and both would have continued uninterruptedly their quiescent repose had not an old Book, which claims a higher than human authorship, awakened conscience, and made it more indispensable to the men of the Netherlands to have freedom of worship than to enjoy goods or estate, or even life itself. It was this inexorability that brought on the conflict.

But was it not a misfortune to transfer such a controversy to the arena of the battle-field? Doubtless it was; but for that calamity the disciples of the Gospel in the Netherlands are not to blame. They waited long and endured much before they betook them to arms. Nearly half a century passed away after the burning of the first martyrs of Protestantism in Brussels till the first, sword was unsheathed in the war of independence. During that period, speaking generally-for the exact number never can be ascertained-from 50,000 to 100,000 men and women had been put to death for religion. And when at last war came, it came not from the Protestants, but from the Spaniards. We have seen the powerful army of soldiers which Alva led across the Alps, and we have seen the terrible work to which they gave themselves when they entered the country. The Blood Council was set up, the preaching of the Gospel was forbidden, the ministers were hanged, whole cities were laid in ashes, and, the gibbets being full, the trees of the field were converted into gallows, and their boughs were seen [138] laden with the corpses of men and women whose only crime was that they were, or were suspected of being, converts to Protestantism. As if this were not enough, sentence of death was passed upon all the inhabitants of the Netherlands. Not even yet had a sword been drawn in opposition to a tyranny that had converted the Provinces, recently so flourishing, into a slaughter-house, and that threatened speedily to make them as silent as a graveyard. Nor did Philip mean that his strangling, burnings, and massacrings should stop at the Netherlands. The orders to his devastating hordes were to follow the steps of Protestantism to every land where it had gone; to march to the shores of the Leman; to the banks of the Thames; to France, should the Guises fail in the St. Bartholomew they were at that moment plotting: everywhere “extermination, utter extermination,” was to be inflicted. Protestantism was to be torn up by the roots, although it should be necessary to tear up along with it all human rights and liberties. It is not the Netherlands, with William at their head, for whom we need to offer vindication or apology, for coming forward at the eleventh hour to save Christendom and the world from a catastrophe so imminent and so tremendous; the parties that need to be defended are those more powerful States and princes who stood aloof, or rendered but inadequate aid at this supreme crisis, and left the world’s battle to be fought by one of the smallest of its kingdoms. It is no doubt true, as we are often reminded, that the great Defender of the Church is her heavenly King; but it is equally true that he saves her not by miracle, but by blessing the counsels and the arms, as well as the teaching and the blood of her disciples. There is a time to die for the truth, and there is a time to fight for it; and the part of Christian wisdom is to discern the “times,” and the duty which they call for.

Leaving the armed struggles that are seen on the surface, let us look at the under-current, which, from one hour to another, is waxing in breadth and power. Protestantism in the Netherlands does not form one great river, as it did in some other countries. For half a century, at least, it is a congeries of fountains that burst out here and there, and send forth a multitude of streamlets, that are seen flowing through the country and refreshing it with living water. The course of Netherland Protestantism is the exact reverse of that of the great river of the land, the Rhine, which long keeping its floods united, divides at last into an infinity of streams, and falls into the ocean. Netherland Protestantism, long parted into a multitude of courses, gathers at length its waters into one channel, and forms henceforth one great river. This makes it somewhat difficult to obtain a clear view of the Netherland Protestant Church. That Church is first seen in her martyrs, and it may be truly said that her martyrs are her glory, for they are excelled in numbers, and in holy heroism, by those of no Church in Christendom. The Netherland Church is next seen in her individual congregations, scattered through the cities of Flanders, Brabant, and Holland; and these congregations come into view, and anon disappear, according as the cloud of persecution now rises and now falls; and last of all, that Church is seen in her Synods. Her days of battle and martyrdom come at length to an end; and under the peaceful scepter of the princes of the House of Orange, her courts regularly convene, her seminaries flourish, her congregations fill the land, and the writings of her theologians are diffused through Christendom. The schools of Germany have ceased by this time to be the crowded resort of scholars they once were; the glory of the French Huguenots has waxed dim; and the day is going away in Geneva, where in the middle and end of the sixteenth century it had shone so brightly; but the light of Holland is seen burning purely, forming the link between Geneva and the glory destined to illuminate England in the seventeenth century.

The order and government established in the Church of Holland may be clearly ascertained from the “Forty Ecclesiastical Laws,” which in the year 1577 were drawn up and published in the name of the Prince of Orange as Stadtholder, and of the States of Holland, Zealand, and their allies. The preamble of the Act indicates the great principle of ecclesiastical jurisprudence entertained by the framers, and which they sought to embody in the Dutch Church. “Having,” say they, “nothing more at heart than that the doctrine of the holy Gospel may be propagated in its utmost purity in the towns and other places of our jurisdiction, we have thought fit, after mature deliberation, to make the following rules, which we will and require to be inviolably preserved; and we have judged it necessary that the said rules should chiefly relate to the administration of Church government, of which there are to be found in Holy Scripture four principal kinds: 1. That of Pastors, who are likewise styled Bishops, Presbyters, Ministers in the Word of God, and whose office chiefly consists in teaching the said Word, and in the administration of the Sacraments. 2. That of Doctors, to whose office is now substituted that of Professors of Divinity. 3. That of Elders, whose main business is to watch over men’s morals, and to bring transgressors again into the right way by friendly [139] [140] admonitions; and 4. That of Deacons, who have the care of the sick.”

According to this programme of Church government, or body of ecclesiastical canons, now enacted by the States, the appointment of ministers was lodged in the hands of the magistrates, who were to act, however, upon “the information and with the advice of the ministers.” Towns whose magistrates had not yet embraced the Reformed religion, were to be supplied with pastors from a distance. No one was to assume at his own hands an office so sacred as the ministry: he must receive admission from the constituted authorities of the Church. The minister “elect” of a city had first to undergo examination before the elders, to whom he must give proofs that his learning was competent, that his pulpit gifts were such as might enable him to edify the people, and, above all, that his life was pure, lest he should dishonor the pulpit, and bring reproach upon “the holy office of the ministry.” If found qualified in these three particulars, “he shall be presented,” say the canons, “to the magistrate for his approbation, in order to his preaching to the people,” that they, too, may be satisfied as to his fitness to instruct them. There still awaits him another ordeal before he can enter a pulpit as pastor of a flock. He has been nominated by the magistrate with advice of the ministers; he has been examined by the elders; he has been accepted by the people; and thus has given guarantees as to his learning, his life, and his power of communicating instruction; but before being ordained to the office of the ministry, “his name shall be published from the pulpit,” say the canons, “three Sundays successively, to the end that if any man has aught to object against him, or can show any cause why he should not be admitted, he may have time to do it.” We shall suppose that no objections have been offered-at least none such as to form a bar to his admission

- the oath of allegiance is then administered to him. In that oath he swears obedience to the lawful authorities “in all things not contrary to the will of God.” To this civil oath was appended a solemn vow of spiritual fidelity, in these words: “Moreover, I swear that I will preach and teach the Word of God. after the purest manner, and with the greatest diligence, to the end it may bring forth much fruit in this congregation, as becomes a true and faithful shepherd..... Neither will I forsake this ministry on account of any advantage or disadvantage.” It was to the ecclesiastical authorities that this promise was comnonly given in other Presbyterian Churches, but in Holland it was tendered to the nation through the magistrate, the autonomy of the Church not being as yet complete. The act of ordination was to be preceded by a sermon on the sacred function, and followed by prayers for a blessing on the pastor and his flock. So simple was the ritual in studied contrast to the shearings, the anointings, and the investitures of the Roman Church, which made the entrance into sacred orders an affair of so much mystic pomp. “This,” the canons add, “we think sufficient, seeing that the ancient ceremonies are degenerated into abominable institutions,” and they might have added, had failed to guard the purity of the priesthood,[1]

In these canons we see at least an earnest desire evinced on the part of the civil authorities of Holland to secure learned and pious men for its pulpits, and to provide guarantees, so far as human foresight and arrangement could do so, against the indolent and unfaithful discharge of the office on the part of those entrusted with it. And in this they showed a wise care. The heart of a Protestant State is its Church, and the heart of a Church is its pulpit, and the centuries which have elapsed since the era of the Reformation furnish us with more than one example, that so long as the pulpit retains its purity, the Church will preserve her vigour; and while the Church preserves her vigour, the commonwealth will continue to flourish; and that, on the other hand, when languor invades the pulpit, corruption sets-in in the Church, and from the Church the leprosy quickly extends to the State; its pillars totter, and its bulwarks fall.

Following an example first originated at Geneva, the ministers of a city and of the parishes around met every fortnight to confer together on religious matters, as also on their studies, and, in short, on whatever concerned the welfare of the Church and the efficiency of her pastors. Every minister, in his turn, preached before his brethren; and if his sermon was thought to contain anything contrary to sound doctrine, the rest admonished him of his error. In order still more to guard the purity and keep awake the vigilance of the ministry, a commission, consisting of two elders and two ministers of the chief town, was to make a yearly circuit through the dependent Provinces, and report the state of matters to the magistrate on their return, “to the end,” say the canons, “that if they find anything amiss it may be seasonably redressed.” Not fewer than three sermons a week were to be preached “in all public places,” and on the afternoon of Sunday the Heidelberg Catechism was to be expounded in all the churches.Baptism was to

[1]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 318, 319

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be administered by a minister only; it was not to be denied to any infant; it was “pious and praiseworthy” for the parent himself to bring the child to be baptised, and the celebration was to take place in the church in presence of the congregation, unless the child were sick, when the ordinance might be dispensed at home “in presence of some godly persons.” The Lord’s Supper was to be celebrated four times yearly, care being taken that all who approached the table were well instructed in the faith. The canons, moreover, prescribe the duty of ministers touching the visitation of the sick, the care of prisoners, and attendance at funerals. A body of theological professors was provided for the University of Leyden; and the magistrates planted a school in every town under their jurisdiction, selecting as teachers only those who professed the Reformed faith, “whose business it. shall be to instil into them principles of true religion as well as learning.”

The elders were chosen, not by the congregation, but by the magistrates of the city. They were to be selected from their own body, “good men, and not inexperienced in the matters of religion;” they were to sit with the pastors, constituting a court of morals, and to report to the Government such decisions and transactions as it might concern the Government to know. To the deacons was assigned the care of the poor. The State arrangements in Holland for this class of the community made the office of deacon well-nigh superfluous; nevertheless, it was instituted as being an integral part of the Church machinery; and so the canons bid the magistrates take care “that fit and godly stewards be appointed, who understand how to assist the poor according to their necessities, by which means the trade of begging may be prevented, and the poor contained within the bounds of their duty; this will be easily brought about as soon as an end shall be put to our miseries by peace and public tranquillity.”[2]

This first framework of the Netherland Reformed Church left the magistrate the highest functionary in it. The final decision of all matters lay with him. In matters of administration and of discipline, in questions of morals and of doctrine, he was the court of last appeal. This presents us with a notable difference between the Protestant Church of the Netherlands and the Churches of Geneva and France. Calvin aimed, as we have seen, at a complete separation of the civil and the spiritual domain; he sought to exclude entirely the power of the magistrate in things purely spiritual, and he effected this in the important point of admission to the Communion-table; but in Geneva, the Church being the State, the two necessarily touched each other at a great many points, and the Reformer failed to make good the perfect autonomy which he aimed at conferring on the Church. In France, however, as we have also seen, he realized his ideal fully. He established in that country an ascending gradation of Church courts, or spiritual tribunals, according to which the final legislation and administration of all spiritual affairs lay within the Church herself. We behold the French Protestant Church taking her place by the side of the French Government, and exhibiting a scheme of spiritual administration and rule as distinct and complete as that of the civil government of the country. But in the Netherlands we fail to see a marked distinction between the spiritual and the civil power: the ecclesiastical courts merge into the magistrates tribunal, and the head of the State is to the Church in room of National Synod and Assembly. One reason of the difference is to be found in the fact that whereas in France the magistrate was hostile, in the Low Countries he was friendly, and was oftener found in the van than in the rear of the Reform. Moreover, the magistrates of Holland could plead a very venerable and a very unbroken precedent for their interference in the affairs of the Church: it had been, they affirmed, the practice of princes from the days of Justinian downwards.[3]

This was one source of the troubles which afterwards afflicted the States, and which we must not pass wholly without notice. Peter Cornelison and Gaspar Koolhaes, ministers in Leyden, were (1579) the first to begin the war which raged so long and so fiercely in Holland on the question of the authority of the Civil Government in Ecclesiastical matters. Peter Cornelison maintained that elders and deacons ought to be nominated by the Consistory and proposed to the congregation without the intervention of the magistrate. Gaspar Koolhaes, on the contrary, maintained that elders and deacons, on being nominated by the Consistory, should be approved of by the magistrates, and afterwards presented to the congregation. The dispute came before the magistrates, and decision was given in favor of the latter method, that elders and deacons elect should receive the approval of the magistrate before being presented to the people. The States of Holland, with the view of preserving the public peace and putting

[2]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 321, 322

[3]See “Reasons of prescribing these Ecclesiastical Laws”-Brandt, vol. 1., p. 322.

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an end to these quarrels, appointed certain divines to deduce from Scripture, and embody in a concise treatise, the Relations of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Powers-in other words, to give an answer to the question, what the magistrate may do and what he may not do in the Church. It is almost unnecessary to say that their dissertation on this difficult and delicate question did not meet the views of all parties, and that the tempest was not allayed. The worthy divines took somewhat decided views on the magistrate’s functions. His duty, they said, was “to hinder those who corrupt the Word of God from disturbing the external peace of the Church, to fine and imprison them, and inflict corporal punishments upon them.” As an illustration Peter Cornelison, the champion of the Consistorial rights, was dismissed from his charge in Leyden, an apology accompanying the act, in which the magistrates set forth that they “did not design to tyrannise over the Church, but to rid her of violent and seditious men,” adding” that the Church ought to be governed by Christ alone, and not by ministers and Consistories.” This looked like raising a false issue, seeing both parties admitted that the government of the Church is in Christ alone, and only disputed as to whether that government ought to be administered through magistrates, or through ministers and Consistories.[4]

The National Synod which met at Dort in 1578, and which issued the famous declaration in favor of toleration, noticed in a previous chapter, agreed that a National Synod should be convened once every three years. In pursuance of that enactment, the Churches of Antwerp and Delft, to whom the power had been given of convoking the assembly, issued circular letters calling the Synod, which accordingly assembled in 1581 at Middelburg in Zealand. The constitution of the Netherland Reformed Church-so far framed by the “Ecclesiastical Laws”-this Synod completed on the French model. The Consistories, or Kirk-sessions, it placed under classes or Presbyteries; and the Presbyteries it placed under particular Synods. The other regulations tended in the direction of curtailing the power of the magistrate in Church matters. The Synod entirely shut him out in the choice of elders and deacons, and it permitted him to interfere in the election of ministers only so far as to approve the choice of the people. The Synod likewise decreed that all ministers, elders, deacons, and professors of divinity should subscribe the Confession of Faith of the Netherland Church. In the case of Koolhaes, who had maintained against Cornelison the right of the magistrate to intervene in the election of elders and deacons, the Synod found his doctrine erroneous, and ordained him to make a public acknowledgement. Nevertheless, he refused to submit to this judgment, and though excommunicated by the Synod of Haarlem next year, he was sustained in the spiritual functions and temporal emoluments of his office by the magistrates of Leyden. The matter was abundantly prolific of strifes and divisions, which had all but ruined the Church at Leyden, until it ended in the recalcitrant resigning his ministry and adopting the trade of a distiller.[5]

[4]Abridgment of Brandt’s History, vol. 1., pp. 200-202.

[5]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 381, 382.

Chapter 28: Disorganisation of the Provinces

Vessels of Honour and of Dishonour—Memorial of the Magistrates of Leyden—They demand an Undivided Civil Authority—The Pastors demand an Undivided Spiritual Authority—The Popish and Protestant Jurisdictions—Oath to Observe the Pacification of Ghent Refused by many of the Priests—The Pacification Violated—Disorders—Tumults in Ghent, etc—Dilemma of the Romanists—Their Loyalty—Miracles—The Prince obliged to Withdraw the Toleration of the Roman Worship- Priestly Charlatanties in Brussels—William and Toleration

Picture: View in Haarlem: the Corn Market

Picture: View of Flushing.

In proportion as the Reformed Church of the Netherlands rises in power and consolidates her order, the Provinces around her fall into disorganisation and weakness. It is a process of selection and rejection that is seen going on in the Low Countries. All that is valuable in the Netherlands is drawn out of the heap, and gathered round the great principle of Protestantism, and set apart for liberty and glory; all that is worthless is thrown away, and left to be burned in the fire of [143] despotism. Of the Seventeen Provinces seven are taken to be fashioned into a “vessel of honour,” ten are left to become a “vessel of dishonour.” The first become the “head of gold,” the second are the “legs and feet of clay.”

Notwithstanding the efforts of the Synod of Middelburg, the peace at large was not restored; there was still war between the pastors and some of the municipalities. The next move in the battle came from the magistrates of Leyden. Their pride had been hurt by what the Synod of Middelburg had done, and they presented a complaint against it to the States of Holland. In a Synod vested with the power of enacting canons, the magistrates of Leyden saw, or professed to see, another Papacy rising up. The fear was not unwarranted, seeing that for a thousand years the Church had tyrannised over the State. “If a new National Synod is to meet every three years,” say the magistrates in their memorial to the States, “the number of ecclesiastical decrees will be so great that we shall have much ado to find the beginning and the end of that link.” It was a second canon law which they dreaded. “If we receive the decrees of Synods we shall become their vassals,” they reasoned. “We demand,” said they in conclusion, “that the civil authority may still reside in the magistrates, whole and undivided; we desire that the clergy may have no occasion to usurp a new jurisdiction, to raise themselves above the Government, and rule over the subjects.”

The ministers and elders of the Churches of Holland met the demand for an undivided civil authority on the, part of the magistrates by a demand for an undivided spiritual authority on the part of the Church. They asked that “the government of the Church, which is of a spiritual nature, should still reside, whole and undivided, in the pastors and overseers of the Churches, and that politicians, and particularly those who plainly showed that they were not of the Reformed religion, should have no occasion to exercise an unreasonable power over the Church, which they could no more endure than the yoke of Popery.” And they add, “that having escaped from the Popish tyranny, it behoved them to see that the people did not fall into unlimited licentiousness, or libertinage, tending to nothing but disorder and confusion. The blunted rod should not be thrown away lest peradventure a sharper should grow up in its room.”[1] It is true that both the Popish and the Protestant Churches claim a spiritual jurisdiction, but there is this essential difference between the two powers claimed-the former is lawless, the latter is regulated by law. The Popish jurisdiction cannot be resisted by conscience, because, claiming to be infallible, it is above conscience. The Protestant jurisdiction, on the contrary, leaves conscience free to resist it, should it exceed its just powers, because it teaches that God alone is Lord of the conscience.

But to come to the root of the unhappy strifes that now tore up the Netherlands, and laid the better half of the Provinces once more at the feet of Rome-there were two nations and two faiths struggling in that one country. The Jesuits had now had time to bring their system into full operation, and they succeeded so far in thwarting the measures which were concerted by the Prince of Orange with the view of uniting the Provinces, on the basis of a toleration of the two faiths, in a common struggle for the one liberty. Led by the disciples of Loyola, the Romanists in the Netherlands would neither be content with equality for themselves, nor would they grant toleration to the Protestants wherever they had the power of refusing it; hence the failure of the Pacification of Ghent, and the Peace of Religion. The Fathers kept the populations in continual agitation and alarm, they stirred up seditions and tumults, they coerced the magistrates, and they provoked the Protestants in many places into acts of imprudence and violence. On the framing of the Pacification of Ghent, the Roman Catholic States issued an order requiring all magistrates and priests to swear to observe it. The secular priests of Antwerp took the oath, but the Jesuits refused it, “because they had sworn to be faithful to the Pope, who favored Don John of Austria.”[2] Of the Franciscan monks in the city twenty swore the oath, and nineteen refused to do so, and were thereupon conducted peaceably out of the town along with the Jesuits. The Franciscans of Utrecht fled, as did those of other towns, to avoid the oath. In some places the Peace of Religion was not accepted, and in others where it had been formally accepted, it was not only not kept, it was flagrantly violated by the Romanists. The basis of that treaty was the toleration of both worships all over the Netherlands. It gave to the Protestants in the Roman Catholic Provinces-in all places where they numbered a hundred-the right to a chapel in which to celebrate their worship; and where their numbers did not enable them to claim this privilege, they were nevertheless to be permitted the unmolested exercise of their worship in private. But in many places the fights accorded by the treaty were denied them: they could have no chapel, and even

[1]Brandt, vol. 1., pp. 384-386.

[2]Abridgment of Brandt’s History, vol. 1., p. 185.

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the private exercise of their worship exposed them to molestations of various kinds. The Protestants, incensed by this anti-national spirit and bad faith, and emboldened moreover by their own growing numbers, seized by force in many cities the rights which they could not obtain by peaceable means. Disorders and seditions were the consequence. Ghent, the city which had given its name to the Pacification, led the van in these disgraceful tumults; and it was remarked that nowhere was the Pacification worse kept than in the city where it had been framed. The Reformed in Ghent, excited by the harangues delivered to them from the pulpit by Peter Dathenus, an ex-monk, and now a Protestant high-flier, who condemned the toleration granted to the Romanists as impious, and styled the prince who had framed the treaty an atheist, rose upon the Popish clergy and chased them away, voting them at the same time a yearly pension. They pillaged the abbeys, pulled down the convents, broke the images, melted the bells and cast them into cannon, and having fortified the town, and made themselves masters of it they took several villages in the neighborhood and enacted there the same excesses.[3] These deplorable disorders were not confined to Ghent; they extended to Antwerp, to Utrecht, to Mechlin, and to other towns-the Protestants taking the initiative in some places, and the Romanists in others; but all these violences grew out of the rejection of the Peace of Religion, or out of the flagrant violation of its articles.[4] The commanding influence of the Prince of Orange succeeded in pacifying the citizens in Ghent and other towns, but the tumults stilled for a moment broke out afresh, and raged with greater violence. The country was torn as by a civil war.

This state of matters led to the adoption of other measures, which still more complicated and

[3]Brandt, vol. 1, p. 342.

[4]Abridgment of Brandt’s History, vol. 1., p. 196.

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embarrassed the movement. It was becoming evident to William that his basis of operations must be narrowed if he would make it stable; that the Pacification of Ghent, and the Peace of Religion, in themselves wise and just, embraced peoples that were diverse, and elements that were irreconcilable, and in consequence were failing of their ends. A few Romanists were staunch patriots, but the great body were showing themselves incapable of sympathising with, or heartily co-operating in, the great struggle for the liberation of their native land. Their consciences, in the guidance of the Jesuits, stifled their patriotism. They were awkwardly placed between two alternatives: if Philip should conquer in the war they would lose their country, if victory should declare for the Prince of Orange they would lose their faith. From this dilemma they could be delivered only by becoming Protestants, and Protestants they were determined not to become; they sought escape by the other door-namely, that of persuading or compelling the Protestants to become Romanists. Their desire to solve the difficulty by this issue introduced still another element of disorganisation and danger. There came a sudden outburst of propagandist zeal on the part of the priests, and of miraculous virtue on the part of statues and relics. Images began to exude blood, and from the bones of the dead a healing power went forth to cure the diseases of the living. These prodigies greatly edified the piety of the Roman Catholics, but they inflamed their passions against their Protestant fellow subjects, and they rendered them decidedly hostile to the cause of their country’s emancipation. The prince had always stood up for the full toleration of their worship, but he now began to perceive that what the Flemish Romanists called worship was what other men called political agitation; and though still holding by the truth of his great maxim, and as ready to tolerate all religions as ever, he did not hold himself bound to tolerate charlatanry, especially when practiced for the overthrow of Netherland liberty. He had proclaimed toleration for the Roman worship, but he had not bound himself to tolerate everything which the Romanist might substitute for worship, or which it might please him to call worship. The prince came at length to the conclusion that he had no alternative [146] but to withdraw by edict the toleration which he had proclaimed by edict; nor in doing so did he feel that he was trenching on the rights of conscience, for he recognised on the part of no man, or body of men, a right to plead conscience for feats of jugglery and tricks of legerdemain. Accordingly, on the 26th of December, 1581, an edict was published by the prince and the States of Holland, forbidding the public and private exercise of the Roman religion, but leaving opinion free, by forbidding inquisition into any man’s conscience.[5] This was the first “placard” of the sort published in Holland since the States had taken up arms for their liberties; and the best proof of its necessity is the fact that some cities in Brabant, where the bulk of the inhabitants were Romanist-Antwerp and Brussels in particular-were compelled to have recourse to the same measure, or submit to the humiliation of seeing their Government bearded, and their public peace hopelessly embroiled. Antwerp chose six “discreet ecclesiastics” to baptise, marry, and visit the sick of their own communion, granting them besides the use of two little chapels; but even these functions they were not permitted to undertake till first they had sworn fidelity to the Government. The rest of the priests were required to leave the town within twenty-four hours under a penalty of 200 crowns.[6] In Brussels the suppression of the Popish worship, which was occasioned by a tumult raised by a seditious curate, brought with it an exposure of the arts which had rendered the edict of suppression necessary. “The magistrates,” says the edict, “were convinced that the three bloody Hosts, which were shown to the people by the name of the Sacrament of Miracles, were only a stained cloth; that the clergy had exposed to the people some bones of animals as relics of saints, and deceived the simple many other ways to satisfy their avarice; that they had made them worship some pieces of alder-tree as if they had been a part of our Savior’s cross; that in some statues several holes had been discovered, into which the priests poured oil to make them sweat; lastly, that in other statues some springs had been found by which they moved several parts of their bodies.[7]

These edicts, unlike the terrible placards of Philip, erected no gibbets, and dug no graves for living men and women; they were in all cases temporary, “till public tranquillity should be restored;” they did not proscribe opinion, nor did they deny to the Romanist the Sacraments of his Church; they suppressed the public assembly only, and they suppressed it because a hundred proofs had demonstrated that it was held not for worship but sedition, and that its fruits were not piety but tumults and disturbances of the public peace. Most unwilling was the Prince of Orange to go even this length; it placed him, he saw, in apparent, not real, opposition to his formerly declared views. Nor did he take this step till the eleventh hour, and after being perfectly persuaded that without some such measure he could not preserve order and save liberty.

[5]Brandt, vol. 1., p. 383

[6]Ibid., p. 382

[7]Abridgment of Brandt, vol. 1., p. 207.

Chapter 29: The Synod of Dort

First Moments after William’s Death—Defection of the Southern Provinces—Courage of Holland—Prince Maurice—States offer their Sovereignty to Henry III. of France—Treaty with Queen Elizabeth—Earl of Leicester—Retires from the Government of the Netherlands—Growth of the Provinces—Dutch Reformed Church—Calvinism the Common Theology of the Reformation—Arminius—His Teaching—His Party—Renewal of the Controversy touching Grace and Free-will—The Five Points—The Remonstrants—The Synod of Dort—Members and Delegates—Remonstrants Summoned before it—Their Opinions Condemned by it—Remonstrants Deposed and Banished—The Reformation Theology of the Second Age as compared with that of the First

Picture: James Arminius

Picture: Episcopius Addressing the Members of the Synod of Dort

William, Prince of Orange, had just fallen, and the murderous blow that deprived of life the great founder of the Dutch Republic was as much the act of Philip of Spain as if his own hand had fired the bullet that passed through the prince’s body, and laid him a corpse in the hall of his own dwelling-house. Grief, consternation, despair overspread the Provinces. The very children cried in [147] the streets. Father William had fallen, and the Netherlands had fallen with him; so did men believe, and for a time it verily seemed as if the calamity had all the frightful magnitude in which it presented itself to the nation in the first moments of its surprise and terror. The genius, wisdom, courage, and patriotism of which the assassin’s shot had deprived the Low Countries could not possibly be replaced. William could have no successor of the same lofty stature as himself. While he lived all felt that they had a bulwark between them and Spanish tyranny; but now that he was dead, the shadow of Rome and Spain seemed again to approach them, and all trembled, from the wealthy merchant on the exchanges of Antwerp and Brussels, to the rude fisherman on the solitary coast of Zealand. The gloom was universal and tragical. The diplomacy of Parma and the ducats of Spain were instantly set to work to corrupt and seduce the Provinces. The faint-hearted, the lukewarm, and the secretly hostile were easily drawn away, and induced to abandon the great struggle for Netherland liberty and the Protestant faith. Ghent, the key-stone of that arch of which one side was Roman Catholic and the other Protestant, reconciled itself to Philip. Bruges, Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin, and other towns of Brabant and Flanders, won by the diplomacy or vanquished by the arms of Parma, returned under the yoke. It seemed as if the free State which the labours and sacrifices of William the Silent had called into existence was about to disappear from the scene, and accompany its founder to the tomb.

But the work of William was not so to vanish; its root was deeper. When the first moments of panic were over, the spirit of the fallen hero asserted itself in Holland. The Estates of that Province passed a resolution, the very day of his murder, “to maintain the good cause, by God’s help, to the uttermost, without sparing gold or blood,” and they communicated their resolve to all commanders by land and sea. A State Council, or provisional executive board, was established for the Seven Provinces of the Union. At the head of it was placed Prince Maurice, William’s second son, a lad of seventeen, who already manifested no ordinary decision and energy of character, and who in obedience to the summons of the States now quitted the University of Leyden, where he had been pursuing his studies, to be invested with many of his father’s commands and honors. The blandishments of the Duke of Parma the States strenuously repelled, decreeing that no overture of reconciliation should be received from “the tyrant;” and the city of Dort enacted that whoever should bring any letter from the enemy to any private person “should forthwith be hanged.”

It was Protestantism that had fired Holland and her six sister Provinces with this great resolve; and it was Protestantism that was to build up their State in the face of the powerful enemies that surrounded it, and in spite of the reverses and disasters to which it still continued to be liable. But the Hollanders were slow to understand this, and to see wherein their great strength lay. They feared to trust their future to so intangible and invisible a protector. They looked abroad in the hope of finding some foreign prince who might be willing to accept their crown, and to employ his power in their defense. They hesitated some time between Henry III. of France and Elizabeth of England, and at last their choice fell on the former. Henry was nearer them, he could the more easily send them assistance; besides, they hoped that on his death his crown would devolve on the King of Navarre, the future Henry IV., in whose hands they believed their religion and liberty would be safe. Willingly would Henry III. have enhanced the splendor of his crown by adding thereto the Seven United Provinces, but he feared the wrath of the League, the intrigues of Philip, and the ban of the Pope.

The infant States next repaired to Elizabeth with an offer of their sovereignty. This offer the Protestant queen felt she could neither accept nor decline. To accept was to quarrel with Philip; and the state of Ireland at that moment, and the numbers and power of the Roman Catholics in England, made a war with Spain dangerous to the stability of her own throne; and yet should she decline, what other resource had the Provinces but to throw themselves into the arms of Philip? and, reconciled to the Netherlands, Spain would be stronger than ever, and a stage nearer on its road to England. The prudent queen was in a strait between the two. But though she could not be the sovereign, might she not be the ally of the Hollanders? This she resolved to become. She concluded a treaty with them, “that the queen should furnish the States with 5,000 foot and 1,000 horse, to be commanded by a Protestant general of her appointment, and to be paid by her during the continuance of the war; the towns of Brill and Flushing being meanwhile put into her possession as security for the reimbursement to her of the war expenses” It was further stipulated “that should it be found expedient to employ a fleet in the common cause, the States should furnish the same number of ships as the queen, to be commanded by an English admiral.” [148]

The force agreed upon was immediately despatched to Holland under the command of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Leicester possessed but few qualities fitting him for the weighty business now put into his hands. He was vain, frivolous, greedy, and ambitious, but he was an immense favourite with the queen. His showy accomplishments blinded at the first the Hollanders, who entertained him at a series of magnificent banquets (December, 1585), loaded him with honors and posts, and treated him more as one who had already achieved their deliverance, than one who was only beginning that difficult and doubtful task. The Provinces soon began to see that their independence was not to come from the hand of Leicester. He proved no match for the genius and address of the Duke of Parma, who was daily winning victories for Spain, while Leicester could accomplish nothing. His prudence failing him, he looked askance on the grave statesmen and honest patriots of Holland and Zealand, while he lavished his smiles on the artful and the designing who submitted to his caprice and flattered his vanity. His ignorance imposed restrictions on their commerce which greatly fettered it, and would ultimately have ruined it, and he gave still deeper offense by expressing contempt for those ancient charters to which the Dutch were unalterably attached. Misfortune attended all that he undertook in the field. He began to intrigue to make himself master of the country. His designs came to light, the contempt of the Provinces deepened into disgust, and just a year after his first arrival in Holland, Leicester returned to England, and at the desire of Elizabeth resigned his government.

The distractions which the incapacity and treachery of the earl had occasioned among the Dutch themselves, offered a most inviting opportunity to Parma to invade the Provinces, and doubtless he would have availed himself of it but for a dreadful famine that swept over the Southern Netherlands. The famine was followed by pestilence. The number of the deaths, added to the many banishments which had previously taken place, nearly emptied some of the great towns of Brabant and Flanders. In the country the peasants, owing to the ravages of war, had neither horses to plough their fields nor seed wherewith to sow them, and the harvest was a complete failure. In the terrible desolation of the country the beasts of prey so multiplied, that within two miles of the once populous and wealthy city of Ghent, not fewer than a hundred persons were devoured by wolves.

Meanwhile Hollland and Zealand presented a picture which was in striking contrast to the desolation and ruin that overspread the Southern and richer Provinces. Although torn by factions, the result of the intrigues of Leicester, and burdened with the expense of a war which they were compelled to wage with Parma, their inhabitants continued daily to multiply, and their wealth, comforts, and power to grow. Crowds of Protestant refugees flocked into the Northern Provinces, which now became the seat of that industry and manufacturing skill which for ages had enriched and embellished the Netherlands. Having the command of the sea, the Dutch transported their products to foreign markets, and so laid the foundation of that world-wide commerce which was a source of greater riches to Holland than were the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru to Spain.[1]

We have seen the throes and agonies amid which the Dutch Republic came to the birth, and before depicting the prosperity and power in which the State culminated, it is necessary to glance at the condition of the Dutch Church. From and after 1603, dissensions and divisions broke out in it, which tended to weaken somewhat the mighty influences springing out of a free conscience and a pure faith, which were lifting the United Provinces to prosperity and renown. Up till the year we have named, the Church of the Netherlands was strictly Calvinistic, but now a party in it began to diverge from what had been the one common theology of the Reformation. It is an error to suppose that Calvin held and propagated a doctrine peculiar to himself or different from that of his fellow-Reformers. His theology contained nothing new, being essentially that of the great Fathers of the early Christian Church of the West, and agreeing very closely with that of his illustrious fellow laborers, Luther and Zwingle. Our readers will remember the battles which Luther waged with the champions of Rome in defense of the Pauline teaching under the head of the corruption of man’s whole nature, the moral inability of his will, and the absolute sovereignty of God. It was on the same great lines that Calvin’s views developed themselves. On the doctrine of Divine sovereignty, for instance, we find both Luther and Zwingle expressing themselves in terms fully stronger than Calvin ever employed. Calvin looked at both sides of the tremendous subject. He maintained the free agency of man not less strenuously than he did God’s eternal fore-ordination. He felt that both were great facts, but he doubted whether it

[1]Meteren, lib. 4., p. 434.

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lay within the power of created intelligence to reconcile the two, and he confessed that he was not able to do so. Many, however, have made this attempt. There have been men who have denied the doctrine of God’s eternal fore-ordination, thinking thereby to establish that of man’s free agency; and there have been men who have denied the doctrine of an’s free agency, meaning thereby to strengthen that of the eternal fore-ordination of all things by God; but these reconcilements are not solutions of this tremendous question-they are only monuments of man’s inability to grapple with it, and of the folly of expending strength and wasting time in such a discussion. Heedless of the warnings of past ages, there arose at this time in the Reformed Church of Holland a class of divines who renewed these discussions, and attempted to solve the awful problem by attacking the common theology of Luther, and Zwingle, and Calvin[2] on the doctrines of grace and of the eternal decrees.

The controversy had its beginning thus: the famous Francis Junius, Professor of Divinity at Leyden, died of the plague in 1602; and James Arminius, who had studied theology at Geneva under Beza, and was pastor at Amsterdam, was appointed to succeed him[3] Arminius was opposed by many ministers of the Dutch Church, on the ground that, although he was accounted learned, eloquent, and pious, he was suspected of holding views inconsistent with the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, which since 1570 had possessed authority in the Church. Promulgating his views cautiously and covertly from his chair, a controversy ensued between him and his learned colleague, Gomarus. Arminius rested God’s predestination of men to eternal life on his foresight of their piety and virtue; Gomarus, on the other hand, taught that these were not the causes, but the fruits of God’s election of them to life eternal. Arminius accused Gomarus of instilling the belief of a fatal necessity, and Gomarus reproached Armthins with making man the author of his own salvation. The controversy between the two lasted till the death of Arminius, which took place in 1609. He died in the full hope of everlasting life. He is said to have chosen for his motto, Bona conscientia Paradisus.[4]

After his death, his disciple Simon Episcopius became the head of the party, and, as usually happens in such cases, gave fuller development to the views of his master than Arminius himself had done. From the university, the controversy passed to the pulpit, and the Church was divided. In 1610 the followers of Arminius presented a Remonstrance to the States of Holland, complaining of being falsely accused of seeking to alter the faith, but at the same time craving revision of the standard books of the Dutch Church-the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism-and demanding toleration for their views, of which they gave a summary or exhibition in five points, as follow -

1. 1. That the decree of election is grounded on foreseen good works.

2. 2. That Christ died for all men, and procured remission of sins for all.

3. 3. That man cannot acquire saving faith of himself, or by the strength of his free-will, but needs for that purpose the grace of God.

4. 4. That, seeing man cannot believe at first, nor continue to believe, without the aid of this co-operating grace, his good works are to be ascribed to the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

5. 5. That the faithful have a sufficient strength, through the Divine grace, to resist all temptation, and finally to overcome it.

As to the question whether those who have once believed to the saving of the soul can again fall away from faith, and lose the grace of God, the authors of the Remonstrance were not prepared to give any answer. It was a point, they said, that needed further examination; but the logical train of the previous propositions clearly pointed to the goal at which their views touching the “perseverance of the saints” must necessarily arrive; and accordingly, at a subsequent stage of the controversy, they declared, “That those who have a true faith may, nevertheless, fall by their own fault, and lose faith wholly and for ever.”[5]

It is the first receding wave within the Protestant Church which we are now contemplating, and it is both instructive and curious to mark that the ebb from the Reformation began at what had been the starting-point of the Reform movement. We have remarked, at an early stage of our history, that the question touching the Will of man is the deepest in theology. Has the Fall left to man the power of willing and doing what is spiritually good? or has it deprived him of that power, and inflicted upon his will a moral inability? If we answer the first question affirmatively, and maintain that man still retains the power of willing and doing what is spiritually good, we advance a proposition from which, it might be argued, a whole system of Roman theology can be worked out. And if we answer the second question affirmatively, we lay a foundation from which, it might be contended on the other hand, a whole system of Protestant

[2]See Calv., Inst., lib. in., cap. 21, 22, etc.

[3]Brandt (abridg.), vol. 1., bk. 18., p. 267.

[4]Brandt-“A good conscience is Paradise,“

[5]Brandt (abridg.), vol. 10., bk. 19., pp. 307, 308,

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theology can be educed. Pursuing the one line of reasoning, if man still has the power of willing and doing actions spiritually good, he needs only cooperating grace in the matter of his salvation; he needs only to be assisted in the more difficult parts of that work which he himself has begun, and which, mainly in the exercise of his own powers, he himself carries on to the end. Hence the doctrine of good works, with all the dogmas, rites, penances, and merits that Rome has built upon it. But, following the other line of reasoning, if man, by his fall, lost the power of doing what is spiritually good, then he must be entirely dependent upon Divine grace for his recovery-he must owe all to God, from whom must come the beginning, the continuance, and the end of his salvation; and hence the doctrines of a sovereign election, an effectual calling, a free justification, and a perseverance to life eternal. The point, to an ordinary eye, seems an obscure one-it looks a purely speculative point, and one from which no practical issues of moment can flow; nevertheless, it lies at the foundation of all theology, and as such it was the first great battle-ground at the period of the Reformation. It was the question so keenly contested, as we have already narrated, between Dr. Eck on the one side, and Carlstadt and Luther on the other, at Leipsic.[6] This question is, in fact, the dividing line between the two theologies.

Of the five points stated above, the third, fourth, and fifth may be viewed as one; they teach the same doctrine-namely, that man fallen still possesses such an amount of spiritual strength as that he may do no inconsiderable part of

[6]See ante, vol. 1., bk. 5., chap. 15.

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the work of his salvation, and needs only cooperating grace; and had the authors of the Remonstrance been at Leipsic, they must have ranged themselves on the side of Eck, and done battle for the Roman theology. It was this which gave the affair its grave aspect in the eyes of the majority of the pastors of the Church of Holland. They saw in the doctrine of the “Five Points” the ground surrendered which had been won at the beginning of the Reformation; and they saw seed anew deposited from which had sprung the great tree of Romanism. This was not concealed on either side. The Remonstrants-so called from the Remonstrance given in by them to the States-put forward their views avowedly as intermediate between the Protestant and Roman systems, in the hope that they might conciliate not a few members of the latter Church, and lead to peace. The orthodox party could not see that these benefits would flow from the course their opponents were pursuing; on the contrary, they believed that they could not stop where they were

- that their views touching the fall and the power of free-will must and would find their logical development in a greater divergence from the theology of the Protestant Churches, and that by removing the great boundary-line between the two theologies, they were opening the way for a return to the Church of Rome; and hence the exclamation of Gomarus one day, after listening to a statement of his views by Arminius, in the University of Leyden. Rising up and leaving the hall, he uttered these words: “Henceforward we shall no longer be able to oppose Popery.”[7]

Peace was the final goal which the Remonstrants sought to reach; but the first-fruits of their labours were schisms and dissensions. The magistrates, sensible of the injury they were doing the State, strove to put an end to these ecclesiastical wars, and with this view they summoned certain pastors of both sides before them, and made them discuss the points at issue in their presence; but these conferences had no effect in restoring harmony. A disputation, of this sort took place at the Hague in 1611, but like all that had gone before it, it failed to reconcile the two parties and establish concord. The orthodox pastors now began to demand the assembling of a National Synod, as a more legitimate and competent tribunal for the examination and decision of such matters, and a more likely way of putting an end to the dissensions that prevailed; but the Remonstrant clergy opposed this proposal. They had influence enough with the civil authorities to prevent the calling of a Synod for several years; but the war waxing louder and fiercer every day, the States-General at last convoked a National Synod to meet in November, 1618, at Dort.

Than the Synod of Dort there is perhaps no more remarkable Assembly in the annals of the Protestant Church. It is alike famous whether we regard the numbers, or the learning, or the eloquence of its members. It met at a great crisis, and it was called to review, re-examine, and authenticate over again, in the second generation since the rise of the Reformation, that body of truth and system of doctrine which that great movement had published to the world. The States-General had agreed that the Synod should consist of twenty-six divines of the United Provinces, twenty-eight foreign divines, five theological professors, and sixteen laymen. The sum of 100,000 florins was set apart to defray its estimated expenses. Its sessions lasted six months.

Learned delegates were present in this Assembly from almost all the Reformed Churches of Europe. The Churches of England, Scotland, Switzerland, Geneva, Bremen, Hesse, and the Palatinate were represented in it. The French Church had no delegate in the Synod. That Church had deputed Peter du Moulin and Andrew Rivet, two of the most distinguished theologians of the age, to represent it, but the king forbade their attendance. From England came Dr. George Carleton, Bishop of Llandaff; Joseph Hall, Dean of Worcester; John Davenant, Professor of Theology and Master of Queen’s College, Cambridge; and Samuel Ward, Archdeacon of Taunton, who had been appointed to proceed to Holland and take part in the proceedings at Dort not indeed by the Church of England, but by the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Walter Balcanqual represented Scotland in the Synod.[8]

The Synod was opened on the 16th of November, 1618, with a sermon by Balthazar Lydius, minister of Dort. Thereafter, the members repaired to the hall appointed for their meeting. Lydius offered a prayer in Latin. The commissioners of the States sat on the right of the president, and the English divines on his left. An empty seat was kept for the French deputies. The rest of the delegates took their places according to the rank of the country from which they came. John Bogerman, minister of Leeuwarden, was chosen president; Daniel Heinsius was appointed secretary. Heinsius was an accomplished Latin scholar, and it had been

[7]Brandt (abridg), vol, 1., bk. 18, p. 285

[8]Brandt (abridg.), vol. 2., bk. 23., p, 394.

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agreed that that language should be used in all the transactions of the Assembly, for the sake of the foreign delegates. There came thirty-six ministers and twenty elders, instead of the twenty-six pastors and sixteen laymen which the States-General had appointed, besides deputies from other Provinces, thus swelling the roll of the Synod to upwards of a hundred.

The Synod summoned thirteen of the leading Remonstrants, including Episcopius, to appear within a fortnight. Meanwhile the Assembly occupied itself with arrangements for a new translation of the Bible into Dutch, and the framing of rules about other matters, as the catechising of the young and the training of students for the ministry. On the 5th of December, the thirteen Remonstrants who had been summoned came to Dort, and next day presented themselves before the Assembly. They were saluted by the moderator as “Reverend, famous, and excellent brethren in Jesus Christ,” and accommodated with seats at a long table in the middle of the hall. Episcopius, their spokesman, saluting the Assembly, craved more time, that himself and his brethren might prepare themselves for a conference with the Synod on the disputed points. They were told that they had been summoned not to confer with the Synod, but to submit their opinions for the Synod’s decision, and were bidden attend next day. On that day Episcopius made a speech of an hour and a half’s length, in which he discovered all the art and power of an orator. Thereafter an oath was administered to the members of Synod, in which they swore, in all the discussions and determinations of the Synod, to “use no human writing, but only the Word of God, which is an infallible rule of faith,” and “only aim at the glory of God, the peace of the Church, and especially the preservation of the purity of doctrine.”

The Remonstrants did battle on a great many preliminary points: the jurisdiction of the court, the manner in which they were to lay their opinions before it, and the extent to which they were to be permitted to go in vindicating and defending their five points. In these debates much time was wasted, and the patience and good temper of the Assembly were severely tried. When it was found that the Remonstrants persisted in declining the authority of the Synod, and would meet it only to discuss and confer with it, but not to be judged by it, the States-General was informed of the deadlock into which the affair had come. The civil authority issued an order requiring the Remonstrants to submit to the Synod. To this order of the State the Remonstrants gave no more obedience than they had done to the authority of the Church. They were willing to argue and defend their opinions, but not to submit them for judgment. After two months spent in fruitless attempts to bring the Remonstrants to obedience, the Assembly resolved to extract their views from their writings and speeches, and give judgment upon them. The examination into their opinions, and the deliberations upon them, engaged the Assembly till the end of April, by which time they had completed a body of canons, that was signed by all the members. The canons, which were read in the Cathedral of Dort with great solemnity, were a summing up of the doctrine of the Reformation as it had been held by the first Reformers, and accepted in the Protestant Churches without division or dissent, the article of the Eucharist excepted, until Arminius arose. The decision of the Synod condemned the opinions of the Remonstrants as innovations, and sentenced them to deprivation of all ecclesiastical and academical functions[9] The States-General followed up the spiritual part of the sentence by banishing them from their country. It is clear that the Government of the United Provinces had yet a good deal to learn on the head of toleration; but it is fair to say that while they punished the disciples of Arminius with exile, they would permit no inquisition to be made into their consciences, and no injury to be done to their persons or property. A few years thereafter (1626) the decree of banishment was recalled. The Remonstrants returned to their country, and were permitted freely to exercise their worship. They established a theological seminary at Amsterdam, which was adorned by some men of great talents and erudition, and became a renowned fountain of Arminian theology.

The Synod of Dort was the first great attempt to arrest the begun decline in the theology of the Reformation, and to restore it to its pristine purity and splendor. It did this, but not with a perfect success. The theology of Protestantism, as seen in the canons of Dort, and as seen in the writings of the first Reformers, does not appear quite the same theology: it is the same in dogma, but it lacks, as seen in the canons of Dort, the warm hues, the freshness, the freedom and breadth, and the stirring spiritual vitalities it possessed as it flowed from the pens, or was thundered from the pulpits, of the Reformers. The second generation of Protestant divines was much inferior, both fix intellectual endowments and in spiritual gifts, to the first. In the early days it was the sun of genius that

[9]Brandt (abridg.), vol. 2., bks. 23-28., pp. 397-504.

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irradiated the heavens of the Church: now it was the moon of culture that was seen in her waning skies. And in proportion to the more restricted faculties of the men, so the theology was narrow, stinted, and cold. It was formal and critical. Turning away somewhat from the grander, objective, soul-inspiring truths of Christianity, it dealt much with the abstruser questions, it searched into deep and hidden things; it was quicker to discern the apparent antagonisms than the real harmonies between truth and truth; it was prone to look only at one question, or at one side of a question, forgetful of its balancings and modifications, and so was in danger of distorting or even caricaturing truth. The empirical treatment which the doctrine of predestination received-perhaps we ought to say on both sides-is an example of this. Instead of the awe and reverence with which a question involving the character and government of God, and the eternal destinies of men, ought ever to inspire those who undertake to deal with a subject so awful, and the solution of which so far transcends the human faculties, it was approached in a proud, self-sufficient, and flippant spirit, that was at once unchristian and unphilosophical. Election and reprobation were singled out, separated from the great and surpassingly solemn subject of which they are only parts, looked at entirely dissociated from their relations to other necessary truths, subjected to an iron logic, and compelled to yield consequences which were impious and revolting. The very interest taken in these questions marked an age more erudite than religious, and an intellect which had become too subtle to be altogether sound; and the prominence given them, both in the discussions of the schools and the ministrations of the pulpit, reacted on the nation, and was productive of animosities and dissensions.

Nevertheless, these evils were sensibly abated after the meeting of the Synod of Dort. The fountains of truth were again purified, and peace restored to the churches and the schools. The nation, again reunited, resumed its onward march in the path of progress. For half a century the university and the pulpit continued to be mighty powers in Holland the professors and pastors took their place in the first rank of theologians. Abroad the canons of the Synod of Dort met with a very general acquiescence on the part of the Protestant Churches, and continued to regulate the teaching and mould the theology of Christendom. At home the people, imbued with the spirit of the Bible, and impregnate with that love of liberty, and that respect for law, which Protestantism ever engenders, made their homes bright with virtue and their cities resplendent with art, while their land they taught by their industry and frugality to bloom in beauty and overflow with riches.

Chapter 30: Grandeur of the United Provinces

The One Source of Holland’s Strength—Prince Maurice made Governor—His Character—Dutch Statesmen—Spanish Power Sinking—Philip’s Many Projects—His Wars in France—Successes o£ Maurice—Death of the Duke of Parma—Mighty Growth of Holland—Its Vast Commerce—Its Learning—Desolation of Brabant and Flanders—Cause of the Decline of Holland—The Stadtholder of Holland becomes King of England

Picture: Prince Maurice of Nassau.

We have narrated the ill success that attended the government of the Earl of Leicester in the Low Countries. These repeated disappointments rebuked the Provinces for looking abroad for defense, and despising the mightier source of strength which existed within themselves; and in due time they came to see that it was not by the arm of any foreign prince that they were to be holden up and made strong, but by the nurturing virtue of that great principle which, rooted in their land by the blood of their martyrs, had at last found for their nation a champion in William of Orange. This principle had laid the foundations of their free Commonwealth, and it alone could give it stability and conduct it to greatness.

Accordingly, after Leicester’s departure, at a meeting at the Hague, the 6th of February, 1587, the States, after asserting their own supreme authority, unanimously chose Prince Maurice as their governor, though still with a reservation to Queen Elizabeth. It was not respect alone for the memory of his great father which induced the States to repose so great a trust, at so momentous a period of their existence, in one who was then [155] only twenty-one years of age. From his earliest youth the prince had given proof of his superior prudence and capacity, and in the execution of his high command he made good the hopes entertained of him when he entered upon it. If he possessed in lower degree than his illustrious sire the faculty of governing men, he was nevertheless superior to him in the military art, and this was the science most needed at this moment by the States. Maurice became the greatest captain of his age: not only was he famous in the discipline of his armies, but his genius, rising above the maxims then in vogue, enabled him to invent or to perfect a system of fortification much more complete, and which soon became common.[1] The marvellous political ability of William, now lost to the States, was supplied in some sort by a school of statesmen that arose after his death in Holland, and whose patriotic honesty, allied with an uncommon amount of native sagacity and shrewdness, made them a match for the Machiavellian diplomatists with which the age abounded.

Philip II. was at that time getting ready the Armada for the subjugation of England. The Duke of Parma was required to furnish his contingent of the mighty fleet, and while engaged in this labor he was unable to undertake any operation in the Netherlands. Holland had rest, and the military genius of Prince Maurice found as yet no opportunity of displaying itself. But no sooner had Philip’s “invincible” Armada vanished in the North Sea, pursued by the English admiral and the tempests of heaven, than Parma made haste to renew the war. He made no acquisition of moment, however the gains of the campaign remained with Prince Maurice; and the power of Spain in the Low Countries began as visibly to sink as that of Holland to rise.

From this time forward blow after blow came upon that colossal fabric which for so long a period had not only darkened the Netherlands, but had overshadowed all Christendom. The root of the Spanish Power was dried up, and its branch began to wither. Philip, aiming to be the master of the world, plunged into a multitude of schemes which drained his resources, and at length broke in pieces that mighty empire of which he was the monarch. As his years grew his projects multiplied, till at last he found himself warring with the Turks, the Morescoes, the Portuguese, the French, the English, and the Netherlanders. The latter little country he would most certainly have subdued, had his ambition permitted him to concentrate his power in the attempt to crush it. Happily for the Low Countries, Philip was never able to do this. And now another dream misled him-the hope of seizing the crown of France for himself or his daughter,[2] Clara Eugenia, during the troublous times that followed the accession of Henry of Navarre. In this hope he ordered Parma to withdraw the Spanish troops from the Netherlands, and help the League to conquer Henry IV. Parma remonstrated against the madness of the scheme, and the danger of taking away the army out of the country; but Philip, blinded by his ambition, refused to listen to the prudent counsels of his general. The folly of the King of Spain gave a breathing-space to the young Republic, and enabled its governor, Prince Maurice, to display that resource, prudence, and promptitude which gained him the confidence and esteem of his subjects, and which, shining forth yet more brilliantly in future campaigns, won for him the admiration of Europe.

When Parma returned from France (1590) he found Holland greatly stronger than he had left it: its frontier was now fortified; several towns beyond the boundary of the United Provinces had been seized by their army; and Parma, with a treasury drained by his campaign, and soldiers mutinous because ill-paid, had to undertake the work of recovering what had been lost. The campaign now opened was a disastrous one both for himself and for Spain. After many battles and sieges he found that the Spanish Power had been compelled to retreat before the arms of the infant Republic, and that his own prestige as a soldier had been eclipsed by the renown of his opponent, acquired by the prudence with which his enterprises had been concerted, the celerity with which they had been executed, and the success with which they had been crowned. The Duke of Parma was a second time ordered into France to assist the League, and pave Philip’s way for mounting the throne of that country; and foolish though he deemed the order, he had nevertheless to obey it. He returned broken in health, only to find that in his absence the Spanish Power had sustained new losses, that the United Provinces had acquired additional strength, and that Prince Maurice had surrounded his name with a brighter glory than ever. In short, the affairs of Spain in the Low Countries he perceived were becoming hopeless. Worn out with cares, eaten up with vexation and chagrin, and compelled the while to strain every nerve in the execution of projects which his judgment condemned as chimerical and ruinous, his sickness

[1]Muller, Universal History, 3. P. 67. Sir Willam Temple, United Provinces, chap, 1., p. 48; Eidn., 1747.

[2]Muller, 3. 68.

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increased, and on the 3rd of December, 1592, he expired in the forty-seventh year of his age, and the fourteenth of his government of the Netherlands. “With the Duke of Parma,” says Sir William Temple, “died all the discipline, and with that all the fortunes, of the Spanish arms in Flanders.”[3]

There now opened to the United Provinces a career of prosperity that was as uniform and uninterrupted as their previous period of distress and calamity had been continuous and unbroken. The success that attended the arms of Prince Maurice, the vigour with which he extended the dominions of the Republic, the prudence and wisdom with which he administered affairs at home, the truce with Spain, the League with Henry IV. of France, and the various circumstances and methods by which the prince, and the upright and wise counsellors that surrounded him, advanced the credit and power of the United Provinces, belong to the civil history of the country, and hardly come within the scope of our special design. But the mighty growth of the United Provinces, which was the direct product of Protestantism, is one of the finest proofs which history furnishes of the spirit and power of the Reformation, and affords a lesson that the ages to come will not fail to study, and an example that they will take care to imitate.

On the face of all the earth there is not another such instance of a nation for whom nature had done literally nothing, and who had all to create from their soil upwards, attaining such a pitch of greatness. The Dutch received at the beginning but a sand-bank for a country. Their patience and laborious skill covered it with verdure, and adorned it with cities. Their trade was as truly their own creation as their soil. The narrow limits of their land did not furnish them with the materials of their manufactures; these they had to import from abroad, and having worked them up into beautiful fabrics, they carried them back to the countries whence they had obtained the raw materials. Thus their land became the magazine of the world. Notwithstanding that their country was washed, and not unfrequently inundated, by the ocean, nature had not given them harbors; these, too, they had to create. Their scanty territory led them to make the sea their country; and their wars with Spain compelled them to make it still more their home. They had an infinity of ships and sailors. They sent their merchant fleet over every sea-to the fertile islands of the West, to the rich continents of the East. They erected forts on promontories and creeks, and their settlements were dispersed throughout the world. They formed commercial treaties and political alliances with the most powerful nations. The various wealth that was wafted to their shores was ever greater than that which had flowed in on Spain after the discovery of the mines of Mexico and Peru. Their land, which yielded little besides milk and butter, overflowed with the necessaries and luxuries of all the earth. The wheat, and wine, and oil of Southern Europe; the gold and silver of Mexico; the spices and diamonds of the East; the furs of Northern Europe; silk, cotton, precious woods, and marbles-everything, in short, which the earth produces, and which can contribute to clothe the person, adorn the dwelling, supply the table, and enhance the comfort of man, was gathered into Holland. And while every wind and tide were bringing to their shores the raw materials, the persecutions which raged in other countries were daily sending crowds of skillful and industrious men to work them up. And with every increase of their population came a new expansion of their trade, and by consequence a new access to the wealth that flowed from it.

With the rapid growth of material riches, their respect for learning, their taste for intellectual pursuits, and their love of independence still continued with them. They were plain and frugal in habit, although refined and generous in disposition. The sciences were cultivated, and their universities flourished. To be learned or eloquent inferred as great eminence in that country as to be rich or high-born did in others. All this had come out of their great struggle for the Protestant faith.

And, as if to make the lesson still plainer and more striking, by the side of this little State, so illustrious for its virtue, so rich in all good things, and so powerful among the nations of the world, were seen those unhappy Provinces which had retreated within the pale of Rome, and submitted to the yoke of Philip. They were fallen into a condition of poverty and slavery which was as complete as it was deplorable, and which, but a few years before, any one who had seen how populous, industrious, and opulent they were, would have deemed impossible. Commerce, trade, nay, even daily bread, had fled from that so recently prosperous land. Bankers, merchants, farmers, artisans-all were sunk in one great ruin. Antwerp, the emporium of the commerce of Europe, with its river closed, and its harbor and wharves forsaken, was reduced to beggary. The looms and forges of Ghent, Bruges, and Namur were idle. The streets, trodden erewhile by armies of workmen, were covered with grass; fair mansions were occupied by paupers; the fields were falling out of cultivation; the farm-houses

[3]The United Provinces, chap. 1., p. 49.

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were sinking into ruins; and, in the absence of men, the beasts of the field were strangely multiplying. To these evils were added the scourge of a mutinous soldiery, and the incessant rapacious demands of Philip for money, not knowing, or not caring to know, into what a plight of misery and penury his tyranny had already sunk them. Spain itself, towards the close of the nineteenth century, is still as great a wreck; but it required three hundred years for despotism and Popery to ripen their fruits in the Iberian Peninsula, whereas in the Southern Netherlands their work was consummated in a very few years.

We turn once more to their northern sister. The era of the flourishing of the United Provinces was from 1579, when the Union of Utrecht was formed, till 1672 that is, ninety-three years. In the year 1666 we find Holland and her sister States at the acme of their prosperity. They are populous in men; they have a revenue of 40,000,000 florins; they possess a land army of 60,000 men, a fleet of above 100 men-of-war, a countless mercantile navy, a world-wide commerce, and, not content with being one of the great Powers of Europe, they are contesting with England the supremacy of the seas.[4]

It is hardly possible not to ask what led to the decline and fall of so great a Power? Sir William Temple, who had studied with the breadth of a statesman, and the insight of a philosopher, both the rise and the fall of the United Provinces, lays their decay at the door of the Arminian controversy, which had parted the nation in two.

[4]Sir William Temple, chap. 7, p. 174.

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At least, this he makes the primary cause, and the one first led on to others. The Prince of Orange or Calvinist faction, he tells us, contended for the purity of the faith, and the Arminian faction for the liberties of the nation; and so far this was true, but the historian forgets to say that the contest for the purity of the faith covered the nation’s liberties as well, and when the sacred fire which had kindled the conflict for liberty was permitted to go out, the flame of freedom sunk down, the nation’s heart waxed cold, and its hands grew feeble in defense of its independence. The decay of Holland became marked from the time the Arminian party gained the ascendency.[5] But though the nation decayed, the line of William of Orange, the great founder of its liberties, continued to flourish. The motto of Prince Maurice, Tandem fit surculus arbor (“The twig will yet become a tree”), was made good in a higher sense than he had dreamed, for the epics of history are grander than those of fiction, and the Stadtholder of Holland, in due time, mounted the throne of Great Britain.

[5]Sir William Temple. Compare chap. 1., p. 59, with chap. 8., p. 179.

Book 19: Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia

Chapter 1: Rise and Spread of Protestantism in Poland

The “Catholic Restoration “—First Introduction of Christianity into Poland—Influence of Wicliffe and Huss—Luther—The Light Shines on Dantzic—The Ex-Monk Knade—Rashness of the Dantzic Reformers—The Movement thrown back—Entrance of Protestantism into Thorn and other Towns—Cracow—Secret Society, and Queen Bona Sforza—Efforts of Romish Synods to Arrest the Truth—Entrance of Bohemian Protestants into Poland—Their great Missionary Success—Students leave Cracow: go to Protestant Universities—Attempt atCoercive Measures—They Fail—Cardinal Hosius—A Martyr—The Priests in Conflict with the Nobles—National Diet of 1552—Auguries—Abolition of the Temporal Jurisdiction of the Bishops

Picture: View of the Court of the University of Cracow

We are now approaching the era of that great “Catholic Restoration” which, cunningly devised and most perseveringly carried on by the Jesuits, who had now perfected the organisation and discipline of their corps, and zealously aided by the arms of the Popish Powers, scourged Germany with a desolating war of thirty years, trampled out many flourishing Protestant Churches in the east of Europe, and nearly succeeded in rehabilitating Rome in her ancient dominancy of all Christendom. But before entering on the history of these events, it is necessary to follow, in a brief recital, the rise and progress of Protestantism in the countries of Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, and parts of Austria, seeing that these were the Churches which fell before the spiritual cohorts of Loyola, and the military hordes of Austria, and seeing also that these were the lands, in conjunction with Germany, which because the seat of that great struggle which seemed as though it were destined to overthrow Protestantism wholly, till all suddenly, Sweden sent forth a champion who rolled back the tide of Popish success, and restored the balance between the two Churches, which has remained much as it was then settled, down to almost the present hour.

We begin with Poland. Its Reformation opened with brilliant promise, but it had hardly reached what seemed its noon when its light was overcast, and since that disastrous hour the farther Poland’s story is pursued, it becomes but the sadder and more melancholy; nevertheless, the history of Protestantism in Poland is fraught with great lessons, specially applicable to all free countries. Christianity, it is believed, was introduced into Poland by missionaries from Great Moravia in the ninth century. In the tenth we find the sovereign of the country receiving baptism, from which we may infer that the Christian faith was still spreading in Poland.[1] It is owing to the simplicity and apostolic zeal of Cyrillus[2] and Methodius, two pastors from

[1]Krasinski, History Reform. in Poland, vol. 1., p. 2; Lond.; 1838.

[2]A remarkable man, the inventor of the Slavonic alphabet.

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Thessalonica, that the nations, the Slavonians among the rest, who inhabited the wide territories lying between the Tyrol and the Danube on the one side, and the Baltic and Vistula on the other, were at so early a period visited with the light of the Gospel.

Their first day was waxing dim, notwithstanding that they were occasionally visited by the Waldenses, when Wicliffe arose in England. This splendor which had burst out in the west, traveled, as we have already narrated, as far as Bohemia, and from Bohemia it passed on to Poland, where it came in time to arrest the return of the pagan night. The voice of Huss was now resounding through Bohemia, and its echoes were heard in Cracow. Poland was then intimately connected with Bohemia; the language of the two countries was almost the same; numbers of Polish youth resorted to the University of Prague, and one of the first martyrs of Huss’s Reformation was a Pole. Stanislav Pazek, a shoemaker by trade, suffered death, along with two Bohemians, for opposing the indulgences which were preached in Prague in 1411. The citizens interred their bodies with great respect, and Huss preached a sermon at their funeral.[3] In 1431, a conference took place in Cracow, between certain Hussite missionaries and the doctors of the university, in presence of the king and senate. The doctors did battle for the ancient faith against the “novelties” imported from the land of Huss, which they described as doctrines for which the missionaries could plead no better authority than the Bible. The disputation lasted several days, and Bishop Dlugosh, the historian of the conference, complains that although, “in the opinion of all present, the heretics were vanquished, they never acknowledged their defeat.”[4]

It is interesting to find these three countries-Poland, Bohemia, and England-at that early period turning their faces toward the day, and hand-in-hand attempting to find a path out of the darkness. How much less happy, one cannot help reflecting, the fate of the first two countries than that of the last, yet all three were then directing their steps into the same road. Many of the first families in Poland embraced openly the Bohemian doctrines; and it is an interesting fact that one of the professors in the university, Andreas Galka, expounded the works of Wicliffe at Cracow, and wrote a poem in honour of the English Reformer. It is the earliest production of the Polish muse in existence, a poem in praise of the Virgin excepted. The author, addressing “Poles, Germans, and all nations,” says, “Wicliffe speaks the truth! Heathendom and Christendom have never had a greater man than he, and never will.” Voice after voice is heard in Poland, attesting a growing opposition to Rome, till at last in 1515, two years before Luther had spoken, we find the seminal principle of Protestantism proclaimed by Bernard of Lublin, in a work which he published at Cracow, and in which he says that “we must believe the Scriptures alone, and reject human ordinances.”[5] Thus was the way prepared.

Two years after came Luther. The lightnings of his Theses, which flashed through the skies of all countries, lighted up also those of Polish Prussia. Of that flourishing province Dantzic was the capital, and the chief emporium of Poland with Western Europe. In that city a monk, called James Knade, threw off his habit (1518), took a wife, and began to preach publicly against Rome. Knade had to retire to Thorn, where he continued to diffuse his doctrines under the protection of a powerful nobleman; but the seed he had sown in Dantzic did not perish; there soon arose a little band of preachers, composed of Polish youths who had sat at Luther’s feet in Wittemberg, and of priests who had found access to the Reformer’s writings, who now proclaimed the truth, and made so numerous converts that in 1524 five churches in Dantzic were given up to their use.

Success made the Reformers rash. The town council, to whom the king, Sigismund, had hinted his dislike of these innovations, lagged behind in the movement, and the citizens resolved to replace that body with men more zealous. They surrounded the council, to the number of 400, and with arms in their hands, and cannon pointed on the council-hall, they demanded the resignation of the members. No sooner had the council dissolved itself than the citizens elected another from among themselves. The new council proceeded to complete the Reformation at a stroke. They suppressed the Roman Catholic worship, they closed the monastic establishments, they ordered that the convents and other ecclesiastical edifices should be converted into schools and hospitals, and declared the goods of the “Church” to be public property, but left them untouched.[6] This violence only threw back the movement; the majority of the inhabitants were still of the old faith, and had a right to exercise its worship till, enlightened in a better way they should be pleased voluntarily to abandon it.

[3]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 61.

[4]Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 174.

[5]Krasinski, S1avonia, p. 182; Lond., 1849.

[6]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 1., pp. 115, 116.

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The deposed councillors, seating themselves in carriages hung in black, and encircling their heads with crape, set out to appear before the king. They implored him to interpose his authority to save his city of Dantzic, which was on the point of being drowned in heresy, and re-establish the old order of things. The king, in the main upright and tolerant, at first temporised. The members of council, by whom the late changes had been made, were summoned before the king’s tribunal to justify their doings; but, not obeying the summons, they were outlawed. In April, 1526, the king in person visited Dantzic; the citizens, as a precaution against change, received the monarch in arms; but the royal troops, and the armed retainers of the Popish lords who accompanied the king, so greatly outnumbered the Reformers that they were overawed, and submitted to the court. A royal decree restored the Roman Catholic worship; fifteen of the leading Reformers were beheaded, and the rest banished; the citizens were ordered to return within the Roman pale or quit Dantzic; the priests and monks who had abandoned the Roman Church were exiled, and the churches appropriated to Protestant worship were given back to mass. This was a sharp castigation for leaving the peaceful path. Nevertheless, the movement in Dantzic was only arrested, not destroyed. Some years later, there came an epidemic to the city, and amid the sick and the dying there stood up a pious Dominican, called Klein, to preach the Gospel. The citizens, awakened a second time to eternal things, listened to him. Dr. Eck, the famous opponent of Luther, importuned King Sigismund to stop the preacher, and held up to him, as an example worthy of imitation, Henry VIII. of England, who had just published a book against the Reformer. “Let King Henry write against Martin,” replied Sigismund, “but, with regard to myself, I shall be king equally of the sheep and of the goats.”[7] Under the following reign Protestantism triumphed in Dantzic.

About the same time the Protestant doctrines began to take root in other towns of Polish Prussia. In Thorn, situated on the Vistula, these doctrines appeared in 1520, There came that year toThorn, Zacharias Fereira, a legate of the Pope. He took a truly Roman way of warning the inhabitants against the heresy which had invaded their town. Kindling a great fire before the Church of St. John, he solemnly committed the effigies and writings of Luther to the flames. The faggots had hardly begun to blaze when a shower of stones from the townsmen saluted the legate and his train, and they were forced to flee, before they had had time to consummate their auto- da-fe. At Braunsberg, the seat of the Bishop of Ermeland, the Lutheran worship was publicly introduced in 1520, without the bishop’s taking any steps to prevent it. When reproached by his chapter for his supineness, he told his canons that the Reformer founded all he said on Scripture, and any one among them who deemed himself competent to refute him was at liberty to do so. At Elbing and many other towns the light was spreading.

A secret society, composed of the first scholars of the day, lay and cleric, was formed at Cracow, the university seat, not so much to propagate the Protestant doctrines as to investigate the grounds of their truth. The queen of Sigismund I., Bona Sforza, was an active member of this society. She had for her confessor a learned Italian, Father Lismanini. The Father received most of the Protestant publications that appeared in the various countries of Europe, and laid them on the table of the society, with the view of their being read and canvassed by the members. The society at a future period acquired a greater but not a better renown. One day a priest named Pastoris, a native of Belgium, rose in it and avowed his disbelief of the Trinity, as a doctrine inconsistent with the unity of the Godhead. The members, who saw that this was to overthrow revealed religion, were mute with astonishment; and some, believing that what they had taken for the path of reform was the path of destruction, drew back, and took final refuge in Romanism. Others declared themselves disciples of the priest, and thus were laid in Poland the foundations of Socinianism.[8]

The rapid diffusion of the light is best attested by the vigorous efforts of the Romish clergy to suppress it. Numerous books appeared at this time in Poland against Luther and his doctrines. The Synod of Lenczyca,

[7]Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 185.

[8]Krasinski Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 1., pp. 138-140.

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in 1527, recommended the re-establishment of the “Holy Inquisition.” Other Synods drafted schemes of ecclesiastical reform, which, in Poland as in all the other countries where such projects were broached, were never realized save on paper. Others recommended the appointment of popular preachers to instruct the ignorant, and guide their feet past the snares which were being laid for them in the writings of the heretics On the principle that it would be less troublesome to prevent the planting of these snares, than after they were set to guide the unwary past them, they prohibited the introduction of such works into the country. The Synod of Lenczyca, in 1532, went a step farther, and in its zeal to preserve the “sincere faith” in Poland, recommended the banishment of “all heretics beyond the bounds of Sarmatia.”[9] The Synod of Piotrkow, in 1542, published a decree prohibiting all students from resorting to universities conducted by heretical professors, and threatening with exclusion from all offices and dignities all who, after the passing of the edict, should repair to such universities, or who, being already at such, did not instantly return. This edict had no force in law, for besides not being recognised by the Diet, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was carefully limited by the constitutional liberties of Poland, and the nobles still continued to send their sons to interdicted universities, and in particular to Wittemberg. Meanwhile the national legislation of Poland began to flow in just the opposite channel. In 1539 a royal ordinance established the liberty of the press; and in 1543 the Diet of Cracow granted the freedom of studying at foreign universities to all Polish subjects.

At this period an event fell out which gave an additional impulse to the diffusion of Protestantism in Poland. In 1548, a severe persecution, which will come under our notice at a subsequent stage of our history, arose against the Bohemian brethren, the descendants of that valiant host who had cormbated for the faith under Ziska. In the year above-named Ferdinand of Bohemia published an edict shutting up their churches, imprisoning their ministers, and enjoining the brethren, under severe penalties, to leave the country within forty-two days. A thousand exiles, marshalling themselves in three bands, left their native villages, and began their march westward to Prussia, where Albert of Brandenburg, a zealous Reformer, had promised them asylum. The pilgrims, who were under the conduct of Sionins, the chief of their community- “the leader of the people of God,” as a Polish historian styles him had to pass through Silesia and Poland on their way to Prussia. Arriving in Posen in June, 1548, they were welcomed by Andreas Gorka, first magistrate of Grand Poland, a man of vast possessions, and Protestant opinions, and were offered a settlement in his States. Here, meanwhile, their journey terminated. The pious wanderers erected churches and celebrated their worship. Their hymns chanted in the Bohemian language, and their sermons preached in the same tongue, drew many of the Polish inhabitants, whose speech was Slavonic, to listen, and ultimately to embrace their opinions. A missionary army, it looked to them as if Providence had guided their steps to this spot for the conversion of all the provinces of Grand Poland. The Bishop of Posen saw the danger that menaced his diocese, and rested not till he had obtained an order from Sigismund Augustus, who had just succeeded his father (1548), enjoining the Bohemian emigrants to quit the territory. The order might possibly have been recalled, but the brethren, not wishing to be the cause of trouble to the grandee who had so nobly entertained them, resumed their journey, and arrived in due time in Prussia, where Duke Albert, agreeably to his promise, accorded them the rights of naturalisation, and full religious liberty. But the seed they had sown in Posen remained behind them. In the following year (1549) many of them returned to Poland, and resumed their propagation of the Reformed doctrines. They prosecuted their work without molestation, and with great success. Many of the principal families embraced their opinions; and the ultimate result of their labours was the formation of about eighty congregations in the provinces of Grand Poland, besides many in other parts of the kingdom.

A quarrel broke out between the students and the university authorities at Cracow, which, although originating in a street-brawl, had important bearings on the Protestant movement. The breach it was found impossible to heal, and the students resolved to leave Cracow in a body. “The schools became silent,” says a contemporary writer, “the halls of the university were deserted, and the churches were mute.”[10] Nothing but farewells, lamentations, and groans resounded through Cracow. The pilgrims assembled ill a suburban church, to hear a farewell mass, and then set forth, singing a sacred hymn, some taking the road to the College of Goldberg, in Silesia, and others going on to the newly-erected University of Konigsberg, in Prussia. The first-named school was under the direction of Frankendorf, one of the most eminent of Melancthon’s pupils; Konigsberg, a creation of Albert, Duke of Prussia, was already fulfilling its founder’s intention, which was the diffusion of scriptural knowledge. In both seminaries the predominating influences were Protestant. The consequence was that almost all these students returned to their homes imbued with the Reformed doctrine, and powerfully contributed to spread it in Poland.

So stood the movement when Sigismund Augustus ascended the throne in 1548. Protestant truth was widely spread throughout the kingdom. In the towns of Polish Prussia, where many Germans resided,

[9]Constitutiones Synodorum-apud Krasinski.

[10]Zalaszowski, Jus Publicum Regni Poloniae-Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 157.

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the Reformation was received in its Lutheran expression; in the rest of Poland it was embraced in its Calvinistic form. Many powerful nobles had abandoned Romanism; numbers of priests taught the Protestant faith; but, as yet, there existed no organisation-no Church. This came at a later period.

The priesthood had as yet erected no stake. They thought to stem the torrent by violent denunciations, thundered from the pulpit, or sent abroad over the kingdom through the press. They raised their voices to the loftiest pitch, but the torrent continued to flow broader and deeper every day. They now began to make trial of coercive measures. Nicholaus Olesnicki, Lord of Pinczov, ejecting the images from a church on his estates, established Protestant worship in it according to the forms of Geneva. This was the first open attack on the ancient order of things, and Olesnicki was summoned before the ecclesiastical tribunal of Cracow. He obeyed the summons, but the crowd of friends and retainers who accompanied him was such that the court was terrified, and dared not open its sittings. The clergy had taken a first step, but had lost ground thereby.

The next move was to convoke a Synod (1552) at Piotrkow. At that Convocation, the afterwards celebrated Cardinal Hosius produced a summary of the Roman faith, which he proposed all priests and all of senatorial and equestrian degree should be made to subscribe. Besides the fundamental doctrines of Romanism, this creed of Hosius made the subscriber express his belief in purgatory, in the worship of saints and images, in the efficacy of holy water, of fasts, and similar rites.[11] The suggestion of Hosius was adopted; all priests were ordered to subscribe this test, and the king was petitioned to exact subscription to it from all the officers of his Government, and all the nobles of his realm. The Synod further resolved to set on foot a Vigorous war against heresy, to support which a tax was to be levied on the clergy. It was sought to purchase the assistance of the king by offering him the confiscated property of all condemned heretics.[12] It seemed as if Poland was about to be lighted up with martyr-piles.

A beginning was made with Nicholaus, Rector of Kurow. This good man began in 1550 to preach the doctrine of salvation by grace, and to give the Communion in both kinds to his parishioners. For these offenses he was cited before the ecclesiastical tribunal, where he courageously defended himself. He was afterwards thrown into a dungeon, and deprived of life, but whether by starvation, by poison, or by methods more violent still, cannot now be known. One victim had been offered to the insulted majesty of Rome in Poland. Contemporary chroniclers speak of others who were immolated to the intolerant genius of the Papacy, but their execution took place, not in open day, but in the secresy of the cell, or in the darkness of the prison.

The next move of the priests landed them in open conflict with the popular sentiment and the chartered rights of the nation. No country in Europe enjoyed at that hour a greater degree of liberty than did Poland. The towns, many of which were flourishing, elected their own magistrates, and thus each city, as regarded its internal affairs, was a little republic. The nobles, who formed a tenth of the population, were a peculiar and privileged class. Some of them were owners of vast domains, inhabited castles, and lived in great magnificence. Others of them tilled their own lands; but all of them, grandee and husbandman alike, were equal before the law, and neither their persons nor property could be disposed of, save by the Diet. The king himself was subject to the law. We find the eloquent but versatile Orichovius, who now thundered against the Pope, and now threw himself prostrate before him, saying in one of his philippics, “Your Romans bow their knees before the crowd of your menials; they bear on their necks the degrading yoke of the Roman scribes; but such is not the case with us, where the law rules even the throne.” The free constitution of the country was a shield to its Protestantism, as the clergy had now occasion to experience. Stanislav Stadnicki, a nobleman of large estates and great influence, having embraced the Reformed opinions, established the Protestant worship according to the forms of Geneva on his domains. He was summoned to answer for his conduct before the tribunal of the bishop. Stadnicki replied that he was quite ready to justify both his opinions and his acts. The court, however, had no wish to hear what he had to say in behalf of his faith, and condemned him, by default, to civil death and loss of property. Had the clergy wished to raise a flame all over the kingdom, they could have done nothing more fitted to gain their end. Stadnicki assembled his fellow-nobles and told them what the priests had done. The Polish grandees had ever been jealous of the throne, but here was an ecclesiastical

[11]Vide Hosii Opera, Antverpise, 1571; and Stanislai Hosii Vita autore Rescio, Romae, 1587. Subscription to the above creed by the clergy was enjoined because many of the bishops were suspected of heresy-” quod multi inter episcopos erant suspecti.”

[12]Bzovius, ann. 1551

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body, acting under an irresponsible foreign chief, assuming a power which the king had never ventured to exercise, disposing of the lives and properties of the nobles without reference to any will or ally tribunal save their own. The idea was not to be endured. There rung a loud outcry [164] against ecclesiastical tyranny all throughout Poland; and the indignation was brought to a height by numerous apprehensions, at that same time, at the instance of the bishops, of influential persons-among others, priests of blameless life, who had offended against the law of clerical celibacy, and whom the Roman clergy sought to put to death, but could not, simply from the circumstance that they could find no magistrate willing to execute their sentences.

At this juncture it happened that the National Diet (1552) assembled. Unmistakable signs were apparent at its opening of the strong anti-Papal feeling that animated many of its members. As usual, its sessions were inaugurated by the solemn performance of high mass. The king in his robes was present, and with him were the ministers of his council, the officers of his household, and the generals of his army, bearing the symbols of their office, and wearing the stars and insignia of their rank; and there, too, were the senators of the Upper Chamber, and the members of the Lower House. All that could be done by chants and incense, by splendid vestments and priestly Fires, to make the service impressive, and revive the decaying veneration of the worshippers for the Roman Church, was done. The great words which effect the prodigy of transubstantiation had been spoken; the trumpet blared, and the clang of grounded arms rung through the building. The Host was being elevated, and the king and his court fell on their knees; but many of the deputies, instead of prostrating themselves, stood erect and turned away their faces. Raphael Leszczynski, a nobleman of high character and great possessions, expressed his dissent from Rome’s great mystery in manner even more marked: he wore his hat all through the performance. The priests saw, but dared not reprove, this contempt of their rites.[13]

The auguries with which the Diet had opened did not fail of finding ample fulfilment in its subsequent proceedings. The assembly chose as its president Leszczynski-the nobleman who had remained uncovered during mass, and who had previously resigned his senatorial dignity in order to become a member of the Lower House.[14] The Diet immediately took into consideration the jurisdiction wielded by the bishops. The question put in debate was this-Is such jurisdiction, carrying civil effects, compatible with the rights of the crown and the freedom of the nation? The Diet decided that it was consistent with neither the prerogatives of the sovereign nor the liberties of the people, and resolved to abolish it, so far as it had force in law. King Sigismund Augustus thought it very possible that if he were himself to mediate in the matter he would, at least, succeed in softening the fall of the bishops, if only he could persuade them to make certain concessions. But he was mistaken: the ecclesiastical dignitaries were perverse, and resolutely refused to yield one iota of their powers. Thereupon the Diet issued its decree, which the king ratified, that the clergy should retain the power of judging of heresy, but have no power of inflicting civil or criminal punishment on the condemned. Their spiritual sentences were henceforward to carry no temporal effects whatever. The Diet of 1552 may be regarded as the epoch of the downfall of Roman Catholic predominancy in Poland, and of the establishment in that country of the liberty of all religious confessions.[15]

The anger of the bishops was inflamed to the utmost. They entered their solemn protest against the enactment of the Diet. The mitre was shorn of half its splendor, and the crozier of more than half its power, by being disjoined from the sword. They left the Senate-hall in a body, and threatened to resign their senatorial dignities. The Diet heard their threats unmoved, and as it made not the slightest effort either to prevent their departure or to recall them after they were gone, but, on the contrary, went on with its business as if nothing unusual had occurred, the bishops returned and took their seats of their own accord.

[13]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., pp. 186-188.

[14]This nobleman was the descendant of that Wenceslaus of Leszna who defended John Huss at the Council of Krasinski, Hist. Constance. He had adopted for his motto, Malo pericuIosam Iibertatem quam tutum servitium- “Better the dangers of liberty than the safeguards of slavery.”

[15]Vide Reform. Poland, vol. 1., pp. 188, 189, where the original Polish authorities are cited.

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Chapter 2: John Alasco, and Reformation of East Friesland

No One Leader—Many Secondary Ones—King Sigismund Augustus—His Character—Favourably Disposed to Protestantism—His Vacillations—Project of National Reforming Synod—Opposed by the Roman Clergy—John Alasco—Education—Goes to Louvain—Visits Zwingle—His Stay with Erasmus—Recalled to Poland—Purges himself from Suspicion of Heresy—Proffered Dignities—He Severs himself from the Roman Church—Leaves Poland—Goes to East Friesland—Begins its Reformation—Difficulties—Triumph of Alasco—Goes to England—Friendship with Cranmer—Becomes Superintendent of the Foreign Church in London—Retires to Denmark on Death of Edward VI—Persecutions and Wanderings—Returns to Poland—His Work there—Prince Radziwill—His Attempts to Reform Poland—His Dying Charge to his Son—His Prophetic Words to Sigismund Augustus

Picture: John Alasco and his Congregation leaving England

We see the movement marching on, but we can see no one leader going before it. The place filled by Luther in Germany, by Calvin in Geneva, and by men not dissimilarly endowed in other countries, is vacant in the Reformation of Poland. Here it is a Waldensian missionary or refugee who is quietly sowing the good seed which he has drawn from the garner of some manuscript copy of the New Testament, and there it is a little band of Bohemian brethren, who have preserved the traditions of John Huss, and are trying to plant them in this new soil. Here it is a university doctor who is expounding the writings of Wicliffe to his pupils, and there it is a Polish youth who has just returned from Wittemberg, and is anxious to communicate to his countrymen the knowledge which he has there learned, and which has been so sweet and refreshing to himself. Nevertheless, although amid all these laborers we can discover no one who first gathers all the forces of the new life into himself, and again sends them forth over the land, we yet behold the darkness vanishing on every side. Poland’s Reformation is not a sunrise, but a daybreak: the first dim streaks are succeeded by others less doubtful; these are followed by brighter shades still; till at last something like the clearness of day illuminates its sky. The truth has visited some nobleman, as the light will strike on some tall mountain at the morning hour, and straightway his retainers and tenantry begin to worship as their chief worships; or some cathedral abbot or city priest has embraced the Gospel, and their flocks follow in the steps of their shepherd, and find in the doctrine of a free salvation a peace of soul which they never experienced amid the burdensome rites and meritorious services of the Church of Rome. There are no combats; no stakes; no mighty hindrances to be vanquished; Poland seems destined to enter without struggle or bloodshed into possession of that precious inheritance which other nations are content to buy with a great price.

But although there is no one who, in intellectual and spiritual stature, towers so far above the other workers in Poland as to be styled its Reformer there are three names connected with the history of Protestantism in that country so outstanding as not to be passed without mention. The first is that of King Sigismund Augustus. Tolerant, accomplished, and pure in life, this monarch had read the Institutes, and was a correspondent of Calvin, who sought to inflame him with the ardour of making his name and reign glorious by laboring to effect the Reformation of his dominions. Sigismund Augustus was favourably disposed toward the doctrines of Protestantism, and he had nothing of that abhorrence of heresy and terror of revolution which made the kings of France drive the Gospel from their realm with fire and sword; but he vacillated, and could never make up his mind between Rome and the Reformation. The Polish king would fain have seen an adjustment of the differences that divided his subjects into two great parties, and the dissensions quieted that agitated his kingdom, but he feared to take the only effectual steps that could lead to that end. He was surrounded constantly with Protestants, who cherished the hope that he would yet abandon Rome, and declare himself openly in favour of Protestantism, but he always drew back when the moment came for deciding. We have seen him, in conjunction with the Diet of 1552, pluck the sword of persecution from the hands of the bishops; and he was willing to go still further, and make trial of any means that promised to amend the administration and reform the doctrines of the Roman Church. He was exceedingly favorable to a project much talked of in his reign-namely, that of convoking a National Synod for reforming the Church on the [166] basis of Holy Scripture. The necessity of such an assembly had been mooted in the Diet of 1552; it was revived in the Diet of 1555, and more earnestly pressed on the king, and thus contemporaneously with the abdication of the imperial sovereignty by Chares V., and the yet unfinished sittings of the great Council of Trent, the probability was that Christendom would behold a truly (Ecumenical Council assemble in Poland, and put the topstone upon the Reformation of its Church and kingdom. The projected Polish assembly, over which it was proposed that King Sigismund Augustus should preside, was to be composed of delegates from all the religious bodies in the kingdom-Lutherans, Calvinists, and Bohemians-who were to meet and deliberate on a perfect equality with the Roman clergy. Nor was the constituency of this Synod to be confined to Poland; other Churches and lands were to be represented in it. All the living Reformers of note were to be invited to it; and, among others, it was to include the great names of Calvin and Beza, of Melancthon and Vergerius. But this Synod was never to meet. The clergy of Rome, knowing that tottering fabrics can stand only in a calm air, and that their Church was in a too shattered condition to survive the shock of free discussion conducted by such powerful antagonists, threw every obstacle in the way of the Synod’s meeting. Nor was the king very zealous in the affair. It is doubtful whether Sigismund Augustus was ever brought to test the two creeds by the great question which of the twain was able to sustain the weight of his soul’s salvation; and so, with convictions feeble and ill-defined, his purpose touching the reform of the Church never ripened into act.

The second name is that of no vacillating man-we have met it before-it is that of John Alasco. John Alasco, born in the last year save one of the fifteenth century[1] was sprung of one of the most illustrious families in Poland. Destined for the Church, he received the best education which the schools of his native land could bestow, and he afterwards visited Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium in order to enlarge and perfect his studies. At the University of Louvain, renowned for the purity of its orthodoxy, and whither he resorted, probably at the recommendation of his uncle, who was Primate of Poland, he contracted a close friendship with Albert Hardenberg.[2] After a short stay at Louvain, finding the air murky with scholasticism, he turned his steps in the direction of Switzerland, and arriving at Zurich, he made the acquaintance of Zwingle. “Search the Scriptures,” said the Reformer of Zurich to the young Polish nobleman. Alasco turned to that great light, and from that moment he began to be delivered from the darkness which had till then encompassed him. Quitting Zurich and crossing the Jura, he entered Basle, and presented himself before Erasmus. This great master of the schools was not slow to discover the refined grace, the beautiful genius, and the many and great acquirements of the stranger who had sought his acquaintance. Erasmus was charmed with the young Pole, and Alasco on his part was equally enamoured of Erasmus. Of all then living, Erasmus, if not the man of highest genius, was the man of highest culture, and doubtless the young scholar caught the touch of a yet greater suavity from this prince of letters, as Erasmus, in the enthusiasm of his friendship, confesses that he had grown young again in the society of Alasco. The Pole lived about a year (1525) under the roof,[3] but not at the cost of the great scholar; for his disposition being as generous as his means were ample, he took upon himself the expenses of housekeeping; and in other ways he ministered, with equal liberality and delicacy, to the wants of his illustrious host. He purchased his library for 300 golden crowns, leaving to Erasmus the use of it during his life-time.[4] He formed a friendship with other eminent men then living at Basle; in particular, with Oecolampadius and Pellicanus, the latter of whom initiated him into the study of the Hebrew Scriptures.

His uncle, the primate, hearing that his nephew had fallen into “bad company,” recalled him by urgent letters to Poland. It cost Alasco a pang to tear himself from his friends in Basle. He carried back to his native land a heart estranged from Rome, but he did not dissever himself from her communion, nor as yet did he feel the necessity of doing so; he had tested her doctrines by the intellect only, not by the conscience, He was received at court, where his youth, the refinement of his manners, and the brilliance of his talents made him a favourite. The pomps and galeties amid which he now lived weakened, but did not wholly efface, the impressions made upon him at Zurich and Basle. Destined for the highest offices in the Church of Poland, his uncle demanded that he should purge himself by oath from the suspicions

[1]Gerdesius, Hist. Reform., vol 3., p. 146.

[2]Ibid. This is the date (1523) of their friendship as given by Gerdesius; it is doubtful, however, whether it began so early’.

[3]“Is in iisdem cum Erasmo aedibus vixerat Basileae.” (Gerdesius, vol. 3., p. 146.)

[4]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 247

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of heresy which had hung about him ever since his return from Switzerland. Alasco complied. The document signed by him is dated in 1526, and in it Alasco promises not to embrace doctrines foreign to those of the Apostolic Roman Church, and to submit in all lawful and honest things to the authority of the bishops and of the Papal See. “This I swear, so help me, God, and his holy Gospel.”[5]

This fall was meant to be the first step towards the primacy. Ecclesiastical dignities began now to be showered upon him, but the duties which these imposed, by bringing him into close contact with clerical men, disclosed to him more and more every day the corruptions of the Papacy, and the need of a radical reform of the Church. He resumed his readings in the Bible, and renewed his correspondence with the Reformers. His spiritual life revived, and he began now to try Rome by the only infallible touch-stone-“Can I, by the performance of the works she prescribes, obtain peace of conscience, and make myself holy in the sight of God?” Alasco was constrained to confess that he never should. He must therefore, at whatever cost, separate himself from her. At this moment two mitres-that of Wesprim in Hungary, and that of Cujavia in Poland-were placed at his acceptance.[6] The latter mitre opened his way to the primacy in Poland. On the one side were two kings proffering him golden dignities, on the other was the Gospel, with its losses and afflictions. Which shall he choose? “God, in his goodness,” said he, writing to Pellicanus, “has brought me to myself.” He went straight to the king, and frankly and boldly avowing his convictions, declined the Bishopric of Cujavia.

Poland was no place for Alasco after such an avowal. He left his native land in 1536, uncertain in what country he should spend what might yet remain to him of life, which was now wholly devoted to the cause of the Reformation. Sigismund, who knew his worth, would most willingly have retained Alasco the Romanist, but perhaps he was not sorry to see Alasco the Protestant leave his dominions. The Protestant princes, to whom his illustrious birth and great parts had made him known, vied with each other to secure his services. The Countess Regent of East Friesland, where the Reformation had been commenced in 1528, urged him to come and complete the work by assuming the superintendence of the churches of that province. After long deliberation he went, but the task was a difficult one. The country had become the battle-ground of the sectaries. All things were in confusion; the churches were full of images, and the worship abounded in mummeries; the people were rude in manners, and many of the nobles dissolute in life; one less resolute might have been dismayed, and retired.

Alasco made a commencement. His quiet, yet persevering, and powerful touch was telling. Straightway a tempest arose around him. The wrangling sectaries on the one side, and the monks on the other, united in assailing the man in whom both recognised a common foe. Accusations were carried to the court at Brussels against him, and soon there came an imperial order to expel “the fire-brand” from Friesland. “Dost thou hear the gowl of the thunder?”[7] said Alasco, writing to his friends; he expected that the bolt would follow. Anna, the sovereign princess of the kingdom, terrified at the threat of the emperor, began to cool in her zeal toward the superintendent and his work; but in proportion as the clouds grew black and danger menaced, the courage and resolution of the Reformer waxed strong. He addressed a letter to the princess (1543), fit which he deemed it “better to be unpolite than to be unfaithful,” warning her that should she “take her hand from the plough” she would have to “give account to the eternal Judge.” “I am only a foreigner,” he added, “burdened with a family,[8] and having no home. I wish, therefore, to be friends with all, but... as far as to the altar. This barrier I cannot pass, even if I had to reduce my family to beggary.”[9]

This noble appeal brought the princess once more to the side of Alasco, not again to withdraw her support from one whom she had found so devoted and so courageous. Prudent, yet resolute, Alasco went on steadily in his work. Gradually the remnants of Romanism were weeded out; gradually the images disappeared from the temples; the order and discipline of the Church were reformed on the Genevan model; the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was established according to the doctrine of Calvin;[10] and, as regarded the monks, they were permitted to occupy their convents in peace, but were forbidden the public performance of their worship. Not liking this restraint, the Fathers quietly withdrew from the kingdom. In six years John Alasco had completed the Reformation

[5]Alasco, Opp., vol. 2., p. 548-apud D’Aubigne, 7:546.

[6]Gerdesius, Hist. Reform., vol 3., p. 147.

[7]Alasco, Opp., vol. 2., p. 558.

[8]In 1540, Alasco had married at Mainz, to put an insurmountable barrier between himself and Rome.

[9]Alasco, Opp., vol. 2., p. 560.

[10]Gerdesius, Hist. Reform., vol. 3., p. 148.

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of the Church of East Friesland. It was a great service. He had prepared an asylum for the Protestants of the Netherlands during the evil days that were about to come upon them, and he had helped to pave the way for the appearance of William of Orange.

The Church order established by Alasco in Friesland was that of Geneva. This awoke against him the hostility of the Lutherans, and the adherents of that creed continuing to multiply in Friesland, the troubles of Alasco multiplied along with them. He resigned the general direction of ecclesiastical affairs, which he had exercised as superintendent, and limited his sphere of action to the ministry of the single congregation of Emden, the capital of the country.

But the time was come when John Alasco was to be removed to another sphere. A pressing letter now reached him from Archbishop Cranmer, inviting him to take part, along with other distinguished Continental Reformers, in completing the Reformation of the Church of England.[11] The Polish Reformer accepted the invitation, and traversing Brabant and Flanders in disguise, he arrived in London in September, 1548. A six months’ residence with Cranmer at Lambeth satisfied him that the archbishop’s views and his own, touching the Reformation of the Church, entirely coincided; and an intimate friendship sprang up between the two, which bore good fruits for the cause of Protestantism in England, where Alasco’s noble character and great learning soon won him high esteem. After a short visit to Friesland, in 1549, he returned to England, and was nominated by Edward VI., in 1550, Superintendent of the German, French, and Italian congregations erected in London, numbering between 3,000 and 4,000 persons, and which Cranmer hoped would yet prove a seed of Reformation in the various countries from which persecution had driven them,[12] and would also excite the Church of England to pursue the path of Protestantism. And so, doubtless, it would have been, had not the death of Edward VI. and the accession of Mary suddenly changed the whole aspect of affairs in England.[13] The Friesian Reformer and his congregation had now to quit our shore. They embarked at Gravesend on the 15th of September, 1553, in the presence of thousands of English Protestants, who crowded the banks of the Thames, and on bended knees supplicated the blessing and protection of Heaven on the wanderers.

Setting sail, their little fleet was scattered by a storm, and the vessel which bore John Alasco entered the Danish harbor of Elsinore. Christian III. of Denmark, a mild and pious prince, received Alasco and his fellow-exiles at first with great kindness; but soon their asylum was invaded by Lutheran intolerance. The theologians of the court, Westphal and Pomeranus (Bugenhagen), poisoned the king’s mind against the exiles, and they were compelled to re-embark at an inclement season, and traverse tempestuous seas in quest of some more hospitable shore. This shameful breach of hospitality was afterwards repeated at Lubeck, Hamburg, and Rostock; it kindled the indignation of the Churches of Switzerland, and it drew from Calvin an eloquent letter to Alasco, in which he gave vent not only to his deep sympathy with him and his companions in suffering, but also to his astonishment “that the barbarity of a Christian people should exceed even the sea in savageness.[14]

Driven hither and thither, not by the hatred of Rome, but by the intolerance of brethren, Gustavus Vasa, the reforming monarch of Sweden, gave a cordial welcome to the pastor and his flock, should they choose to settle in his dominions. Alasco, however, thought better to repair to Friesland, the scene of his former labours; but even here the Lutheran spirit, which had been growing in his absence, made his stay unpleasant. He next sought asylum in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, where he established a Church for the Protestant refugees from Belgium.[15] During his stay at Frankfort he essayed to heal the breach between the Lutheran and the Calvinistic branches of the Reformation. The mischiefs of that division he had amply experienced in his own person; but its noxious influence was felt far beyond the little community of which he was the center. It was the great scandal of Protestantism; it disfigured it with dissensions and hatreds, and divided and weakened it in the presence of a powerful foe. But his efforts to heal this deplorable and scandalous schism, although

[11]Gerdesius, Hist. Reform., vol. 3., p. 150.

[12]Strype, Cranmer, pp. 234-240. The young king granted him letters patent, erecting Alasco and the other ministers of the foreign congregations into a body corporate. The affairs of each congregation were managed by a minister, ruling elders and deacons. The oversight of all was committed to Alasco as superintendent. He had greater trouble but no more authority than the others, and was subject equally with them to the discipline of the, Church. Although he allowed no superiority of office or authority to superintendents, he considered that they were of Divine appointment, and that Peter held this rank among the apostles. (Vide McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1., p. 407, notes.)

[13]Gerdesius, vol. 3., p. 151. Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 1., pp. 264-266.

[14]Vide Letter of Calvin to John Alasco-Bonnet, vol. 2., p. 432.

[15]Gerdesius, vol. 3., p. 151

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seconded by the Senate of Frankfort and several German princes, were in vain.[16]

He never lost sight of his native land; in all his wanderings he cherished the hope of returning to it at a future day, and aiding in the Reformation of its Church; and now (1555) he dedicated to Sigismund Augustus of Poland a new edition of an account he had formerly published of the foreign Churches in London of which he had acted as superintendent. He took occasion at the same time to explain in full his own sentiments on the subject of Church Reformation. With great calmness and dignity, but with great strength of argument, he maintained that the Scriptures were the one sole basis of Reformation; that neither from tradition, however venerable, nor from custom, however long established, were the doctrines of the Church’s creed or the order of her government to be deduced; that neither Councils nor Fathers could infallibly determine anything; that apostolic practice, as recorded in the inspired canon that is to say, the Word of God

- alone possessed authority in this matter, and was a sure guide. He also took the liberty of urging on the, king the necessity of a Reformation of the Church of Poland, “of which a prosperous beginning had already been made by the greatest and best part of the nation;” but the matter, he added, was one to be prosecuted “with judgment and care, seeing every one who reasoned against Rome was not orthodox;” and touching the Eucharist-that vexed question, and in Poland, as elsewhere, so fertile in divisions-Alasco stated “that doubtless believers received the flesh and blood of Christ in the Communion, but by the lip of the soul, for there was neither bodily nor personal presence in the Eucharist.”[17]

It is probable that it was this publication that led to his recall to Poland, in 1556, by the king and nobles.[18] The Roman bishops heralded his coming with a shout of terror and wrath. “The ‘butcher’[19] of the Church has entered Poland!” they cried. “Driven out of every land, he returns to that one that gave him birth, to afflict it with troubles and commotions. He is collecting troops to wage war against the king, root out the Churches, and spread riot and bloodshed over the kingdom.” This clamor had all the effect on the royal mind which it deserved to have-that is, none at all.[20]

Alasco, soon after his return, was appointed superintendent of all the Reformed Churches of Little Poland.[21] His long-cherished object seemed now within his reach. That was not the tiara of the primacy-for, if so, he needed not have become the exile; his ambition was to make the Church of Poland one of the brightest lights in the galaxy of the Reformation. He had arrived at his great task with fully-ripened powers. Of illustrious birth, and of yet more illustrious learning and piety, he was nevertheless, from remembrance of his fall, humble as a child. Presiding over the Churches of more than half the kingdom, Protestantism, under his fostering care, waxed stronger every day. He held Synods. He actively assisted in the translation of the first Protestant Bible in Poland, that he might give his countrymen direct access to the fountain of truth. He laboured unweariedly in the cause of union. He had especially at heart the healing of the great breach between the Lutheran and the Reformed-the sore through which so much of the vital force of Protestantism was ebbing away. The final goal which he kept ever in eye, and at which he hoped one day to arrive, was the erection of a national Church, Reformed in doctrine on the basis of the Word of God, and constituted in government as similarly to the Churches over which he had presided in London as the circumstances of Poland would allow. Besides the opposition of the Roman hierarchy, which was to be looked for, the Reformer found two main hindrances obstructing his path. The first was the growth of anti-Trinitarian doctrines, first broached, as we have seen, in the secret society of Cracow, and which continued to spread widely among the Churches superintended by Alasco, in spite of the polemical war he constantly maintained against them. The second was the vacillation of King Sigismund Augustus. Alasco urged the convocation of a National Synod, in order to the more speedy and universal Reformation of thee Polish Church. But the king hesitated. Meanwhile Rome, seeing in the measures on foot, and more especially in the projected Synod, the impending overthrow of her power in Poland, dispatched Lippomani, one of the ablest of the Vatican diplomatists, with a promise, sealed with the Fisherman’s ring, of a General Council, which should reform the Church and restore her unity. What need, then, for a National Council? The Pope would do, and

[16]Krasinski, Slovenia, pp. 214, 215.

[17]Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 217; and Hist. Reform Poland, vol. 1., pp. 272, 273

[18]Gerdesius, vol, 3., p. 151.

[19]“Carnifex.”

[20]Krasinski, Slavonia, pp. 217, 218.

[21]Poland was divided politically into Great and Little Poland. The first comprehended the western parts, and being the original seat of the Polish power, was called Great Poland, although actually less than the second division, which comprehended the south-eastern provinces, and was styled Little Poland.

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with more order and quiet, what the Poles wished to have done. How many score of times had this promise been made, and when had it proved aught save a delusion and a snare? It served, however, as an excuse to the king, who refused to convoke the Synod which Alasco so much desired to see assemble. It was a great crisis. The Reformation had essayed to crown her work in Poland, but she was hindered, and the fabric remained unfinished: a melancholy monument of the egregious error of letting slip those golden opportunities that are given to nations, which “they that are wise” embrace, but they that are void of wisdom neglect, and bewail their folly with floods of tears and torrents of blood in the centuries that come after. In January, 1560, John Alasco died, and was buried with great pomp in the Church of Pintzov.[22] After him there arose in Poland no Reformer of like adaptability and power, nor did the nation ever again enjoy so favorable an opportunity of planting its liberties on a stable foundation by completing its Reformation.[23]

After John Alasco, but not equal to him, arose Prince Radziwill. His rank, his talents, and his zealous labours in the cause of Protestantism give him a conspicuous place in the list of Poland’s Reformers. Nicholas Radziwill was sprung of a wealthy family of Lithuania. He was brother to Barbara, the first queen of Sigismund Augustus, whose unlimited confidence he enjoyed. Appointed ambassador to the courts of Charles V. and Ferdinand I., the grace of his manners and the charm of his discourse so attracted the regards of these monarchs, that he received from the Emperor Charles the dignity of a Prince of the Empire. At the same time he so acquitted himself in the many affairs of importance in which he was employed by his own sovereign, that honors and wealth flowed upon him in his native land. He was created Chancellor of Lithuania, and Palatine of Vilna. Hitherto politics alone had engrossed him, but the time was now come when something nobler than the pomp of courts, and the prizes of earthly kingdoms, was to occupy his thoughts and call forth his energies. About 1553 he was brought into intercourse with some Bohemian Protestants at Prague, who instructed him in the doctrines of the Reformation, which he embraced in the Genevan form. From that time his influence and wealth-both of which were vast-were devoted to the cause of his country’s Reformation. He summoned to his help Vergerius[24] from Italy. He supported many learned Protestants. He defrayed the expense of the printing of the first Protestant Bible at Brest, in Lithuania, in 1563. He diffused works written in defense of the Reformed faith. He erected a magnificent church and college at Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, and in many other ways fostered the Reformed Church in that powerful province where he exercised almost royal authority. Numbers of the priests now embraced the Protestant faith. “Almost the whole of the Roman Catholic nobles,” says Krasinski, “including the first families of the land, and a great number of those who had belonged to the Eastime coming.” The Pope’s manager with skillful hand lifted the veil, and the Romanists saw in the future a purifiedtern Church, became Protestants; so that in the diocese of Samogitia there were only eight Roman Catholic clergymen remaining. The Reformed worship was established not only in the estates of the nobles, but also in many towns.”[25] On the other side, the testimony to Radziwill’s zeal as a Reformer is equally emphatic. We find the legate, Lippomani, reproaching him thus:-” Public rumor says that the Palatine of Vilna patronises all heresies, and that all the dangerous innovators are gathering under his protection; that he erects, wherever his influence reaches, sacrilegious altars against the altar of God, and that he establishes pulpits of falsehood against the pulpits of truth.” Besides these scandalous deeds, the legate charges Radziwill with other heinous transgressions against the Papacy, as the casting down the images of the saints, the forbidding of prayers to the dead, and the giving of the cup to the laity; by all of which he had greatly offended against the Holy Father, and put his own salvation in peril.

Had the life of Prince Radziwill been prolonged, so great was his influence with the king, it is just possible that the vacillation of Sigismund Augustus might have been overcome, and the throne permanently won for the cause of Poland’s Reformation; but that possibility, if it ever existed, was suddenly

[22]Gerdesius, vol. 3., p. 152.

[23]Krasinski says that but scanty materials exist for illustrating the last four years of John Alasco’s life. This the count explains by the fact that his descendants returned into the bosom of the Roman Church after his death, and that all records of his labors for the Reformation of his native land, as well as most of his published works, were destroyed by the Jesuits.

[24]There were two brothers of that name, both zealous Protestants. The one was Bishop of Capo d’Istria, and set about writing a work against “the apostates of Germany,” which resulted in his own conversion to Protestantism. He communicated his change of mind to his brother, Bishop of Pola, who at first opposed, and at last embraced his opinions. The Bishop of Pola soon after met his fate, though how is shrouded in mystery. The Bishop of Capo d’Istria was witness to the horrors of the death-bed of Francis Spira, and was so impressed by them that he resigned his bishopric and left Italy. He it was that now came to Poland. (See McCrie, Italy.)

[25]Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 227.

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extinguished. In 1565, while yet in the prime of life, and in the midst of his labours for the emancipation of his native land from the Papal yoke, the prince died. When he felt his last hour approaching he summoned to his bed-side his eldest son, Nicholas Christopher, and solemnly charged him to abide constant in the profession of his father’s creed, and the service of his father’s God; and to employ the illustrious name, the vast possessions, and the great influence which had descended to him for the cause of the Reformation.

So ill did that son fulfill the charge, delivered to him in circumstances so solemn, that he returned into the bosom of the Roman Church, and to repair to the utmost of his power the injury his father had done the Papal See, he expended 5,000 ducats in purchasing copies of his father’s Bible, which he burned publicly in the market-place of Vilna. On the leaves, now sinking in ashes, might be read the following words, addressed in the dedication to the Polish monarch, and which we who are able to compare the Poland of the nineteenth century with the Poland of the sixteenth, can hardly help regarding as prophetic. “But if your Majesty (which may God avert) continuing to be deluded by this world, unmindful of its vanity, and fearing still some hypocrisy, will persevere in that error which, according to the prophecy of Daniel, that impudent priest, the idol of the Roman temple, has made abundantly to grow in his infected vineyard, like a true and real Antichrist; if your Majesty will follow to the end that blind chief of a generation of vipers, and lead us the faithful people of God the same way, it is to be feared that the Lord may, for such a rejection of his truth, condemn us all with your Majesty to shame, humiliation, and destruction, and afterwards to an eternal perdition.”[26]

[26]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland. vol. 1., p. 309, foot-note.

Chapter 3: Acme of Protestantism in Poland

Arts of the Pope’s Legate-Popish Synod—Judicial Murder—A Miracle—The King asks the Pope to Reform the Church—Diet of 1563—National Synod craved—Defeated by the Papal Legate—His Representations to the King—The King Gained over—Project of a Religious Union—Conference of the Protestants—Union of Sandomir—Its Basis—The Eucharistic Doctrine of the Polish Protestant Church—Acme of Protestantism in Poland

Picture: Radziwills Miracle: Curing a Sham Demoniac.

Inpemuaded following the labours of those eminent men whom God inspired with the wish to emancipate their native land from the yoke of Rome, we have gone a little way beyond the point at which we had arrived in the history of Protestantism in Poland. We go back a stage. We have seen the Diet of 1552 inflict a great blow on the Papal power in Poland, by abolishing the civil jurisdiction of the bishops. Four years after this (1556) John Alasco returned, and began his labours in Poland; these he was prosecuting with success, when Lippomani was sent from Rome to undo his work. Lippomani’s mission bore fruit. He revived the fainting spirits and rallied the wavering courage of the Romanists. He sowed with subtle art suspicions and dissensions among the Protestants; he stoutly promised in the Pope’s name all necessary ecclesiastical reforms; this fortified the king in his vacillation, and furnished those within the Roman Church who had been demanding a reform, with an excuse for relaxing their efforts. They would wait “the good time coming.” The Pope’s manager with skillful hand lifted the veil, and the Romanists saw in the future a purified, united, and Catholic Church as clearly as the traveller sees the mirage in the desert. Vergerius labored to convince them that what they saw was no lake, but a shimmering vapor, floating above the burning sands, but the phantasm was so like that the king and the bulk of the nation chose it in preference to the reality which John Alasco would have given them.

Meanwhile the Diet of 1552 had left the bishops crippled; their temporal arm had been broken, and their care now was to restore this most important branch of their jurisdiction. Lippomani assembled a General Synod of the Popish clergy at Lowicz. This Synod passed a resolution declaring that heretics, now springing up on every side, ought to be visited with pains and penalties, and then proceeded to make trial how far the king and [173] nation would permit them to go in restoring their punitive power. They summoned to their bar the Canon of Przemysl, Lutomirski by name, on a suspicion of heresy. The canon appeared, but with him came his friends, all of them provided with Bibles-the best weapons, they thought, for such a battle as that to which they were advancing; but when the bishops saw how they were armed, they closed the doors of their judgment-hall and shut them out. The first move of the prelates had not improved their position.

Their second was attended with a success that was more disastrous than defeat. They accused a poor girl, Dorothy Lazecka, of having obtained a consecrated wafer on pretense of communicating, and of selling it to the Jews. The Jews carried the Host to their synagogue, where, being pierced with needles, it emitted a quantity of blood. The miracle, it was said, had come opportunely to show how unnecessary it was to give the cup to the laity. But further, it was made a criminal charge against both the girl and the Jews. The Jews pleaded that such an accusation was absurd; that they did not believe in transubstantiation, and would never think of doing anything so preposterous as experimenting on a wafer to see whether it contained blood. But in spite of their defense, they, as well as the unfortunate girl, were condemned to be burned. This atrocious sentence could not be carried out without the royal exequatur. The king, when applied to, refused his consent, declaring that he could not believe such an absurdity, and dispatched a messenger to Sochaczew, where the parties were confined, with orders for their release. The Synod, however, was determined to complete its work. The Bishop of Chelm, who was Vice-Chancellor of Poland, attached the royal seal without the knowledge of the king, and immediately sent off a messenger to have the sentence instantly executed. The king, upon being informed of the forgery, sent in haste to counteract the nefarious act of his minister; but it was too late. Before the royal messenger arrived the stake had been kindled, and the innocent persons consumed in the flames.[1]

This deed, combining so many crimes in one, filled all Poland with horror. The legate, Lippomani, disliked before, was now detested tenfold. Assailed in pamphlets and caricatures, he quitted the kingdom, followed by the execration of the nation. Nor was it Lippomani alone who was struck by the recoil of this, in every way, unfortunate success; the Polish hierarchy suffered disgrace and damage along with him, for the atrocity showed the nation what the bishops were prepared to do, should the sword which the Diet of 1552 had plucked from their hands ever again be grasped by them.

An attempt at miracle, made about this time, also helped to discredit the character and weaken the influence of the Roman clergy in Poland. Christopher Radziwill, cousin to the famous Prince Radziwill, grieved at his relative’s lapse into what he deemed heresy, made a pilgrimage to Rome, in token of his own devotion to the Papal See, and was rewarded with a box of precious relics from the Pope. One day after his return home with his inestimable treasure, the friars of a neighbouring convent waited on him, and telling him that they had a man possessed by the devil under their care, on whom the ordinary exorcisms had failed to effect a cure, they besought him, in pity for the poor demoniac, to lend them his box of relics, whose virtue doubtless would compel the foul spirit to flee. The bones were given with joy. On a certain day the box, with its contents, was placed on the high altar; the demoniac was brought forward, and in presence of a vast multitude the relics were applied, and with complete success. The evil spirit departed out of the man, with the usual contortions and grimaces. The spectators shouted, “Miracle!” and Radziwill, overjoyed, lifted eyes and hands to heaven, in wonder and gratitude.[2]

In a few days thereafter his servant, smitten in conscience, came to him and confessed that on their journey from Rome he had carelessly lost the true relics, and had replaced them with common bones. This intelligence was somewhat disconcerting to Radziwill, but greatly more so to the friars, seeing it speedily led to the disclosure of the imposture. The pretended demoniac confessed that he had simply been playing a part, and the monks likewise were constrained to acknowledge their share in the pious fraud. Great scandal arose; the clergy bewailed the day the Pope’s box had crossed the Alps; and Christopher Radziwill, receiving from the relics a virtue he had not anticipated, was led to the perusal of the Scriptures, and finally embraced, with his whole family, the Protestant faith. When his great relative, Prince Radziwill, died in 1565, Christopher came forward, and to some extent supplied his loss to the Protestant cause.

The king, still pursuing a middle course, solicited from the Pope, Paul IV., a Reformation which he

[1]Raynaldus, ad ann. 1556. Starowolski, Epitomae Synodov.-apud Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 1., p. 305

[2]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., pp. 310, 311. Bayle, art. “Radziwi11.”

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might have had to better effect from his Protestant clergy, if only he would have permitted them to meet and begin the work. Sigismund Augustus addressed a letter to the Pontiff at the Council of Trent, demanding the five following things: -

1st, the performance of mass in the Polish tongue;

2ndly, Communion in both kinds;

3rdly, the marriage of priests;

4thly, the abolition of annats;

5thly, the convocation of a National Council for the reform of abuses,

and the reconcilement of the various opinions.

The effect of these demands on Paul IV. was to irritate this very haughty Pontiff; he fell into a fume, and expressed in animated terms his amazement at the arrogance of his Majesty of Poland; but gradually cooling down, he declined civilly, as might have been foreseen, demands which, though they did not amount to a very great deal, were more than Rome could safely grant.[3]

This rebuff taught the Protestants, if not the king, that from the Seven Hills no help would come-that their trust must be in themselves; and they grew bolder every day. In the Diet of Piotrkow, 1559, an attempt was made to deprive the bishops of their seats in the Senate, on the ground that their oath of obedience to the Pope was wholly irreconcilable to and subversive of their allegiance to their sovereign, and their duty to the nation. The oath was read and commented on, and the senator who made the motion concluded his speech in support of it by saying that if the bishops kept their oath of spiritual obedience, they must necessarily violate their vow of temporal allegiance; and if they were faithful subjects of the Pope, they must necessarily be traitors to their king.[4] The motion was not carried, probably because the vague hope of a more sweeping measure of reform still kept possession of the minds of men.

The next step of the Poles was in the direction of realising that hope. A Diet met in 1563, and passed a resolution that a General Synod, in which all the religious bodies in Poland would be represented, should be assembled. The Primate of Poland, Archbishop Uchanski, who was known to be secretly inclined toward the Reformed doctrines, was favorable to the proposed Convocation. Had such a Council been convened, it might, as matters then stood, with the first nobles of the land, many of the great cities, and a large portion of the nation, all on the side of Protestantism, have had the most decisive effects on the Kingdom of Poland and its future destinies. “It would have upset,” says Krasinski, “the dominion of Rome in Poland for ever.”[5] Rome saw the danger in all its extent, and sent one of her ablest diplomatists to cope with it. Cardinal Commendoni, who had given efficient aid to Queen Mary of England in 1553, in her attempted restoration of Popery, was straightway dispatched to employ his great abilities in arresting the triumph of Protestantism, and averting ruin from the Papacy in the Kingdom of Poland. The legate put forth all his dexterity and art in his important mission, and not without effect. He directed his main efforts to influence the mind of Sigismund Augustus. He drew with masterly hand a frightful picture of the revolts and seditions that were sure to follow such a Council as it was contemplated holding. The warring winds, once let loose, would never cease to rage till the vessel of the Polish State was driven on the rocks and shipwrecked. For every concession to the heretics and the blind mob, the king would have to part with as many rights of his own. His laws contemned, his throne in the dust, who then would lift him up and give him back his crown? Had he forgotten the Colloquy of Poissy, which the King of France, then a child, had been persuaded to permit to take place? What had that disputation proved but a trumpet of revolt, which had banished peace from France, not since to return? In that unhappy country, whose inhabitants were parted by bitter feuds and contending factions, whose fields were reddened by the sword of civil war, whose throne was being continually shaken by sedition and revolt, the king might see the picture of what Poland would become should he give his consent to the meeting of a Council, where all doctrines would be brought into question, and all things reformed without reference to the canons of the Church, and the authority of the Pope. Commendoni was a skillful limner; he made the king hear the roar of the tempest which he foretold; Sigismund Augustus felt as if his throne were already rocking beneath him; the peace-loving monarch revoked the permission he had been on the point of giving; he would not permit the Council to convene.[6]

If a National Council could not meet to essay the Reformation of the Church, might it not be possible, some influential persons now asked, for the three Protestant bodies in Poland to unite in one Church? Such a union would confer new strength

[3]Pietro Soave Polano, Hist. Counc. Trent, lib. 5., p. 399; Lond., 1629.

[4]“Episcopi sunt non custodes sed proditores reipublicae.” (Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 312.)

[5]Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 232, foot-note.

[6]Vie de Commendoni, par Gratiani, Fr. Trans., p. 213 et seq.-apud Krasinski, Slavonia, pp. 232-234.

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on Protestantism, would remove the scandal offered by the dissensions of Protestants among themselves, and would enable them in the day of battle to unite their arms against the foe, and in the hour of peace to conjoin their labours in building up their Zion. The Protestant communions in Poland were-lst, the Bohemian; 2ndly, the Reformed or Calvinistic; and 3rdly, the Lutheran. Between the first and second there was entire agreement in point of doctrine; only inasmuch as the first pastors of the Bohemian Church had received ordination (1467) from a Waldensian superintendent, as we have previously narrated,[7] the Bohemians had come to lay stress on this, as an order of succession peculiarly sacred. Between the second and third there was the important divergence on the subject of the Eucharist. The Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation approached more nearly to the Roman doctrine of the mass than to the Reformed doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. If change there had been since the days of Luther on the question of consubstantiation, it was in the direction of still greater rigidity and tenacity, accompanied with a growing intolerance toward the other branches of the great Protestant family, of which some melancholy proofs have come before us. How much the heart of John Alasco was set on healing these divisions, and how small a measure of success attended his efforts to do so, we have already seen. The project was again revived. The main opposition to it came from the Lutherans. The Bohemian Church now numbered upwards of 200 congregations in Moravia and Poland,[8] but the Lutherans accused them of being heretical. Smarting from the reproach, and judging that to clear their orthodoxy would pave the way for union, the Bohemians submitted their Confession to the Protestant princes of Germany, and all the leading Reformers of Europe, including Peter Martyr and Bullinger at Zurich, and Calvin and Beza at Geneva. A unanimous verdict was returned that the Bohemian Confession was “conformable to the doctrines of the Gospel.” This judgment silenced for a time the Lutheran attacks on the purity of the Bohemian creed; but this good understanding being once more disturbed, the Bohemian Church in 1568 sent a delegation to Wittemberg, to submit their Confession to the theological faculty of its university. Again their creed was fully approved of, and this judgment carrying great weight with the Lutherans, the attacks on the Bohemians from that time ceased, and the negotiations for union went prosperously forward.

At last the negotiations bore fruit. In 1569, the leading nobles of the three communions, having met together at the Diet of Lublin, resolved to take measures for the consummation of the union. They were the more incited to this by the hope that the king, who had so often expressed his desire to see the Protestant Churches of his realm become one, would thereafter declare himself on the side of Protestantism. It was resolved to hold a Synod or Conference of all three Churches, and the town of Sandomir was chosen as the place of meeting. The Synod met in the beginning of April, 1570, and was attended by the Protestant grandees and nobles of Poland, and by the ministers of the Bohemian, Reformed, and Lutheran Churches. After several days discussion it was found that the assembly was of one heart and mind on all the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel; and all agreement, entitled “Act of the Religious Union between the Churches of Great and Little Poland, Russia, Lithuania, and Samogitia,” was signed on the 14thof April, 1570.[9]

The subscribers place on the front of their famous document their unanimity in “the doctrines about God, the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, Justification, and other principal points of the Christian religion.” To give effect to this unanimity they “enter into a mutual and sacred obligation to defend unanimously, and according to the injunctions of the Word of God, this their covenant in the true and pure religion of Christ, against the followers of the Roman Church, the sectaries, as well as all the enemies of the truth and Gospel.”

On the vexed question of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the United Church agreed to declare that “the elements are not only elements or vain symbols, but are sufficient to believers, and impart by faith what they signify.” And in order to express themselves with still greater clearness, they agreed to confess that “the substantial presence of Christ is not only signified but really represented in the Communion to those that receive it, and that the body and blood of our Lord are really distributed and given with the symbols of the thing itself; which according to the nature of Sacraments are by no means bare signs.”

“But that no disputes,” they add, “should originate from a difference of expressions, it has been resolved to add to the articles inserted into our Confession, the article of the Confession of the Saxon Churches relating to the Lord’s Supper, which was

[7]See ante, bk. 3., chap. 19, p. 212.

[8]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 368.

[9]This union is known in history as the Consensus Sandomiriensis.

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sent in 1551 to the Council of Trent, and which we acknowledge as pious, and do receive. Its expressions are as follows:’ Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are signs and testimonies of grace, as it has been said before, which remind us of the promise and of the redemption, and show that the benefits of the Gospel belong to all those that make use of these rites... In the established use of the Communion, Christ is substantially present, and the body and blood of Christ are truly given to those who receive the Communion.’”[10]

The confederating Churches further agreed to “abolish and bury in eternal oblivion all the contentions, troubles, and dissensions which have hitherto impeded the progress of the Gospel,” and leaving free each Church to administer its own discipline and practice its own rites, deeming these of “little importance” provided “the foundation of our faith and salvation remain pure and unadulterated,” they say: “Having mutually given each other our hands, we have made a sacred promise faithfully to maintain the peace and faith, and to promote it every day more and more for the edification of the Word of God, and carefully to avoid all occasions of dissension.”[11]

There follows a long and brilliant list of palatines, nobles, superintendents, pastors, elders, and deacons belonging to all the three communions, who, forgetting the party-questions that had divided them, gathered round this one standard, and giving their hands to one another, and lifting them up to heaven, vowed henceforward to be one and to contend only against the common foe. This was one of the triumphs of Protestantism. Its spirit now gloriously prevailed over the pride of church, the rivalry of party, and the narrowness of bigotry, and in this victory gave an augury-alas! never to be fulfilled-of a yet greater triumph in days to come, by which this was to be completed and crowned.

Three years later (1573) a great Protestant Convocation was held at Cracow. It was presided over by John Firley, Grand Marshal of Poland, a leading member of the Calvinistic communion, and the most influential grandee of the kingdom. The regulations enacted by this Synod sufficiently show the goal at which it was anxious to arrive. It aimed at reforming the nation in life as well as in creed. It forbade “all kinds of wickedness and luxury, accursed gluttony and inebriety.” It prohibited lewd dances, games of chance, profane oaths, and night assemblages in taverns. It enjoined landowners to treat their peasants with “Christian charity and humanity,” to exact of them no oppressive labor or heavy taxes, to permit no markets or fairs to be held upon their estates on Sunday, and to demand no service of their peasants on that day. A Protestant creed was but the means for creating a virtuous and Christian people.

There is no era like this, before or since, in the annals of Poland. Protestantism had reached its acme in that country. Its churches numbered upwards of 2,000. They were at peace and flourishing. Their membership included the first dignitaries of the crown and the first nobles of the land. In some parts Romanism almost entirely disappeared. Schools were planted throughout the country, and education flourished. The Scriptures were translated into the tongue of the people, the reading of them was encouraged as the most efficient weapon against the attacks of Rome. Latin was already common, but now Greek and Hebrew began to be studied, that direct access might be had to the Divine fountains of truth and salvation. The national intellect, invigorated by Protestant truth, began to expatiate in fields that had been neglected hitherto. The printing-press, which rusts unused where Popery dominates, was vigorously wrought, and sent forth works on science, jurisprudence, theology, and general literature. This was the Augustan era of letters in Poland. The toleration which was so freely accorded in that country drew thither crowds of refugees, whom persecution had driven from their homes, and who, carrying with them the arts and manufactures of their own lands, enriched Poland with a material prosperity which, added to the political power and literary glory that already encompassed her, raised her to a high pitch of greatness.

[10]These articles are a compromise between the Lutheran and Calvinistic theologies, on the vexed question of the Eucharist. The Lutherans soon began loudly to complain that though their phraseology was Lutheran their sense was Calvinistic, and the union, as shown in the text, was short-lived.

[11]Krasinski, Hist Reform. Poland, vol. 1., chap. 9.

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Chapter 4: Organisation of the Protestant Church of Poland

Several Church Organisations in Poland—Causes—Church Government in Poland a Modified Episcopacy—The Superintendent—His Powers—The Senior, etc—The Civil Senior—The Synod the Supreme Authority—Local and Provincial Synods—General Convocation-Two Defects in this Organisation—Death of Sigismund Augustus—Who shall Succeed him?—Coligny proposes the Election of a French Prince—Montluc sent as Ambassador to Poland—Duke of Anjou Elected—Pledges—Attempted Treacheries—Coronation—Henry Attempts to Evade the Oath—Firmness of the Polish Protestants—The King’s Unpopularity and Flight

Picture: View of the Market-place of Cracow

Picture: The Marshal of Poland Demanding the Oath from the Duke of Anjou

The short-lived golden age of Poland was now waning into the silver one. But before recording the slow gathering of the shadows—the passing of the day into twilight, and the deepening of the twilight into night-we must cast a momentary glance, first, at the constitution of the Polish Protestant Church as seen at this the period of her fullest development; and secondly, at certain political events, which bore with powerful effect upon the Protestant character of the nation, and sealed the fate of Poland as a free country.

In its imperfect unity we trace the absence of a master-hand in the construction of the Protestant Church of Poland. Had one great mind led in the Reformation of that country, one system of ecclesiastical government would doubtless from the first have been given to all Poland. As it was, the organisation of its Church at the beginning, and in a sense all throughout, differed in different provinces. Other causes, besides the want of a great leader, contributed to this diversity in respect of ecclesiastical government. The nobles were allowed to give what order they pleased to the Protestant churches which they erected on their lands, but the same liberty was not extended to the inhabitants of towns, and hence very considerable diversity in the ecclesiastical arrangements. This diversity was still farther increased by the circumstance that not one, but three Confessions had gained ground in Poland-the Bohemian, the Genevan, and the Lutheran. The necessity of a more perfect organ-isation soon came to be felt, and repeated attempts were made at successive Synods to unify the Church’s government. A great step was taken in this direction at the Synod of Kosmin, in 1555, when a union was concluded between the Bohemian and Genevan Confessions; and a still greater advance was made in 1570, as we have narrated in the preceding chapter, when at the Synod of Sandomir the three Protestant Churches of Poland-the Bohemian, the Genevan, and the Lutheran-agreed to merge all their Confessions in one creed, and combine their several organisations in one government.

But even this was only an approximation, not a full and complete attainment of the object aimed at. All Poland was not yet ruled spiritually from one ecclesiastical centre; for the three great political divisions of the country-Great Poland, Little Poland, and Lithuania-had each its independent ecclesiastical establishment, by which all its religious affairs were regulated. Nevertheless, at intervals, or when some matter of great moment arose, all the pastors of the kingdom came together in Synod, thus presenting a grand Convocation of all the Protestant Churches of Poland.

Despite this tri-partition in the ecclesiastical authority, one form of Church government now extended over all Poland. That form was a modified episcopacy. If any one man was entitled to be styled the Father of the Polish Protestant Church it was John Alasco, and the organisation which he gave to the Reformed Church of his native land was not unlike that of England, of which he was a great admirer. Poland was on a great scale what the foreign Church over which John Alasco presided in London was on a small. First came the Superintendent, for Alasco preferred that term, though the more learned one of Senior Primarius was sometimes used to designate this dignitary. The Superintendent, or Senior Primarius, corresponded somewhat in rank and powers to an archbishop. He convoked Synods, presided in them, and executed their sentences; but he had no judicial authority, and was subject to the Synod, which could judge, admonish, and depose him.[1]

Over the Churches of a district a Sub-Superintendent, or Senior, presided. The Senior corresponded to a bishop. He took the place of the Superintendent in his absence; he convoked the Synods of the district, and possessed a certain

[1]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 2., p. 294.

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limited jurisdiction, though exclusively spiritual. The other ecclesiastical functionaries were the Minister, the Deacon, and the Lecturer. The Polish Protestants eschewed the fashion and order of the Roman hierarchy, and strove to reproduce as far as the circumstances of their times would allow, or as they themselves were able to trace it, the model exhibited in the primitive Church.

Besides the Clerical Senior each district had a Civil Senior, who was elected exclusively by the nobles and landowners. His duties about the Church were mainly of an external nature. All things appertaining to faith and doctrine were left entirely in the hands of the ministers; but the Civil Senior took cognisance of the morals of ministers, and in certain cases could forbid them the exercise of their functions till he had reported the case to the Synod, as the supreme authority of the Church. The support and general welfare of churches and schools were entrusted to the Civil Senior, who, moreover, acted as advocate for the Church before the authorities of the country.

The supreme authority in the Polish Protestant Church was neither the Superintendent nor the Civil Senior, but the Synod. Four times every year a Local Synod, composed not of ministers only, but of all the members of the congregations, was convened in each district. Although the members sat along with the pastors, all questions of faith and doctrine were left to be determined exclusively by the latter. Once a year a Provincial Synod was held, in which each district was represented by a Clerical Senior, two Con-Seniors, or assistants, and four Civil Seniors; thus giving a slight predominance to the lay element in the Synod. Nevertheless, ministers, although not delegated by the Local Synods, could sit and vote on equal terms with others in the Provincial Synod.

The Grand Synod of the nation, or Convocation of the Polish Church, met at no stated times. It assembled only when the emergence of some great question called for its decision. These great gatherings, of course, could take place only so long as the Union of Sandomir, which bound in one Church all the Protestant Confessions of Poland, existed, and that unhappily was only from 1570 to 1595. After the expiry of these twenty-five years those great national gatherings, which had so impressively attested the strength and grandeur of Protestantism in Poland, were seen no more. Such in outline was the constitution and government of the Protestant Church of Poland. It wanted only two things to make it complete and perfect-namely, one supreme court, or center of authority, with jurisdiction covering the whole country; and a permanent body or “Board,” having its seat in the capital, through which the Church might take instant action when great difficulties called for united councils, or sudden dangers necessitated united arms. The meetings of the Grand Synods were intermittent and irregular, whereas their enemies never failed to maintain union among themselves, and never ceased their attacks upon the Protestant Church.

We must now turn to the course of political affairs subsequent to the death of King Sigismund Augustus, of which, however, we shall treat only so far as they grew out of Protestantism, and exerted a reflex influence upon it. The amiable; enlightened, and tolerant monarch, Sigismund Augustus, so often almost persuaded to be a Protestant, and one day, as his courtiers fondly hoped, to become one in reality, went to his grave in 1572, without having come to any decision, and without leaving any issue. The Protestants were naturally desirous of placing a Protestant upon the throne; but the intrigues of Cardinal Commendoni, and the jealousy of the Lutherans against the Reformed, which the Union of Sandomir had not entirely extinguished, rendered all efforts towards this effect in vain. Meanwhile Coligny, whom the Peace of St. Germains had restored to the court of Paris, and for the moment to influence, came forward with the proposal of placing a French prince upon the throne of Poland. The admiral was revolving a gigantic scheme for humbling Romanism, and its great champion, Spain. He meditated bringing together in a political and religious alliance the two great countries of Poland and France, and Protestantism once triumphant in both, an issue which to Coligny seemed to be near, the united arms of the two countries would soon put an end to the dominancy of Rome, and lay in the dust the overgrown power of Austria and Spain. Catherine de Medici, who saw in the project a new aggrandisement to her family, warmly favored it; and Montluc, Bishop of Valence, was dispatched to Poland, furnished with ample instructions from Coligny to prosecute the election of Henry of Valois, Duke of Anjou. Montluc had hardly crossed the frontier when the St. Bartholomew was struck, and among the many victims of that dreadful act was the author of that very scheme which Montluc was on his way to advocate and, if possible, consummate. The bishop, on receiving the terrible news, thought it useless to continue his journey; but Catherine, feeling the necessity of following the line of foreign policy which had been originated by the man she had murdered, sent orders to Montluc to go forward. [180] [181] [182]

The ambassador had immense difficulties to overcome in the prosecution of his mission, for the massacre had inspired universal horror, but by dint of stoutly denying the Duke of Anjou’s participation in the crime, and promising that the duke would subscribe every guarantee of political and religious liberty which might be required of him, he finally carried his object. Firley, the leader of the Protestants, drafted a list of privileges which Anjou was to grant to the Protestants of Poland, and of concessions which Charles IX. was to make to the Protestants of France; and Montluc was required to sign these, or see the rejection of his candidate. The ambassador promised for the monarch.

Henry of Valois having been chosen, four ambassadors set out from Poland with the diploma of election, which was presented to the duke on the 10th September, 1573, in Notre Dame, Paris. A Romish bishop, and member of the embassy, entered a protest, at the beginning of the ceremonial, against that clause in the oath which secured religious liberty, and which the duke was now to swear. Some confusion followed. The Protestant Zborowski, interrupting the proceedings, addressed Montluc thus:—“Had you not accepted, in the name of the duke, these conditions, we should not have elected him as our monarch.” Henry feigned not to understand the subject of dispute, but Zborowski, advancing towards him, said-“I repeat, sire, if your ambassador had not accepted the condition securing religious liberty to us Protestants, we would not have elected you to be our king, and if you do not confirm these conditions you shall not be our king.” Thereupon Henry took the oath. When he had sworn, Bishop Karnkowski, who had protested against the religious liberty promised in the oath, stepped forward, and again protested that the clause should not prejudice the authority of the Church of Rome, and he received from the king a written declaration to the effect that it would not.[2]

Although the sovereign-elect had confirmed by oath the religious liberties of Poland, the suspicions of the Protestants were not entirely allayed, and they resolved jealously to watch the proceedings at the coronation. Their distrust was not without cause. Cardinal Hosius, who had now begun to exercise vast influence on the affairs of Poland, reasoned that the oath that Henry had taken in Paris was not binding, and he sent his secretary to meet the new monarch on the road to his new dominions, and to assure him that he did not even need absolution from what he had sworn, seeing what was unlawful was not binding, and that as soon as he should be crowned, he might proceed, the oath notwithstanding, to drive from his kingdom all religions contrary to that of Rome.[3] The bishops began to teach the same doctrine and to instruct Henry, who was approaching Poland by slow stages, that he would mount the throne as an absolute sovereign, and reign wholly unfettered and uncontrolled by either the oath of Paris or the Polish Diet. The kingdom was in dismay and alarm; the Protestants talked of annulling the election, and refusing to accept Henry as their sovereign. Poland was on the brink of civil war.

At the coronation a new treachery was attempted. Tutored by Jesuitical councillors, Henry proposed to assume the crown, but to evade the oath. The ceremonial was proceeding, intently watched by both Protestants and Romanists. The final act was about to be performed; the crown was to be placed on the head of the new sovereign; but the oath guaranteeing the Protestant liberties had not been administered to him. Firley, the Grand Marshal of Poland, and first grandee of the kingdom, stood forth, and stopping the proceedings, declared that unless the Duke of Anjou should repeat the oath which he had sworn at Paris, he would not allow the coronation to take place. Henry was kneeling on the steps of the altar, but startled by the words, he rose up, and looking round him, seemed to hesitate. Firley, seizing the crown, said in a firm voice, “Si non jurabis, non regnabis” (If you will not swear, you shall not reign). The courtiers and spectators were mute with astonishment. The king was awed; he read in the crest-falle countenances of his advisers that he had but one alternative the oath, or an ignominious return to France. It was too soon to go back; he took the copy of the oath which was handed to him, swore, and was crowned.

The courageous act of the Protestant grand marshal had dispelled the cloud of civil war that hung above the nation. But it was only for a moment that confidence was restored. The first act of the new sovereign had revealed him to his subjects as both treacherous and cowardly; what trust could they repose in him, and what affection could they feel for him? Henry took into exclusive favor the

[2]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 2., pp. 15-34.

[3]Hosius wrote in the same terms from Rome to the Archbishop and clergy of Poland: “Que ce que le Roi avait promis a Paris n’etait qu’une feinte et dissimulation; et qu’aussitot qu’il serait couronne, il chasserait hors du royaume tout exercice de re1igion autre que la Romaine.” (MS. of Dupuis in the Library of Richelieu at Paris-apud Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 2., 1). 39.)

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Popish bishops; and, emboldened by a patronage unknown to them during former reigns, they boldly declared the designs they had long harboured, but which they had hitherto only whispered to their most trusted confidants. The great Protestant nobles were discountenanced and discredited. The king’s shameless profligacies consummated the discontent and disgust of the nation. The patriotic Firley was dead-it was believed in many quarters that he had been poisoned

- and civil war was again on the point of breaking out when, fortunately for the unhappy country, the flight of the monarch saved it from that great calamity. His brother, Charles IX., had died, and Anjou took his secret and quick departure to succeed him on the throne of France.

Chapter 5: Turning of the Tide of Protestantism in Poland

Stephen Bathory Elected to the Throne—His Midnight Interview—Abandons Protestantism, and becomes a Romanist—Takes the Jesuits under his Patronage—Builds and Endows Colleges for them—Roman Synod of Piotrkow—Subtle Policy of the Bishops for Recovering their Temporal Jurisdiction—Temporal Ends gained by Spiritual Sanctions—Spiritual Terrors versus Temporal Punishments—Begun Decadence of Poland—Last Successes of its Arms—Death of King Stephen—Sigismund III. Succeeds—” The King of the Jesuits.”

After a year’s interregnum, Stephen Bathory, a Transylvanian prince, who had married Anne Jagellon, one of the sisters of the Emperor Sigismund Augustus, was elected to the crown of Poland. His worth was so great, and his popularity so high, that although a Protestant the Roman clergy dared not oppose his election. The Protestant nobles thought that now their cause was gained; but the Romanists did not despair. Along with the delegates commissioned to announce his election to Bathory, they sent a prelate of eminent talent and learning, Solikowski by name, to conduct their intrigue of bringing the new king over to their side. The Protestant deputies, guessing Solikowski’s errand, were careful to give him no opportunity of conversing with the new sovereign in private. But, eluding their vigilance, he obtained an interview by night, and succeeded in persuading Bathory that he should never be able to maintain, himself on the throne of Poland unless he made a public profession of the Roman faith. The Protestant deputies, to their dismay, next morning beheld Stephen Bathory, in whom they had placed their hopes of triumph, devoutly kneeling at mass.[1] The new reign had opened with no auspicious omen!

Nevertheless, although a pervert, Bathory did not become a zealot. He repressed all attempts at persecution, and tried to hold the balance with tolerable impartiality between the two parties. But he sowed seeds destined to yield tempests in the future. The Jesuits, as we shall afterwards see, had already entered Poland, and as the Fathers were able to persuade the king that they were the zealous cultivators and the most efficient teachers of science and letters, Bathory, who was a patron of literature, took them under his patronage, and built colleges and seminaries for their use, endowing them with lands and heritages. Among other institutions he founded the University of Vilna, which became the chief seat of the Fathers in Poland, and whence they spread themselves over the kingdom.[2]

It was during the reign of King Stephen that the tide began to turn in the fortunes of this great, intelligent, and free nation. The ebb first showed itself in a piece of subtle legislation which was achieved by the Roman Synod of Piotrkow, in 1577. That Synod decreed excommunication against all who held the doctrine of religious toleration[3] But toleration of all religions was one of the fundamental laws of the kingdom, and the enactment of the Synod was levelled against this law. True, they could not blot out the law of the State, nor could they compel the tribunals of the nation to enforce their own ecclesiastical edict;

[1]The fact that Bathory before his election to the throne of Poland was a Protestant, and not, as historians commonly assert, a Romanist, was first published by Krasinski, on the authority of a MS. history now in the Library at St. Petersburg, written by Orselski, a contemporary of the events. (Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 2., p. 48)

[2]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 2., p. 53.

[3]Ibid., vol. 2., pp. 49, 50.

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nevertheless their sentence, though spiritual in its form, was very decidedly temporal in both its substance and its issues, seeing excommunication carried with it many grievous civil and social inflictions. This legislation was the commencement of a stealthy policy which had for its object the recovery of that temporal jurisdiction of which, as we have seen, the Diet had stripped them.

This first encroachment being permitted to pass unchallenged, the Roman clergy ventured on other and more violent attacks on the laws of the State, and the liberties of the people. The Synods of the diocese of Warmia prohibited mixed marriages; they forbade Romanists to be sponsors at the baptism of Protestant children; they interdicted the use of books and hymns not sanctioned by ecclesiastical authority; and they declared heretics incapable of inheriting landed property. All these enactments wore a spiritual guise, and they could be enforced only by spiritual sanctions; but they were in antagonism to the law of the land, and by implication branded the laws with which they conflicted as immoral; they tended to widen the breach between the two great parties in the nation, and they disturbed the consciences of Romanists, by subjecting them to the alternative of incurring certain disagreeable consequences, or of doing what they were taught was unlawful and sinful.

Stretching their powers and prerogatives still farther, the Roman bishops now claimed payment of their tithes from Protestant landlords, and attempted to take back the churches which had been converted front Romanist to Protestant uses. To make trial of how far the nation was disposed to yield to these demands, or the tribunals prepared to endorse them, they entered pleas at law to have the goods and possessions which they claimed as theirs adjudged to them, and in some instances the courts gave decisions in their favour. But the hierarchy had gone farther than meanwhile was prudent. These arrogant demands roused the alarm of the nobles; and the Diets of 1581 and 1582 administered a tacit rebuke to the hierarchy by annulling the judgments which had been pronounced in their favor. The bishops had learned that they must walk slowly if they would walk safely; but they had met with nothing to convince them that their course was not the right one, or that it would not succeed in the end.

Nevertheless, under the appearance of having suffered a rebuff, the hierarchy had gained not a few substantial advantages. The more extreme of their demands had been disallowed, and many thought that; the contest between them and the civil courts was at an end, and that it had ended adversely to the spiritual authority; but the bishops knew better. They had laid the foundation of what would grow with every successive Synod, and each new edict, into a body of law, diverse from and in opposition to the law of the land, and which presenting itself to the Romanist with a higher moral sanction, would ultimately, in his eyes, deprive the civil law of all force, and transfer to itself the homage of his conscience and the obedience of his life. The coercive power wielded by this new code, which was being stealthily put in operation in the heart of the Polish State, was a power that could neither be seen nor heard; and those who were accustomed to execute their behests through the force of armies, or the majesty of tribunals, were apt to contemn it as utterly unable to cope with the power of law; nevertheless, the result as wrought out in Poland showed that this influence, apparently so weak, yet penetrating deeply into the heart and soul, had in it an omnipotence compared with which the power of the sword was but feebleness. And farther there was this danger, perhaps not foreseen or not much taken into account in Poland at the moment, namely, that the Jesuits were busy manipulating the youth, and that whenever public opinion should be ripe for a concordat between the bishops and the Government, this spiritual code would start up into an undisguisedly temporal one, having at its service all the powers of the State, and enforcing its commands with the sword.

What was now introduced into Poland was a new and more refined policy than the Church of Rome had as yet employed in her battles with Protestantism. Hitherto she had filled her hand with the coarse weapons of material force-the armies of the Empire and the stakes of the Inquisition. But now, appealing less to the bodily senses, and more to the faculties of the soul, she began at Trent, and continued in Poland, the plan of creating a body of legislation, the pseudo-divine sanctions of which, in many instances, received submission where the terrors of punishment would have been withstood. The sons of Loyola came first, moulding opinion; and the bishops came after, framing canons in conformity with that altered opinion—gathering where the others had strewed-and noiselessly achieving victory where the swords of their soldiers would have but sustained defeat. No doubt the liberty enjoyed in Poland necessitated this alteration of the Roman tactics; but it was soon seen that it was a more effectual method than the vulgar weapons of force, and that if a revolted Christendom was to be brought back to the Papal obedience, it must be mainly, though [185] not exclusively, by the means of this spiritual artillery.

It was under the same reign, that of Stephen Bathory, that the political influence of the Kingdom of Poland began to wane. The ebb in its national prestige was almost immediately consequent on the ebb in its Protestantism. The victorious wars which Bathory had carried on with Russia were ended, mainly through the counsels of the Jesuit Possevinus, by a peace which stripped Poland of the advantages she was entitled to expect from her victories. This was the last gleam of military success that shone upon the country. Stephen Bathory died in 1586, having reigned ten years, not without glory, and was succeeded on the throne of Poland by Sigismund III. He was the son of John, King of Sweden, and grandson of the renowned Gustavus Vasa. Nurtured by a Romish mother, Sigismund

III. had abandoned the faith of his famous ancestor, and during his long reign of well-nigh half a century, he made the grandeur of Rome his first object, and the power of Poland only his second. Under such a prince the fortunes of the nation continued to sink. He was called “the King of the Jesuits,” and so far was he from being ashamed of the title, that he gloried in it, and strove to prove himself worthy of it. He surrounded himself with Jesuit councillors; honors and riches he showered almost exclusively upon Romanists, and especially upon those whom interest had converted, but argument left unconvinced. No dignity of the State and no post in the public service was to be obtained, unless the aspirant made friends of the Fathers. Their colleges and schools multiplied, their hoards and territorial domains augmented from year to year. The education of the youth, and especially the sons of the nobles, was almost wholly in their hands, and a generation was being created brimful of that “loyalty” which Rome so highly lauds, and which makes the understandings of her subjects so obdurate and their necks so supple. The Protestants were as yet too powerful in Poland to permit of direct persecution, but the way was being prepared in the continual decrease of their numbers, and the systematic diminution of their influence; and when Sigismund III. went to his grave in 1632, the glory which had illuminated the country during the short reign of Stephen Bathory had departed, and the night was fast closing in around Poland.

Chapter 6: The Jesuits enter Poland-Destruction of its Protestantism

Cardinal Hosius—His Acquirements—Prodigious Activity—Brings the Jesuits into Poland—They rise to vast Influence—Their Tactics—Mingle in all Circles—Labour to Undermine the Influence of Protestant Ministers—Extraordinary Methods of doing this—Mob Violence—Churches, etc., Burned—Graveyards Violated—The Jesuits in the Saloons of the Great—Their Schools and Method of Teaching—They Dwarf the National Mind—They Extinguish Literature—Testimony of a Popish Writer—Reign of Vladislav—John Casimir, a Jesuit, ascends the Throne—Political Calamities-Revolt of the Cossacks—Invasion of the Russians and Swedes—Continued Decline of Protestantism and Oppression of Protestants—Exhaustion and Ruin of Poland—Causes which contributed along with the Jesuits to the Overthrow of Protestantism in Poland

Picture: View of the Tomb of Anne Jagellon in the Cathedral of Cracow

The Jesuits had been introduced into Poland, and the turning of the Protestant tide, and the begun decadence of the nation’s political power, which was almost contemporaneous with the retrogression in its Protestantism, was mainly the work of the Fathers. The man who opened the door to the disciples of Loyola in that country is worthy of a longer study than we can bestow upon him. His name was Stanislaus Hosen, better known as Cardinal Hosius. He was born at Cracow in 1504, and thus in birth was nearly contemporaneous with Knox and Calvin. He was sprung of a family of German descent which had been engaged in trade, and become rich. His great natural powers had been perfected by a finished education, first in the schools of his own country, and afterwards in the Italian universities. He was unwearied in his application to business, often dictating to several secretaries at once, and not unfrequently dispatching important matters at meals, He was at home in the controversial literature of the Reformation, and knew how to employ in his own cause the arguments of one Protestant polemic against another. He took care to inform himself of everything about the life and occupation of the leading Reformers, his contemporaries, which it was important [186] for him to know. His works are numerous; they are in various languages, written with equal elegance in all, and with a wonderful adaptation in their style and method to the genius and habit of thought of each of the various peoples he addressed. The one grand object of his life was the overthrow of Protestantism, and the restoration of the Roman Church to that place of power and glory from which the Reformation had cast her down. He brought the concentrated forces of a vast knowledge, a gigantic intellect, and a strong will to the execution of that task. History has not recorded, so far as we are aware, any immorality in his life. He could boast the refined manners, liberal sentiments, and humane disposition which the love and cultivation of letters usually engender. Nevertheless the marvellous and mysterious power of that system of which he was so distinguished a champion asserted its superiority in the case of this richly endowed, highly cultivated, and noble-minded man. Instead of imparting his virtues to his Church, she transferred her vices to him. Hosius always urged on fitting occasions that no faith should be kept with heretics, and although few could better conduct an argument than himself, he disliked that tedious process with heretics, and recommended the more summary one of the lictor’s axe. He saw no sin in spilling heretical blood; he received with joy the tidings of the St. Bartholomew Massacre, and writing to congratulate the Cardinal of Lorraine on the slaughter of Coligny, he thanked the Almighty for the great boon bestowed on France, and implored him to show equal mercy to Poland. His great understanding he prostrated at the feet of his Church, but for whose authority, he declared, the Scriptures would have no more weight than the Fables of Aesop. His many acquirements and great learning were not able to emancipate him from the thrall of a gloomy asceticism; he grovelled in the observance of the most austere performances, scouring himself in the belief that to have his body streaming with blood and covered with wounds was more pleasing to the Almighty than to have his soul adorned with virtues and replenished with graces. Such was the man who, to use the words of the historian Krasinski, “deserved the eternal gratitude of Rome and the curses of his own country,” by introducing the Jesuits into Poland.[1]

Returning from the Council of Trent in 1564, Hosius saw with alarm the advance which Protestantism had made in his diocese during his absence. He immediately addressed himself to the general of the society, Lainez, requesting him to send him some members of his order to aid him in doing what he despaired of accomplishing by his own single arm. A few of the Fathers were dispatched from Rome, and being joined by others from Germany, they were located in Braunsberg, a little town in the diocese of Hosius, who richly endowed the infant establishment. For six years they made little progress, nor was it till the death of Sigismund Augustus and the accession of Stephen Bathory that they began to make their influence felt in Poland. How they ingratiated themselves with that monarch by their vast pretensions to learning we have already seen. They became great favourites with the bishops, who finding Protestantism increasing in their dioceses, looked for its repression rather from the intrigues of the Fathers than the labors of their own clergy. But the golden age of the Jesuits in Poland, to be followed by the iron age to the people, did not begin until the bigoted Sigismund III. mounted the throne. The favors of Stephen Bathory, the colleges he had founded, and the lands with which he had endowed them, were not remembered in comparison with the far higher consideration and vaster wealth to which they were admitted under his successor. Sigismund reigned, but the Jesuits governed. They stood by the fountain-head of honours, and they held the keys of all dignities and emoluments. They took care of their friends in the distribution of these good things, nor did they forget when enriching others to enrich also themselves. Conversions were numerous; and the wanderer who had returned from the fatal path of heresy to the safe fold of the Church was taught to express his thanks in some gift or service to the order by whose instructions and prayers he had been rescued. The son of a Protestant father commonly expressed his penitence by building them a college, or bequeathing them an estate, or expelling from his lands the confessors of his father’s faith, and replacing them with the adherents of the Roman creed. Thus all things were prospering to their wish. Every day new doors were opening to them. Their missions and schools were springing up in all corners of the land. They entered all houses, from the baron’s downward; they sat at all tables, and listened to all conversations. In all assemblies, for whatever purpose convened, whether met to mourn or to make merry, to transact business or to seek amusement, there were the Jesuits. They were present at baptisms, at marriages, at funerals, and at fairs. While their learned men taught

[1]See his Life by Rescius (Reszka), Rome, 1587. Numerous editions have been published of his works; the best is that of Cologne, 1584, containing his letters to many of the more eminent of his contemporaries.

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the young nobles in the universities, they had their itinerant orators, who visited villages, frequented markets, and erecting their stage in public exhibited scenic representations of Bible histories, or of the combats, martyrdoms, and canonisations of the saints. These wandering apostles were furnished, moreover, with store of relics and wonder-working charms, and by these as well as by pompous processions, they edified and awed the crowds that gathered round them.

They strenuously and systematically labored to destroy the influence of Protestant ministers. They strove to make them odious, sometimes by malevolent whisperings, and at other times by open accusations. The most blameless life and the most venerated character afforded no protection against Jesuit calumny. Volanus, whose ninety years bore witness to his abstemious life, they called a drunkard. Sdrowski, who had incurred their anger by a work written against them, and whose learning was not excelled by the most erudite of their order, they accused of theft, and of having once acted the part of a hangman. Adding ridicule to calumny, they strove in every way to hold up Protestant sermons and assemblies to laughter. If a Synod convened, there was sure to appear, in no long time, a letter from the devil, addressed to the members of court, thanking them for their zeal, and instructing them, in familiar and loving phrase, how to do their work and his. Did a minister marry, straightway he was complimented with an epithalamium from the ready pen of some Jesuit scribe. Did a Protestant pastor die, before a few days had passed by, the leading members of his flock were favored with letters from their deceased minister, duly dated from Pandemonium. These effusions were composed generally in doggerel verse, but they were barbed with a venomous wit and a coarse humor. The multitude read, laughed, and believed. The calumnies, it is true, were refitted by those at whom they were levelled; but that signified little, the falsehood was repeated again and again, till at last, by dint of perseverance and audacity, the Protestants and their worship were brought into general hatred and contempt.[2]

The defection of the sons of Radziwill, the zealous Reformer of whom we have previously made mention, was a great blow to the Protestantism of Poland. That family became the chief support, after the crown, of the Papal reaction in the Polish dominions. Not only were their influence and wealth freely employed for the spread of the Jesuits, but all the Protestant churches and schools which their father had built on his estates were made over to the Church of Rome. The example of the Radziwills was followed by many of the Lithuanian nobles, who returned within the Roman pale, bringing with them not only the edifices on their lands formerly used in the Protestant service, but their tenants also, and expelling those who refused to conform.

By this time the populace had been sufficiently leavened with the spirit and principles of the Jesuits to be made their tool. Mob violence is commonly the first form that persecution assumes. It was so in Poland. The caves whence these popular tempests issued were the Jesuit colleges. The students inflamed the passions of the multitude, and the public peace was broken by tumult and outrage. Protestant worshipping assemblies began to be assailed and dispersed, Protestant churches to be wrecked, and Protestant libraries to be given to the flames. The churches of Cracow, of Vilna, and other towns were pillaged. Protestant cemeteries were violated, their monuments and tablets destroyed, the dead exhumed, and their remains scattered about. It was not possible at times to carry the Protestant dead to their graves. In June, 1578, the funeral procession of a Protestant lady was attacked in the streets of Cracow by the pupils of All-hallows College. Stones were thrown, the attendants were driven away, the body was torn from the coffin, and after being dragged through the streets it was thrown into the Vistula. Rarely indeed did the authorities interfere; and when it did happen that punishment followed these misdeeds, the infliction fell on the wretched tools, and the guiltier instigators and ringleaders were suffered to escape.[3]

While the Jesuits were smiting the Protestant ministers and members with the arm of the mob, they were bowing the knee in adulation and flattery before the Protestant nobles and gentry. In the saloons of the great, the same men who sowed from their chairs the principles of sedition and tumult, or vented in doggerel rhyme the odious calumny, were transformed into paragons of mildness and inoffensiveness. Oh, how they loved order, abominated coarseness, and anathematised all uncharitableness and violence! Having gained access into Protestant families of rank by their winning manners, their showy accomplishments, and sometimes by important services, they strove by every

[2]Lukaszewicz (a Popish author), History of the Helvetian Churches of Lithuania, vol. 1., pp. 47, 85. and vol. 2., p. 192; Posen, 1842, 1843-apud Krasinski, Slavonia,..... pp. 289, 294.

[3]Albert Wengiersi

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means-by argument, by wit, by insinuation-to convert them to the Roman faith; if they failed to pervert the entire family they generally succeeded with one or more of its members. Thus they established a foothold in the household, and had fatally broken the peace and confidence of the family. The anguish of the perverts for their parents, doomed as they believed to perdition, often so affected these parents as to induce them to follow their children into the Roman fold. Rome, as is well known, has made more victories by touching the heart than by convincing the reason.

But the main arm with which the Jesuits operated in Poland was the school. They had among them a few men of good talent and great erudition. At the beginning they were at pains to teach well, and to send forth from their seminaries accomplished Latin scholars, that so they might establish a reputation for efficient teaching, and spread their educational institutions over the kingdom. They were kind to their pupils, they gave their instructions without exacting any fee; and they were thus able to compete at great advantage with the Protestant schools, and not unfrequently did they succeed in extinguishing their rivals, and drafting the scholars into their own seminaries. Not only so: many Protestant parents, attracted by the high repute of the Jesuit schools, and the brilliant Latin scholars whom they sent forth from time to time, sent their sons to be educated in the institutions of the Fathers.

But the national mind did not grow, nor did the national literature flourish. This was the more remarkable from contrast with the brilliance of the era that had preceded the educational efforts of the Jesuits. The half-century during which the Protestant influence was the predominating one was “the Augustan age of Polish literature;” the half-century that followed, dating from the close of the sixteenth century, showed a marked and most melancholy decadence in every department of mental exertion. It was but too obvious that decrepitude had smitten the national intellect. The press sent forth scarcely a single work of merit; capable men were disappearing from professional life; Poland ceased to have statesmen fitted to counsel in the cabinet, or soldiers able to lead in the field. The sciences were neglected and the arts languished; and even the very language was becoming corrupt and feeble; its elegance and fire were sinking in the ashes of formalism and barbarism. Nor is it difficult to account for this. Without freedom there can be no vigour; but the Jesuits dared not leave the mind of their pupils at liberty. That the intellect should make full proof of its powers by ranging freely over all subjects, and investigating and discussing unfettered all questions, was what the Jesuits could not allow, well knowing that such freedom would overthrow their own authority. They led about the mind in chains as men do wild beasts, of whom they fear that should they slip their fetters, they would turn and rend them. The art they studied was not how to educate, but how not to educate. They intrigued to shut up the Protestant schools, and when they had succeeded, they collected the youth into their own, that they might keep them out of the way of that most dangerous of all things, knowledge. They taught them words, not things. They shut the page of history, they barred the avenues of science and philosophy, and they drilled their pupils exclusively in the subtleties of a scholastic theology. Is it wonderful that the eye kept perpetually poring on such objects should at last lose its power of vision; that the intellect confined to food like this should pine and die; and that the foot-prints of Poland ceased to be visible in the fields of literature, in the world of commerce, and on the arena of politics? The men who had taken in hand to educate the nation, taught it to forget all that other men strive to remember, and to remember all that other men strive to forget; in short, the education given to Poland by the Jesuits was a most ingenious and successful plan of teaching them not how to think right, but how to think wrong; not how to reason out truth, but how to reason out falsehood; not how to cast away prejudice, break the shackles of authority, and rise to the independence and noble freedom of a rational being, but how to cleave to error, hug one’s fetters, hoot at the light, and yet to be all the while filled with a proud conceit that this darkness is not darkness, but light; and this folly not folly, but wisdom. Thus metamorphosed this once noble nation came forth from the schools of the Jesuits, the light of their eye quenched, and the strength of their arm dried up, to find that they were no longer able to keep their place in the struggles of the world. They were put aside, they were split up, they were trampled down, and at last they perished as a nation; and yet their remains were not put into the sepulcher, but were left lying on the face of Europe, a melancholy monument of what nations become when they take the Jesuit for their schoolmaster.

This estimate of Jesuit teaching is not more severe than that which Popish authors themselves have expressed. Their system was admirably described by Broscius, a zealous Roman Catholic clergyman, professor in the University of Cracow, and one of the most learned men of his time, in a work published [190] originally in Polish, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. He says: “The Jesuits teach children the grammar of Alvar,[4] which it is very difficult to understand and to learn; and much time is spent at it. This they do for many reasons: first, that by keeping the child a long time in the school they may receive in gifts from the parents of the children, whom they pretend gratuitously to educate, much more than they would have got had there been a regular payment; second, that by keeping the children a long while in the school they may become well acquainted with their minds; third, that they may train the boy for their own plans, and for their own purposes; fourth, that in case the friends of the boy wish to have him from them, they may have a pretense for keeping him, saying, give him time at least to learn grammar, which is the foundation of every other knowledge; fifth, they want to keep boys at school till the age of manhood, that they may engage for their order those who show most talent or expect large inheritances; but when an individual neither possesses talents nor has any expectations, they will not retain him.”[5]

Sigismund III., in whose reign the Jesuits had become firmly rooted in Poland, died in 1632, and was succeeded by his eldest son Vladislav IV. Vladislav hated the disciples of Loyola as much as his father had loved and courted them, and he strove to the utmost of his power to counteract the evil effects of his father’s partiality for the order. He restrained the persecution by mob riots; he was able, in some instances, to visit with punishment the ringleaders in the burning down of Protestant churches and schools; but that spirit of intolerance and bigotry which was now diffused throughout the nation, and in which, with few exceptions, noble and peasant shared alike, he could not lay; and when he went to his grave, those bitter hatreds and evil passions which had been engendered during his father’s long occupancy of the throne, and only slightly repressed during his own short reign, broke out afresh in all their violence.

Vladislav was succeeded by his brother John Casimir. Casimir was a member of the Society of Jesus, and had attained the dignity of the Roman purple; but when his brother’s death opened his way to the throne, the Pope relieved him from his vows as a Jesuit. The heart of the Jesuit remained within him, though his vow to the order had been dissolved. Nevertheless, it is but justice to say that Casimir was less bigoted, and less the tool of Rome, than his father Sigismund had been. Still it was vain to hope that under such a monarch the prospects of the Protestants would be materially improved, or the tide of Popish reaction stemmed. Scarcely had this disciple of Loyola ascended the throne than those political tempests began, which continued at short intervals to burst over Poland, till at length the nation was destroyed. The first calamity that befell the unhappy country was a terrible revolt of the Cossacks of the Ukraine. The insurgent Cossacks were joined by crowds of peasants belonging to the Greek Church, whose passions had been roused by a recent attempt of the Polish bishops to compel them to enter the Communion of Rome. Poland now began to feel what it was to have her soul chilled and her bonds loosened by the touch of the Jesuit. If the insurrection did not end in the dethronement of the monarch, it was owing not to the valor of his troops, or the patriotism of his nobles, but to the compassion or remorse of the rebels, who stopped short in their victorious career when the king was in their power, and the nation had been brought to the brink of ruin.

The cloud which had threatened the kingdom with destruction rolled away to the half-civilised regions whence it had so suddenly issued; but hardly was it gone when it was again seen to gather, and to advance against the unhappy kingdom. The perfidy of the Romish bishops had brought this second calamity upon Poland. The Archbishop of Kioff, Metropolitan of the Greek Church of Poland, had acted as mediator between the rebellious Cossacks and the king, and mainly through the archbishop’s friendly offices had that peace been effected, which rescued from imminent peril the throne and life of Casimir. One of the conditions of the Pacification was that the archbishop should have a seat in the Senate; but when the day came, and the Eastern prelate entered the hall to take his place among the senators, the Roman Catholic bishops rose in a body and left the Senate-house, saying that they never would sit with a schismatic. The Archbishop of Kioff had lifted Casimir’s throne out of the dust, and now he had his services repaid with insult.

The warlike Cossacks held themselves affronted in the indignity done their spiritual chief; and hence the second invasion of the kingdom. This

[4]A Spanish Jesuit who compiled a grammar which the Jesuits used in the schools of Poland.

[5]Dialogue of a Landowner with a Parish Priest. The work, published about 1620, excited the violent anger of the Jesuits; but being unable to wreak their vengeance on the author, the printer, at their instigation, was publicly flogged, and afterwards banished. (See Krasinski, S1avonia, p. 296.)

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time the insurgents were defeated, but that only brought greater evils upon the country. The Cossacks threw themselves into the arms of the Czar of Muscovy. He espoused their quarrel, feeling, doubtless, that his honour also was involved in the disgrace put upon a high dignitary of his Church, and he descended on Poland with an immense army. At the same time, Charles Gustavus of Sweden, taking advantage of the discontent which prevailed against the Polish monarch Casimir, entered the kingdom with a chosen body of troops; and such were his own talents as a leader, and such the discipline and valor of his army, that in a short time the principal part of Poland was in his possession. Casimir had, meanwhile, sought refuge in Silesia. The crown was offered to the valorous and magnanimous Charles Gustavus, the nobles only craving that before assuming it he should permit a Diet to assemble and formally vote it to him.

Had Gustavus ascended the throne of Poland, it is probable that the Jesuits would have been driven out, that the Protestant spirit would have been reinvigorated, and that Poland, built up into a powerful kingdom, would have proved a protecting wall to the south and west of Europe against the barbaric masses of the north; but this hope, with all that it implied, was dispelled by the reply of Charles Gustavus. “It did not need,” he said, “that the Diet should elect him king, seeing he was aready master of the country by his sword.” The self-love of the Poles was wounded; the war was renewed; and, after a great struggle, a peace was concluded in 1660, under the joint mediation and guarantee of England, France, and Holland. John Casimir returned to resume his reign over a country bleeding from the swords of two armies. The Cossacks had exercised an indiscriminate vengeance: the Popish cathedral and the Protestant church had alike been given to the flames, and Protestants and Papists had been equal sufferers in the calamities of the war.

The first act of the monarch, after his return, was to place his kingdom under the special protection of the “Blessed Virgin.” To make himself and his dominions the more worthy of so august a suzerainty, he registered on the occasion two vows, both well-pleasing, as he judged, to his celestial patroness. Casimir promised in the first to redress the grievances of the lower orders, and in the second to convert the heretics-in other words, to persecute the Protestants. The first vow it was not even attempted to fulfill. All the efforts of the sovereign, therefore, were given to the second. But the shield of England and Holland was at that time extended over the Protestants of Poland, who were still numerous, and had amongst them some influential families; the monarch’s efforts were, in consequence, restricted meanwhile to the conversion of the Socinians, who were numerous in his kingdom. They were offered the alternative of return to the Roman Church or exile. They seriously proposed to meet the prelates of the Roman hierarchy in conference, and convince them that there was no fundamental difference between their tenets and the dogmas of the Roman Church.[6] The conference was declined, and the Socinians, with great hardship and loss, were driven out of the kingdom. But the persecution did not stop there. England, with Charles II. on her throne, grew cold in the cause of the Polish Protestants. In the treaty of the peace of 1660, the rights of all religious Confessions in Poland had been secured; but the guaranteeing Powers soon ceased to enforce the treaty, the Polish Government paid but small respect to it, persecution in the form of mob violence was still continued; and when the reign of John Casimir, which had been fatal to the Protestants throughout, came to an end, it was found that their ranks were broken up, that all the great families who had belonged to their communion were extinct or had passed into the Church of Rome, that their sanctuaries were mostly in ashes, their congregations all dispersed, and their cause hopeless.[7]

There followed a succession of reigns which only furnished evidence how weak the throne had become, and how powerful the Jesuits and the Roman hierarchy had grown. Religious equality was still the law of Poland, and each new sovereign swore, at his coronation, to maintain the rights of the anti-Romanists, but the transaction was deemed a mere fiction, and the king, however much disposed, had not the power to fulfil his oath. The Jesuits and the bishops were in this matter above the law, and the sovereign’s tribunals could not enforce their own edicts. What the law called rights the clergy stigmatised as abuses, and demanded that they should be abolished. In 1732 a law was passed excluding from all public offices those who were not of the communion of the Church of Rome.[8] The public service was thus deprived of whatever activity and enlightenment of mind yet existed in Poland. The country had no need of this additional stimulus: it was already pursuing fast enough the road to ruin. For a century,

[6]Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 333.

[7]Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 2., chap. 12.

[8]Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 356.

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one disaster after another had devastated its soil and people. Its limits had been curtailed by the loss of several provinces; its population had been diminished by the emigration of thousands of Protestants; its resources had been drained by its efforts to quell revolt within and ward off invasion from without; its intelligence had been obscured, and well-nigh extinguished, by those who claimed the exclusive right to instruct its youth; for in that land it was a greater misfortune to be educated than to grow up untaught. Overspread by torpor, Poland gave no signs of life save such as indicate paralysis. Placed under foreign tutelage, and sunk in dependence and helplessness, if she was cared for by her powerful protectors, it was as men care for a once noble palace which they have no thought of rebuilding, but from whose fallen masses they hope to extract a column or a topstone that may help to enlarge and embellish their own dwelling.

Justice requires that we should state, before dismissing this part of our subject, with its many solemn lessons, that though the fall of Protestantism in Poland, and the consequent ruin of the Polish State, was mainly the work of the Jesuits, other causes co-operated, though ill a less degree. The Protestant body in Poland, from the first, was parted into three Confessions: the Genevan in Lithuania, the Bohemian in Great Poland, and the Lutheran in those towns that were inhabited by a population of German descent. This was a source of weakness, and this weakness was aggravated by the ill-will borne by the Lutheran Protestants to the adherents of the other two Confessions. The evil was cured, it was thought, by the Union of Sandomir; but Lutheran exclusiveness and intolerance, after a few years, again broke up the united Church, and deprived the Protestant cause of the strength which a common center always gives. The short lives of John Alasco and Prince Radziwill are also to be reckoned among the causes which contributed to the failure of the Reform movement in Poland. Had their labours been prolonged, a deeper seat would have been given to Protestant truth in the general population, and the throne might have been gained to the Reformation. The Christian chivalry and patriotism with which the great nobles placed themselves at the head of the movement are worthy of all praise, but the people must ever be the mainstay of a religious Reformation, and the great landowners in Poland did not, we fear, take this fact sufficiently into account, or bestow the requisite pains in imbuing their tenantry with great Scriptural principles: and hence the comparative ease with which the people were again transferred into the Roman fold. But an influence yet more hostile to the triumph of Protestantism in Poland was the rise and rapid diffusion of Socinian views. These sprang up in the bosom of the Genevan Confession, and inflicted a blight on the powerful Protestant Churches of Lithuania. That blight very soon overspread the whole land; and the green tree of Protestantism began to be touched with the sere of decay. The Socinian was followed, as we have seen, by the Jesuit. A yet deeper desolation gathered on his track. Decay became rottenness, and blight deepened into death; but Protestantism did not perish alone. The throne, the country, the people, all went down with it in a catastrophe so awful that no one could have effected it but the Jesuit.

Chapter 7: Bohemia-Entrance of Reformation

Darkness Concealing Bohemian Martyrs—John Huss—First Preachers of the Reformed Doctrine in Bohemia—False Brethren—Zahera—Passek—They Excite to Persecutions—Martyrs-Nicolas Wrzetenarz-The Hostess Clara—Martha von Porzicz—The Potter and Girdler—Fate of the Persecutors—Ferdinand I. Invades Bohemia—Persecutions and Emigrations—Flight of the Pastors—John Augusta, etc—A Heroic Sufferer—The Jesuits brought into Bohemia—Maximilian II—Persecution Stopped—Bohemian Confession—Rudolph—The Majestats-Brief—Full Liberty given to the Protestants

Picture: View in Prague: the Powder Tower

Picture: Louis Victor and the Monk

Picture: Arrest of One of the Bohemian Chiefs.

In resuming the story of Bohemia we re-enter a tragic field. Our rehearsal of its conflicts and sufferings will in one sense be a sorrowful, in another a truly triumphant task. What we are about to witness is not the victorious march of a nation out of bondage, with banners unfurled, and singing the song of a recovered Gospel; on the contrary, it is a crowd of sufferers and martyrs that is to pass before us; and when the long procession begins to draw to an end, we shall have to confess [193] that these are but a few of that great army of confessors who in this land gave their lives for the truth. Where are the rest, and why are not their deaths here recorded? They still abide under that darkness with which their martyrdoms were on purpose covered, and which as yet has been only partially dispelled. Their names and sufferings are the locked up in the imperial archives of Vienna, in the archiepiscopal archives of Prague, in the libraries of Leitmeritz, Koniggratz, Wittingau, and other places. For a full revelation we must wait the coming of that day when, in the emphatic language [194] of Scripture,

“The earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.”(Isaiah 26:21.)

In a former book[1] we brought down the history of the Bohemian Church[2] a century beyond the stake of Huss. Speaking from the midst of the flames, as we have already seen, the martyr said, “A hundred years and there will arise a swan whose singing you shall not be able to silence.”[3] The century had revolved, and Luther, with a voice that was rolling from east to west of Christendom, loud as the thunder but melodious as the music of heaven, was preaching the doctrine of justification by faith alone. We resume our history of the Bohemian Church at the point where we broke it off. Though fire and sword had been wasting the Bohemian confessors during the greater part of the century, there were about 200 of their congregations in existence when the Reformation broke. Imperfect as was their knowledge of Divine truth, their presence on the soil of Bohemia helped powerfully toward the reception of the doctrines of Luther in that country. Many hailed his appearance as sent to resume the work of their martyred countryman and recognised in his preaching the “song” for which Huss had bidden them wait. As early as the year 1519, Matthias, a hermit, arriving at Prague, preached to great crowds, which assembled round him in the streets and market-place, though he mingled with the doctrines of the Reformation certain opinions of his own. The Calixtines, who were now Romanists in all save the Eucharistic rite, which they received in both kinds, said, “It were better to have our pastors ordained at Wittemberg than at Rome.” Many Bohemian youths were setting out to sit at Luther’s feet, and those who were debarred the journey, and could not benefit by the living voice of the great doctor, eagerly possessed themselves, most commonly by way of Nuremberg, of his tracts and books; and those accounted themselves happiest of all who could secure a Bible, for then they could drink of the Water of Life at its fountainhead. In January, 1523, we find the Estates of Bohemia and Moravia assembling at Prague, and having summoned several orthodox pastors to assist at their deliberations, they promulgated twenty articles-“the forerunners of the Reformation,” as Comenius calls them-of which the following was one: “If any man shall teach the Gospel without the additions of men, he shall neither be reproved nor condemned for a heretic.”[4] Thus from the banks of the Moldau was coming an echo to the voice at Wittemberg.

“False brethren” were the first to raise the cry of heresy against John Huss, and also the most zealous in dragging him to the stake. So was it again. A curate, newly returned from Wittemberg, where he had daily taken his place in the crowd of students of all nations who assembled around the chair of Luther, was the first in Prague to call for the punishment of the disciples of that very doctrine which he professed to have embraced. His name was Gallus Zahera, Calixtine pastor in the Church of Laeta Curia, Old Prague. Zahera joined himself to John Passek, Burgomaster of Prague, “a deceitful, cruel, and superstitious man,” who headed a powerful faction in the Council, which had for its object to crush the new opinions. The Papal legate had just arrived in Bohemia, and he wrote in bland terms to Zahera, holding out the prospect of a union between Rome and the Calixtines. The Calixtine pastor, forgetting all he had learned at Wittemberg, instantly replied that he had “no dearer wish than to be found constant in the body of the Church by the unity of the faith;” and he went on to speak of Bohemia in a style that must have done credit, in the eyes of the legate, at once to his rhetoric and his orthodoxy. “For truly,” says he, “our Bohemia, supporting itself on the most sure foundation of the most sure rock of the Catholic faith, has sustained the fury and broken the force of all those waves of error wherewith the neighboring countries of Germany have been shaken, and as a beacon placed in the midst of a tempestuous sea, it has held forth a dear light to every voyager, and shown him a safe harbor into which he may retreat from shipwreck;” and he concluded by promising to send forthwith deputies to expedite the business of a union between the Roman and Calixtine Churches.[5] When asked how he could thus oppose a faith he had lately so zealously professed, Zahera replied that he had placed himself at the feet of Luther that he might be the better able to confute him: “An excuse,” observes Comerflus, “that might have become the mouth of Judas.”

[1]See ante, vol. 1., bk. 3

[2]We have in the same place narrated the origin of the “United Brethren,” their election by lot of three men who were afterwards ordained by Stephen, associated with whom, in the laying on of hands, were other Waldensian pastors. Comenius, who relates the transaction, terms Stephen a chief man or bishop among the Waldenses. He afterwards suffered martyrdom for the faith.

[3]See ante, vol. 1, bk. 3., chap. 7, p. 162.

[4]Comenius, Historia Persecutionum Ecclesia Bohemica, cap. 28, p. 98; Lugd Batav., 1647.

[5]Ibid., cap. 28, p. 29.

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Zahera and Passek were not the men to stop at half-measures. To pave the way for a union with the Roman Church they framed a set of articles, which, having obtained the consent of the king, they required the clergy and citizens to subscribe. Those who refused were to be banished from Prague. Six pastors declined the test, and were driven from the city. The pastors were followed into exile by sixty-five of the leading citizens, including the Chancellor of Prague and the former burgomaster. A pretext being sought for severer measures, the malicious invention was spread abroad that the Lutherans had conspired to massacre all the Calixtines, and three of the citizens were put to the rack to extort from them a confession of a conspiracy which had never existed. They bore the torment[6] rather than witness to a falsehood. An agreement was next concluded by the influence of Zahera and Passek, that no Lutheran should be taken into a workshop, or admitted to citizenship. If one owed a debt, and was unwilling to pay it, he had only to say the other was a Lutheran, and the banishment of the creditor gave him riddance from his importunities.[7]

Branding on the forehead, and other marks of ignominy, were now added to exile. One day Louis Victor, a disciple of the Gospel, happened to be among the hearers of a certain Barbarite who was entertaining his audience with ribald stories. At the close of his sermon Louis addressed the monk, saying to him that it were “better to instruct the people out of the Gospel than to detain them with such fables.” Straightway the preacher raised such a clamor that the excited crowd laid hold on the too courageous Lutheran, and haled him to prison. Next day the city sergeant conducted him out of Prague. A certain cutler, in whose possession a little book on the Sacrament had been found, was scourged in the market-place. The same punishment was inflicted upon John Kalentz, with the addition of being branded on the forehead, because it was said that though a layman he had administered the Eucharist to himself and his family. John Lapatsky, who had returned from banishment, under the impression that the king had published an amnesty to the exiles, was apprehended, thrown into prison, and murdered.[8]

The tragic fate of Nicolas Wrzetenarz deserves a more circumstantial detail. Wrzetenarz was a learned man, well stricken in years. He was accused of Picardism, a name by which Protestant sentiments were at times designated. He was summoned to answer before the Senate. When the old man appeared, Zahera, who presided on the tribunal, asked him what he believed concerning the Sacrament of the altar. “I believe,” he replied, “what the Evangelists and St. Paul teach me to believe.” “Do you believe,” asked the other, “that Christ is present in it, having flesh and blood?” “I believe,” replied Wrzetenarz, “that when a pious minister of God’s Word declares to a faithful congregation the benefits which are received by the death of Christ, the bread and wine are made to them the Supper of the Lord, wherein they are made partakers of the body and blood of Christ, and the benefits received by his death.” After a few more questions touching the mass, praying to the saints, and similar matters, he was condemned as a heretic to the fire. His hostess, Clara, a widow of threescore years, whom he had instructed in the truth, and who refused to deny the faith she had received into her heart, was condemned to be burned along with him.

They were led out to die. Being come to the place of execution they were commanded to adore the sign of the cross, which had been elevated in the east. They refused, saying, “The law of God permits us not to worship the likeness of anything either in heaven or in earth; we will worship only the living God, Lord of heaven and earth, who inhabiteth alike the south, the west, the north, the east;” and turning their backs upon the crucifix, and prostrating themselves toward the west, with their eyes and hands lifted up to heaven, they invoked with great ardour the name of Christ. Having taken leave of their children, Nicolas, with great cheerfulness, mounted the pile, and standing on the faggots, repeated the Articles of the Creed, and having finished, looked up to heaven and prayed, saying with a loud voice, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who was born of a pure Virgin, and didst vouchsafe to undergo the shameful death of the cross for me a vile sinner, thee alone do I worship-to thee I commend my soul. Be merciful unto me, and blot out all mine iniquities.” He then repeated in Latin the Psalm, “In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust.” Meanwhile the executioner having brought forward Clara, and laid her on the pile, now tied down both of them upon the wood, and heaping over them the books that had been found in their house, he lighted the faggots, and soon the martyrs were enveloped in the flames. So died this venerable scholar and aged matron at Prague, on the 19th December, 1526.

[6]“Placide expirarunt.” (Comenius, cap. 30, p. 109.)

[7]Comenius, cap. 29, p. 102.

[8]Ibid., cap. 29, p. 105.

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[9]

In the following year Martha von Porzicz was burned. She was a woman heroic beyond even the heroism of her sex. Interrogated by the doctors of the university as well as by the councillors, she answered intrepidly, giving a reason of the faith she had embraced, and upbraiding the Hussites themselves for their stupid adulation of the Pope. The presiding judge hinted that it was time she was getting ready her garment for the fire. “My petticoat and cloak are both ready,” she replied; “you may order me to be led away when you please.”[10] She was straightway sentenced to the fire. The town-crier walked before her, proclaiming that she was to die for blaspheming the holy Sacrament. Raising her voice to be heard by the crowd she said, “It is not so; I am condemned because I will not confess to please the priests that Christ, with his bones, hairs, sinews, and veins, is contained in the Sacrament.”[11] And raising her voice yet higher, she warned the people not to believe the priests, who had abandoned themselves to hypocrisy and every vice. Being come to the place where she was to die, they importuned her to adore the crucifix. Turning her back upon it, and elevating her eyes to heaven, “It is there,” she said, “that our God dwells: thither must we direct our looks.” She now made haste to mount the pile, and endured the torment of the flames with invincible courage. She was burned on the 4th of December, 1527.

On the 28th of August of the following year, two German artificers-one a potter, the other a girdler-accused of Lutheranism by the monks, were condemned by the judges of Prague to be burned. As they walked to the stake, they talked so sweetly together, reciting passages from Scripture, that tears flowed from the eyes of many of the spectators. Being come to the pile, they bravely encouraged one another. “Since our Lord Jesus Christ,” said the girdler, “hath for us suffered so grievous things, let us arm ourselves to suffer this death, and let us rejoice that we have found so great favor with him as to be accounted worthy to die for his Gospel;” to whom the potter made answer, “I, truly, on my marriage-day was not so glad of heart as I am at this moment.” Having ascended the pyre, they prayed with a clear voice, “Lord Jesus, who in thy sufferings didst pray for thine enemies, we also pray, forgive the king, and the men of Prague, and the clergy, for they know not what they do, and their hands are full of blood.” And then addressing the people, they said, “Dearly beloved, pray for your king, that God would give him the knowledge of the truth, for he is misled by the bishops and clergy.” “Having ended this most penitent exhortation,” says the chronicler, “they therewith ended their lives.”

After this the fury of the, persecution for a little while subsided. The knot of cruel and bloodthirsty men who had urged it on was broken up. One of the band fell into debt, and hanged himself in despair. Zahera was caught in a political intrigue, into which his ambitious spirit had drawn him, and, being banished, ended his life miserably in Franconia. The cruel burgomaster, Passek, was about the same time sent into perpetual exile, after he had in vain thrown himself at the king’s feet for mercy. Ferdinand, who had now ascended the throne, changed the Council of Prague, and gave the exiles liberty to return. The year 1530 was to them a time of restitution; their churches multiplied; they corresponded with their brethren in Germany and Switzerland, and were thereby strengthened against those days of yet greater trial that awaited them.[12]

These days came in 1547. Charles V., having overcome the German Protestants in the battle of Muhlberg, sent his brother, Ferdinand I., with an army of Germans and Hungarians to chastise the Bohemians for refusing to assist him in the war just ended. Ferdinand entered Prague like a city taken by siege. The magistrates and chief barons he imprisoned; some he beheaded, others he scourged and sent into exile, while others, impelled by terror, fled from the city. “See,” observed some, “what calamities the Lutherans have brought upon us.” The Bohemian Protestants were accused of disloyalty, and Ferdinand, opening his ear to these malicious charges, issued an order for the shutting up of all their churches. In the five districts inhabited mainly by the “Brethren,” all who refused to enter the Church of Rome, or at least meet her more than half way by joining the Calixtines, were driven away, and their landlords, on various pretexts, were arrested.

This calamity fell upon them like a thunder-bolt. Not a few, yielding to the violence of the persecution, fell back into Rome; but the great body, unalterably fixed on maintaining the faith for which Huss had died, chose rather to leave the soil of Bohemia for ever than apostatise. In a previous chapter we have recorded the march of these exiles, in three

[9]Comenius, cap. 30, pp. 105, 106.

[10]“Parata mihi sunt et indusium et pallium, quando lubet duci jubete.” (Comenius, p. 107.)

[11]“Cum ossibus, capillis, nervis et venis in Sacramento contineri.” (Comenius, p. 108.)

[12]Comenius, p. 110. The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia (from the German), vol. 1., pp. 66, 67; Lond., 1845.

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divisions, to their new settlements in Prussia, and the halt they made on their journey at Posen, where they kindled the light of truth in the midst of a population sunk ill darkness, and laid the foundations of that prosperity which their Church at a subsequent period enjoyed in Poland.

The untilled fields and empty dwellings of the expatriated Bohemians awakened no doubts in the king’s mind as to the expediency of the course he was pursuing. Instead of pausing, there came a third edict from Ferdinand, commanding the arrest and imprisonment of the pastors. All except three saved themselves by a speedy flight. The greater part escaped to Moravia; but many remained near the frontier, lying hid in woods and caves, and venturing forth at night to visit their former flocks and to dispense the Sacrament in private houses, and so to keep the sacred flame from going out in Bohemia.

The three ministers who failed to make their escape were John Augusta, James Bilke, and George Israel, all men of note. Augusta had learned his theology at the feet of Luther. Courageous and eloquent, he was the terror of the Calixtines, whom he had often vanquished in debate, and “they rejoiced,” says Comenins, “when they learned his arrest, as the Philistines did when Samson was delivered bound into their hands.” He and his colleague Bilke were thrown into a deep dungeon in the Castle of Prague, and, being accused of conspiring to dispose Ferdinand, and place John, Elector of Saxony, on the throne of Bohemia, they were put to the torture, but without eliciting anything which their persecutors could construe into treason. Seventeen solitary and sorrowful years passed over them in prison. Nor was it till the death of Ferdinand, in 1564, opened their prison doors that they were restored to liberty. George Israel, by a marvellous providence, escaped from the dungeon of the castle, and fleeing into Prussia, he afterwards preached with great success the Gospel in Poland, where he established not fewer than twenty churches.[13]

Many of the nobles shared with the ministers in these sufferings. John Prostiborsky, a man of great learning, beautiful life, and heroic spirit, was put to a cruel death. On the rack he bit out his tongue and cast it at his tormentors, that he might not, as he afterwards declared in writing, be led by the torture falsely to accuse either himself or his brethren. He cited the king and his councillors to answer for their tyranny at the tribunal of God. Ferdinand, desirous if possible to save his life, sent him a physician; but he sank under his tortures, and died in prison.[14]

Finding that, in spite of the banishment of pastors, and the execution of nobles, Protestantism was still extending, Ferdinand called the Jesuits to his aid. The first to arrive was Wenzel Sturm, who had been trained by Ignatius Loyola himself. Sturm was learned, courteous, adroit, and soon made himself popular in Prague, where he labored, with a success equal to his zeal, to revive the decaying cause of Rome. He was soon joined by a yet more celebrated member of the order, Canisius, and a large and sumptuous edifice having been assigned them as a college, they began to train priests who might be able to take their place in the pulpit as well as at the altar; “for at that time,” says Pessina, a Romish writer, “there were so few orthodox priests that, had it not been for the Jesuits, the Catholic religion would have been suppressed in Bohemia.”[15] The Jesuits grew powerful in Prague. They eschewed public disputations; they affected great zeal for the instruction of youth in the sciences; and their fame for learning drew crowds of pupils around them. When they had filled all their existing schools, they erected others; and thus their seminaries rapidly multiplied, “so that the Catholic verity,” in the words of the author last quoted, “which in Bohemia was on the point of breathing its last, appeared to revive again, and rise publicly.”

Toward the close of his reign, Ferdinand became somewhat less zealous in the cause of Rome. Having succeeded to the imperial crown on the abdication of his brother, Charles V., he had wider interests to care for, and less time, as well as less inclination, to concentrate his attention on Bohemia. It is even said that before his death he expressed his sincere regret for his acts of oppression against his Bohemian subjects; and to do the monarch justice, these severities were the outcome, not of a naturally cruel disposition, but rather of his Spanish education, which had been conducted under the superintendence of the stern Cardinal Ximenes.[16]

Under his son and successor, Maximilian II., the sword of persecution was sheathed. This prince had for his instructor John Fauser, a man of decided piety, and a lover of the Protestant doctrine, the principles of which he took care to instil into the mind of his royal pupil. For this Fauser had nearly paid the penalty of his life. One day Ferdinand, in a fit of rage, burst into his chamber, and seizing

[13]Comenius, cap. 36.

[14]Comenius, cap. 37.

[15]Reform. and Anti-Reform. in Bohem., vol. 1., p. 75.

[16]Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 145.

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him by the throat, and putting a drawn sword to his breast, upbraided him for seducing his son from the true faith. The king forbore, however, from murdering him, and was content with commanding his son no further to receive his instructions. Maximilian was equally fortunate in his physician, Crato. He also loved the Gospel, and, enjoying the friendship of the monarch, he was able at times to do service to the “Brethren.” Under this gentle and upright prince the Bohemian Protestants were accorded full liberty, and their Churches flourished. The historian Thaunus relates a striking incident that occurred in the third year of his reign. The enemies of the Bohemians, having concocted a new plot, sent the Chancellor of Bohemia, Joachim Neuhaus, to Vienna, to persuade the emperor to renew the old edicts against the Protestants. The artful insinuations of the chancellor prevailed over the easy temper of the monarch, and Maximilian, although with great distress of mind, put his hand to the hostile mandate. “But,” says the old chronicler, “God had a watchful eye over his own, and would not permit so good and innocent a prince to have a hand in blood, or be burdened with the cries of the oppressed.”[17] Joachim, overjoyed, set out on his journey homeward, the fatal missives that were to lay waste the Bohemian Church carefully deposited in his chest. He was crossing the bridge of the Danube when the oxen broke loose from his carriage, and the bridge breaking at the same instant, the chancellor and his suite were precipitated into the river. Six knights struck out and swam ashore; the rest of the attendants were drowned. The chancellor was seized hold of by his gold chain as he was floating on the current of the Danube, and was kept partially above water till some fishermen, who were near the scene of the accident, had time to come to the rescue. He was drawn from the water into their boat, but found to be dead. The box containing the letters patent sank in the deep floods of the Danube, and was never seen more-nor, indeed, was it ever sought for. Thaunus says that this catastrophe happened on the fourth of the Ides of December, 1565.

[17]Comenius, cap. 39, pp. 126, 127.

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In Maximilian’s reign, a measure was passed that helped to consolidate the Protestantism of Bohemia. In 1575, the king assembled a Parliament at Prague, which enacted that all the Churches in the kingdom which received the Sacrament under both kinds-that is, the Utraquists or Calixtines, the Bohemian Brethren, the Lutherans, and the Calvinists or Picardines-were at liberty to draw up a common Confession of their faith, and unite into one Church. In spite of the efforts of the Jesuits, the leading pastors of the four communions consulted together and, animated by a spirit of moderation and wisdom, they compiled a common creed, in the Bohemian language, which, although never rendered into Latin, nor printed till 1619, and therefore not to be found in the “Harmony of Confessions,” was ratified by the king, who promised his protection to the subscribers, had this Confession been universally signed, it would have been a bulwark of strength to the Bohemian Protestants.[18]

The reign of the Emperor Maximilian came all too soon to an end. He died in 1576, leaving a name dear to the Protestants and venerated by all parties.

Entirely different in disposition and character was his son, the Emperor Rudolph II., by whom he was succeeded. Educated at the court of his cousin Philip II., Rudolph brought back to his native dominions the gloomy superstitions and the tyrannical maxims that prevailed in the Escorial. Nevertheless, the Bohemian Churches were left in peace. Their sleepless foes were ever and anon intriguing to procure some new and hostile edict from the king; but Rudolph was too much engrossed in the study of astrology and alchemy to pursue steadily any one line of policy, and so these edicts slept. His brother Matthias was threatening his throne; this made it necessary to conciliate all classes of his subjects; hence originated the famous Majestats-Brief, one object of which was to empower the Protestants in Bohemia to open churches and schools wherever they pleased. This “Royal Charter,” moreover, made over to them[19]

[18]Comenius, cap. 39. Reform. and Anti-Reform. in Bohem., vol. 1., pp. 105, 107.

[19]Krasinski, Slavonia, pp. 145, 146.

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the University of Prague, and permitted them to appoint a public administrator of their affairs. It was in virtue of this last very important concession that the Protestant Church of Bohemia now attained more nearly than ever, before or since, to a perfect union and a settled government.

Chapter 8: Overthrow of Protestantism in Bohemia

Protestantism Flourishes—Constitution of Bohemian. Church—Its Government—Concord between Romanists and Protestants—Temple of Janus Shut—Joy of Bohemia—Matthias Emperor—Election of Ferdinand II. as King of Bohemia—Reaction—Intrigues and Insults—Council-chamber—Three Councillors Thrown out at the Window—Ferdinand II. elected Emperor—War—Battle of the White Hill—Defeat of the Protestants—Atrocities—Amnesty—Apprehension of Nobles and Senators—Their Frightful Sentences -Their Behaviour on the Scaffold—Their Deaths

Picture: View of the Palace of the Bohemian Kings, and theCathedral of Hardschin

Picture: Tower of the Bridge of Prague to which the Heads of the Martyrs were affixed

The Protestant Church of Bohemia, now in her most flourishing condition, deserves some attention. That Church was composed of the three following bodies: the Calixtines, the United Brethren, and the Protestants that is, the Lutheran and Calvinist communions. These three formed one Church under the Bohemian Confession-to which reference has been made in the previous chapter. A Consistory, or Table of Government, was constituted, consisting of twelve ministers chosen in the following manner: three were selected from the Calixtines, three from the United Brethren, and three from the Lutheran and Calvinistic communions, to whom were added three professors from the university. These twelve men were to manage the affairs of their Church in all Bohemia. The Consistory thus constituted was entirely independent of the archiepiscopal chair in Prague. It was even provided in the Royal Charter that the Consistory should “direct, constitute, or reform anything among their Churches without hindrance or interference of his Imperial Majesty.” In case they were unable to determine any matter among themselves, they were at liberty to advise with his Majesty’s councillors of state, and with the judges, or with the Diet, the Protestant members of which were exclusively to have the power of deliberating on and determining the matter so referred, “without hindrance, either from their Majesties the future Kings of Bohemia, or the party sub una”-that is, the Romanist members of the Diet.[1]

From among these twelve ministers, one was to be chosen to fill the office of administrator. He was chief in the Consistory, and the rest sat with him as assessors. The duty of this body was to determine in all matters appertaining to the doctrine and worship of the Church-the dispensation of Sacraments, the ordination of ministers, the inspection of the clergy, the administration of discipline, to which was added the care of widows and orphans. There was, moreover, a body of laymen, termed Defenders, who were charged with the financial and secular affairs of the Church.

Still further to strengthen the Protestant Church of Bohemia, and to secure the peace of the kingdom, a treaty was concluded between the Romanists and Protestants, in which these two parties bound themselves to mutual concord, and agreed to certain rules which were to regulate their relations to one another as regarded the possession of churches, the right of burial in the public cemeteries, and similar matters. This agreement was entered upon the registers of the kingdom; it was sworn to by the Emperor Rudolph and his councillors; it was laid up among the other solemn charters of the nation, and a protest taken that if hereafter any one should attempt to disturb this arrangement, or abridge the liberty conceded in it, he should be held to be a disturber of the peace of the kingdom, and punished accordingly.[2]

Thus did the whole nation unite in closing the doors of the Temple of Janus, in token that now there was peace throughout the whole realm of Bohemia. Another most significant and fitting act signalised this happy time. The Bethlehem Chapel-the scene of the ministry of John Huss-the spot where that day had dawned which seemed now to have reached its noon-was handed over to the Protestants as a public recognition that they were

[1]Reform. and Anti-Reform. in Bohem., vol. 1., p. 187.

[2]Comenius, cap. 40. Reform. and Anti-Reform. In Bohem., vol. 1., p. 193 et seq.

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the true offspring of the great Reformer and martyr. Bohemia may be said to be now Protestant. “Religion flourished throughout the whole kingdom,” says Comenius, “so that there was scarcely one among a hundred who did not profess the Reformed doctrine.” The land was glad; and the people’s joy found vent in such unsophisticated couplets as the following, which might be read upon the doors of the churches: -

“Oped are the temples; joys Bohemia’s lion: What Max protected, Rudolph does maintain.”[3]

But even in the hour of triumph there were some who felt anxiety for the future. They already saw ominous symptoms that the tranquillity would not be lasting. The great security which the Church now enjoyed had brought with it a relaxation of morals, and a decay of piety. “Alas!” said the more thoughtful, “we shall yet feel the mailed hand of some Ferdinand.” It was a true presage; the little cloud was even now appearing on the horizon that was rapidly to blacken into the tempest.

The Archduke Matthias renewed his claims upon the crown of Bohemia, and supporting them by arms, he ultimately deposed his brother Rudolph, and seated himself upon his throne. Matthias was old and had no son, and he bethought him of adopting his cousin Ferdinand, Duke or Styria, who had been educated in a bigoted attachment to the Roman faith. Him Matthias persuaded the Bohemians to crown as their king. They knew something of the man whom they were calling to reign over them, but they relied on the feeble security of his promise not to interfere in religious matters while Matthias lived. It soon became apparent that Ferdinand had sworn to the Bohemians with the mouth, and to the Pope with the heart. Their old enemies no longer hung their heads, but began to walk about with front erect, and eyes that presaged victory. The principal measures brought to bear against the Protestants were the work of the college of the Jesuits and the cathedral. The partisans of Ferdinand openly declared that the Royal Charter, having been extorted from the monarch, was null and void; that although Matthias was too weak to tear in pieces that rag of old parchment, the pious Ferdinand would make short work with this bond. By little and little the persecution was initiated. The Protestants were forbidden to print a single line except with the approbation of the chancellor, while their opponents were circulating without let or hindrance, far and near, pamphlets filled with the most slanderous accusations. The pastors were asked to produce the original titles of the churches in their possession; in short, the device painted upon the triumphal arch, which the Jesuits had erected at Olmutz in honour of Ferdinand-namely, the Bohemian lion and the Moravian eagle chained to Austria, and underneath a sleeping hare with open eyes, and the words “I am used to it”[4]-expressed the consummate craft with which the Jesuits had worked, and the criminal drowsiness into which the Bohemians had permitted themselves to fall.[5]

No method was left unattempted against the Protestants. It was sought by secret intrigue to invade their rights, and by open injury to sting them into insurrection. At last, in 1618, they rushed to arms. A few of the principal barons having met to consult on the steps to be taken in this crisis of their affairs, a sudden mandate arrived forbidding their meeting under pain of death. This flagrant violation of the Royal Charter, following on the destruction of several of their churches, irritated the Reformed party beyond endurance. Their anger was still more inflamed by the reflection that these bolts came not from Vienna, but from the Castle of Prague, where they had been forged by the junto whose head-quarters were at the Hardschin. Assembling an armed force the Protestants crossed the Moldau, climbed the narrow street, and presented themselves before the Palace of Hardschin, that crowns the height on which New Prague is built. They marched right into the council-chamber, and seizing on Slarata, Martinitz, and Secretary Fabricius, whom they believed to be the chief authors of their troubles, they threw them headlong out of the window. Falling on a heap of soft earth, sprinkled over with torn papers, the councillors sustained no harm. “They have been saved by miracle,” said their friends. “No,” replied the Protestants, “they have been spared to be a scourge to Bohemia.” This deed was followed by one less violent, but more wise-the expulsion of the Jesuits, who were forbidden under pain of death to return.[6]

The issue was war; but the death of Matthias, which happened at this moment, delayed for a little while its outbreak. The Bohemian States met to

[3]Comenius, cap. 40, pp. 134-136.

[4]“Adsuevi.” (Comenius.)

[5]Comenius, cap. 42. Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 146.

[6]Balbin assures us that some Jesuits, despite the order to withdraw, remained in Prague disguised as coal-fire men. (Reform. and Anti-Reform. in Bohem., vol. 1., p. 336.)

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deliberate whether they should continue to own Ferdinand after his flagrant violation of the Majestats-Brief. They voted him no longer their sovereign. The imperial electors were then sitting at Frankfort-on-the-Maine to choose a new emperor. The Bohemians sent an ambassador thither to say that they had deposed Ferdinand, and to beg the electors not to recognize him as King of Bohemia by admitting him to a seat in the electoral college. Not only did the electors admit Ferdinand as still sovereign of Bohemia, but they conferred upon him the vacant diadem.

The Bohemians saw that they were in an evil case. The bigoted Ferdinand, whom they had made more their enemy than ever by repudiating him as their king, was now the head of the “Holy Roman Empire.”

The Bohemians had gone too far to retreat. They could not prevent the electors conferring the imperial diadem upon Ferdinand, but they were resolved that he should never wear the crown of Bohemia. They chose Frederick, Elector-Palatine, as their sovereign. He was a Calvinist, son-in-law of James I. of England; and five days after his arrival in Prague, he and his consort were crowned with very great pomp, and took possession of the palace.

Scarcely had the bells ceased to ring, and the cannon to thunder, by which the coronation was celebrated, when the nation and the new monarch were called to look in the face the awful struggle they had invited. Ferdinand, raising a mighty army, was already on his march to chastise Bohemia. On the road to Prague he took several towns inhabited by Protestants, and put the citizens to the sword. Advancing to the capital he encamped on the White Hill, and there a decisive battle was fought on the 8th of November, 1620.[7] The Protestant army was completely beaten; the king, whom the unwelcome tidings interrupted at his dinner, fled; and Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia lay prostrated at the feet of the conqueror. The generals of Ferdinand entered Prague, “the conqueror promising to keep articles,” says the chronicler, “but afterwards performing them according to the manner of the Council at Constance.”

The ravages committed by the soldiery were most frightful. Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia were devastated. Villages were set on fire, cities were pillaged, churches, schools, and dwellings pulled down; the inhabitants were slaughtered, matrons and maidens violated; neither the child in its cradle nor the corpse in its grave was spared. Prague was given as a spoil, and the soldiers boasted that they had gathered some millions from the Protestants; nor, large as the sum is, is it an unlikely one, seeing that all the valuables in the country had been collected for security into the capital.

But by far the most melancholy result of this battle was the overthrow, as sudden as it was complete, of the Protestantism of Bohemia. The position of the two parties was after this completely reversed; the Romanists were now the masters; and the decree went forth to blot out utterly Protestant Bohemia. Not by the sword, the halter, and the wheel in the first instance. The Jesuits were recalled, and the work was committed to them, and so skillfully did they conduct it that Bohemia, which had been almost entirely Protestant when Ferdinand II ascended the throne, was at the close of his reign almost as entirely Popish. No nation, perhaps, ever underwent so great a change in the short term of fifteen years as Bohemia.

Instead of setting up the scaffold at once, the conquerors published an amnesty to all who should lay down their arms. The proclamation was as welcome as it was unexpected, and many were caught, who otherwise would have saved their lives by flight. Some came out of their hiding places in the neighborhood, and some returned from distant countries. For three months the talk was only of peace. It was the sweet piping of the fowler till the birds were snared. At length came the doleful 20th of February, 1621.

On that evening fifty chiefs of the Bohemian nation were seized and thrown into prison. The capture was made at the supper-hour. The time was chosen as the likeliest for finding every one at home. The city captains entered the house, a wagon waited at the door, and the prisoners were ordered to enter it, and were driven off to the Tower of Prague, or the prisons of the magistrate. The thing was done stealthily and swiftly; the silence of the night was not broken, and Prague knew not the blow that had fallen upon it.

The men now swept off to prison were the persons of deepest piety and highest intelligence in the land. In short, they were the flower of the Bohemian nation.[8] They had passed their youth in the study of useful arts, or in the practice of arms, or in foreign travel. Their manhood had been devoted to the service of their country. They had been councillors of state, ambassadors, judges, or professors in the university. It was the wisdom, the experience, and the courage which they had brought to the defense of their nation’s liberty, and

[7]Comenius, cap. 44, p. 154.

[8]“Lumina et columina patriae.” (Comenius, cap. 59.)

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the promotion of its Reformation, especially in the recent times of trouble, which had drawn upon them the displeasure of the emperor. The majority were nobles and barons, and all of them were venerable by age.

On the Clay after the transaction we have recorded, writs were issued summoning all now absent from the kingdom to appear within six weeks.

When the period expired they were again summoned by a herald, but no one appearing, they were proclaimed traitors, and their heads were declared forfeit to the law, and their estates to the king. Their execution was gone through in their absence by the nailing of their names to the gallows. On the day following sentence was passed on the heirs of all who had fallen in the insurrection, and their properties passed over to the royal exchequer.[9]

In prison the patriots were strenuously urged to beg pardon and sue for life. But, conscious of no crime, they refused to compromise the glory of their cause by doing anything that might be construed into a confession of guilt. Despairing of their submission, their enemies proceeded with their trial in May. Count Schlik, while undergoing his examination, became wearied out with the importunities of his judges and inquisitors, who tried to make hint confess what had never existed. He tore open his vest, and laying bare his breast, exclaimed, “Tear this body in pieces, and examine my heart; nothing shall you find but what we have already declared in our Apology. The love of liberty and religion alone constrained us to draw the sword; but seeing God has permitted the emperor’s sword to conquer, and has delivered us into your hands, His will be done.” Budowa and Otto Losz, two of his co-patriots, expressed themselves to the same effect, adding, “Defeat has made our cause none the worse, and victory has made yours none the better.”[10]

On Saturday, the 19th of June, the judges assembled in the Palace of Hardschin, and the prisoners, brought before them one by one, heard each his sentence. The majority were doomed to die, some were consigned to perpetual imprisonment, and others were sent into exile. Ferdinand, that he might have an opportunity of appearing more clement and gracious than his judges, ordered the sentences to be sent to Vienna, where some of them were mitigated in their details by the royal pen. We take an instance: Joachim Andreas Schlik, whose courageous reply to his examiners we have already quoted, was to have had his hand cut off, then to have been beheaded and quartered, and his limbs exposed on a stake at a cross-road; but this sentence was changed by Ferdinand to beheading, and the affixing of his head and hand to the tower of the Bridge of Prague. The sentences of nearly all the rest were similarly dealt with by the merciful monarch.

The condemned were told that they were to die within two days, that is, on the 21st of June. This intimation was made to them that they might have a Jesuit, or a Capuchin, or a clergyman of the Augsburg Confession, to prepare them for death. They were now led back to prison: the noblemen were conducted to the Castle of Prague, and the citizens to the prisons of the printer. Some “fellows of the baser sort,” suborned for the purpose, insulted them as they were being led through the streets, crying out, “Why don’t you now sing, ‘The Lord reigneth’?” The ninety-ninth Psalm was a favorite ode of the Bohemians, wherewith they had been wont to kindle their devotion in the sanctuary, and their courage on the battle-field.

Scarcely had they reentered their prisons when a flock[11] of Jesuits and Capuchin monks, not waiting till they were called, gathered round them, and began to earnestly beseech them to change their religion, holding out the hope that even yet their lives might be spared. Not wishing that hours so precious as the few that now remained to them should be wasted, they gave the intruders plainly to understand that they were but losing their pains, whereupon the good Fathers withdrew, loudly bewailing their obstinacy, and calling heaven and earth to witness that they were guiltless of the blood of men who had put away from them the grace of God.

The Protestant ministers were next introduced. The barons and nobles in the tower were attended by the minister of St. Nicholas, Rosacius by name. The citizens in the prisons of Old Prague were waited on by Werbenius and Jakessius, and those in New Prague by Clement and Hertwiz. The whole time till the hour of execution was spent in religious exercises, in sweet converse, in earnest prayers, and in the singing of psalms. “Lastly,” says the chronicler of the persecutions of the Bohemian Church, “they did prepare the holy martyrs by the administration of the Lord’s Supper for the future agony.”

On the evening of Sunday, as the prisoners shut up in Old Prague were conversing with their pastor

[9]Comenius, pp. 209-211. Reform. and Anti-Reform. In Bohem., pp. 287-290.

[10]Comenius, pp. 211, 212.

[11]“Ut muscae advolabant.” (Comenius.)

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Werbenius, the chief gaoler entered and announced the hour of supper. They looked at each other, and all declared that they desired to eat no more on earth. Nevertheless, that their bodies might not be faint when they should be led out to execution, they agreed to sit down at table and partake of something. One laid the cloth, another the plates, a third brought water to wash, a fourth said grace, and a fifth observed that this was their last meal on earth, and that tomorrow they should sit down and sup with Christ in heaven. The remark was overheard by the Prefect of Old Prague. On going out to his friends he observed jeeringly, “What think ye? These men believe that Christ keeps cooks to regale them in heaven!” On these words being told to Jakessius, the minister, he replied that “Jesus too had a troublesome spectator at his last supper, Judas Iscariot.”

Meanwhile they were told that the barons and noblemen were passing from the tower to the courthouse, near to the market-place, where the scaffold on which they were to die had already been erected. They hastened to the windows, and began to sing in a loud voice the forty-fourth Psalm to cheer their fellow-martyrs: “Yea, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; ... Rise, Lord, cast us not off for ever.” A great crowd, struck with consternation at seeing their greatest and most venerated men led to death, followed them with sighs and tears.

This night was spent as the preceding one had been, in prayers and psalms. They exhorted one another to be of good courage, saying that as the glory of going first in the path of martyrdom had been awarded them, it behooved them to leave an example of constancy to their posterity, and of courage to the world, by showing it that they did not fear to die. They then joined in singing the eighty-sixth Psalm. When it was ended, John Kutnauer turned the last stanza into a prayer, earnestly beseeching God that he would “show some token which might at once strengthen them and convince their enemies.” Then turning to his companions, and speaking to them with great fervor of spirit, he said, “Be of good cheer, for God hath heard us even in this, and tomorrow he will bear witness by some visible sign that we are the martyrs of righteousness.” But Pastor Werbenius, when he heard this protestation, bade [205] [206] them be content to have as sufficient token from God, even this, “that that death which was bitter to the world he made sweet to them.”

When the day had broken they washed and changed their clothes, putting on clean apparel as if they were going to a wedding, and so fitting their doublets, and even their frills, that they might not need to re-arrange their dress on the scaffold. All the while John Kutnauer was praying fervently that some token might be vouchsafed them as a testimony of their innocence. In a little the sun rose, and the broad stream of the Moldau, as it rolled between the two Pragues, and the roofs and steeples on either side, began to glow in the light. But soon all eyes were turned upwards. A bow of dazzling brilliance was seen spanning the heavens.[12] There was not a cloud in the sky, no rain had fallen for two days, yet there was this bow of marvellous brightness hung in the clear air. The soldiers and townspeople rushed into the street to gaze at the strange phenomenon. The martyrs, who beheld it from their windows, called to mind the bow which greeted the eyes of Noah when he came forth from the Ark. It was the ancient token of a faithfulness more steadfast than the pillars of earth;[13] and their feelings in witnessing it were doubtless akin to those with which the second great father of the human family beheld it for the first time in the young skies of the post-diluvian world.

The bow soon ceased to be seen, and the loud discharge of a cannon told them that the hour of execution had arrived. The martyrs arose, and embracing, they bade each other be of good cheer, as did also the ministers present, who exhorted them not to faint now when about to receive the crown. The scaffold had been erected hard by in the great square or market-place, and several squadrons of cavalry and some companies of foot were now seen taking up their position around it. The imperial judges and senators next came forward and took their seats on a theater, whence they could command a full view of the scaffold. Under a canopy of state sat Lichtenstein, the Governor of Prague. “Vast numbers of spectators,” says Comenius, “crowded the market-place, the streets, and all the houses.”

The martyrs were called to go forth and die one after the other. When one had offered his life the city officers returned and summoned the next. As if called to a banquet they rose with alacrity, and with faces on which shone a serene cheerfulness they walked to the bloody stage. All of them submitted with undaunted courage to the stroke of the headsman. Rosacius, who was with them all the while, noted down their words, and he tells us that when one was called to go to the scaffold he would address the rest as follows: “Most beloved friends, farewell. God give you the comfort of his Spirit, patience, and courage, that what before you confessed with the heart, the mouth, and the hand, you may now seal by your glorious death. Behold I go before you, that I may see the glory of my Lord Jesus Christ! You will follow, that we may together behold the face of our Father. This hour ends our sorrow, and begins our everlasting joy.” To whom those who remained behind would make answer and say, “May God, to whom you go, prosper your journey, and grant you a happy passage from this vale of misery into the heavenly country. May the Lord Jesus send his angels to meet thee. Go, brother, before us to our Father’s house; we follow thee. Presently we shall reassemble in that heavenly glory of which we are confident through him in whom we have believed.”[14]

The beaming faces and meek yet courageous utterances of these men on the scaffold, exhibited to the spectators a more certain token of the goodness of their cause than the bow which had attracted their wondering gaze in the morning. Many of the senators, as well as the soldiers who guarded the execution, were moved to tears; nor could the crowd have withheld the same tribute, had not the incessant beating of drums, and the loud blaring of trumpets, drowned the words spoken on the scaffold.

But these words were noted down by their pastors, who accompanied them to the block, and as the heroism of the scaffold is a spectacle more sublime, and one that will better repay an attentive study, than the heroism of the battle-field, we shall permit these martyr-patriots to pass before us one by one. The clamor that drowned their dying words has long since been hushed; and the voices of the scaffold of Prague, rising clear and loud above the momentary noise, have traveled down the years to us.

[12]“Nuntiatur formosissimus caelum cinxisse arcus.” (Comenius.)

[13]Comenius, pp. 223, 224.

[14]Comenius, p. 225.

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Chapter 9: An Army of Martyrs

Count Schlik—His Cruel Sentence—The Baron of Budowa—His Last Hours—Argues with the Jesuits—His Execution—Christopher Harant—His Travels—His Death—Baron Kaplirz—His Dream—Attires himself for the Scaffold—Procopius Dworschezky—His Martyrdom—Otto Losz—His Sleep and Execution—Dionysius Czernin—His Behaviour on the Scaffold—Kochan—Steffek—Jessenius—His Learning—His Interview with the Jesuits—Cruel Death—Khobr—Schulz—Kutnauer—His great Courage—His Death—Talents and Rank of these Martyrs—Their Execution the Obsequies of their Country

PICTURE: Departure of the Banished Ministers from Kuttenberg.

Joachim Andreas Schilik, Count of Passau, and chief justice under Frederick, comes first in the glorious host that is to march past us. He was descended of an ancient and illustrious family. A man of magnanimous spirit, and excellent piety, he united an admirable modesty with great business capacity. When he heard his sentence, giving his body to be quartered, and his limbs to be exposed at a cross-road, he said, “The loss of a sepulchre is a small matter.” On hearing the gun in the morning fired to announce the executions, “This,” said he, “is the signal; let me go first.” He walked to the scaffold, dressed in a robe of black silk, holding a prayerbook in his hands, and attended by four German clergymen.[1] He mounted the scaffold, and then marking the great brightness of the sun, he broke out, “Christ, thou Sun of righteousness, grant that through the darkness of death I may pass into the eternal light.” He paced to and fro a little while upon the scaffold, evidently meditating, but with a serene and dignified countenance, so that the judges could scarce refrain from weeping. Having prayed, his page assisted him to undress, and then he kneeled down on a black cloth laid there for the purpose, and which was removed after each execution, that the next to die might not see the blood of the victim who had preceded him. While engaged in silent prayer, the executioner struck, and the head of Bohemia’s greatest son rolled on the scaffold. His right hand was then struck off and, together with his head, was fixed on a spear, and set up on the tower of the Bridge of Prague. His body, untouched by the executioner, was wrapped in a cloth, and carried from the scaffold by four men in black masks.

Scarcely inferior in weight of character, and superior in the variety of his mental accomplishments to Count Schlik, was the second who was called to die-Wenceslaus, Baron of Budown. He was a man of incomparable talents and great learning, which he had further improved by travelling through all the kingdoms of Western and Southern Europe. He had filled the highest offices of the State under several monarchs. Protestant writers speak of him as “the glory of his country, and the bright shining star of the Church, and as rather the father than the lord of his dependents.” The Romanist historian, Pelzel, equally extols his uprightness of character and his renown in learning. When urged in prison to beg the clemency of Ferdinand, he replied, “I will rather die than see the ruin of my country.” When one told him that it was rumored of him that he had died of grief, he exclaimed, “Died of grief! I never experienced such happiness as now. See here,” said he, pointing to his Bible, “this is my paradise; never did it regale me with such store of delicious fruits as now. Here I daily stray, eating the manna of heaven, and drinking the water of life.” On the third day before receiving his sentence he dreamed that he was walking in a pleasant meadow, and musing on the issue that might be awaiting his affairs, when lo! one came to him, and gave him a book, which when he had opened, he found the leaves were of silk, white as snow, with nothing written upon them save the fifth verse of the thirty-seventh Psalm: “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.” While he was pondering over these words there came yet another, carrying a white robe, which he cast over him. When he awoke in the morning he told his dream to his servant. Some days after, when he mounted the scaffold, “Now,” said he, “I attire myself in the white robe of my Savior’s righteousness.”

Early on the morning of his execution there came two Jesuits to him, who, complimenting him on his great learning, said that they desired to do him a work of mercy by gaining his soul. “Would,” he said, “you were as sure of your salvation as I am of mine, through the blood of the Lamb.” “Good, my lord,” said they, “but do not

[1]The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 1., p. 401.

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presume too much; for doth not the Scripture say, ‘No man knoweth whether he deserves grace or wrath’?” “Where find you that written?” he asked; “here is the Bible, show me the words.” “If I be not deceived,” said one of them, “in the Epistle of Paul to Timothy.” “You would teach me the way of salvation,” said the baron somewhat angrily, “thou who knowest thy Bible so in. But that the believer may be sure of his salvation is proved by the words of St. Paul, ‘I know whom I have believed,’ and also, ‘there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.’” “But,” rejoined the Jesuit, “Paul says this of himself, not of others.” “Thou art mistaken,” said Budowa, “for it continues, ‘not for me only, but for all them who love his appearing.’ Depart, and leave me in peace.”

He ascended the scaffold with undaunted look, and stroking his long white beard-for he was a man of seventy-he said, “Behold! my gray hairs, what honour awaits you; this day you shall be crowned with martyrdom.” After this he directed his speech to God, praying for the Church, for his country, for his enemies, and having commended his soul to Christ he yielded his head to the executioner’s sword. That head was exposed by the side of that of his fellow patriot and martyr, Schlik, on the tower of the Bridge of Prague.

The third who was called to ascend the scaffold was Christopher Harant, descended from the ancient and noble family of the Harants of Polzicz and Bezdruzicz. He had traveled in Europe, Asia, and Africa, visiting Jerusalem and Egypt, and publishing in his native tongue his travels in these various lands. He cultivated the sciences, wrote Greek and Latin verses, and had filled high office under several emperors. Neither his many accomplishments nor his great services could redeem his life from the block. When called to die he said, “I have traveled in many countries, and among many barbarous nations, I have undergone dangers manifold by land and sea, and now I suffer, though innocent, in my own country, and by the hands of those for whose good both my ancestors and myself have spent our fortunes and our lives. Father, forgive them.” When he went forth, he prayed, “In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust; let me not be confounded.” When he stepped upon the scaffold he lifted up his eyes, and said, “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” Taking off his doublet, he stepped upon the fatal doth, and kneeling down, again prayed. The executioner from some cause delaying to strike, he again broke out into supplication, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me, and receive my spirit.” The sword now fell, and his prayer and life ended together.[2]

The fourth to offer up his life was Gaspar, Baron Kaplirz of Sulowitz, a knight of eighty-six years of age. He had faithfully served four emperors. Before going to the scaffold he called for Rosacius, and said, “How often have I entreated that God would be pleased to take me out of this life, but instead of granting my wish, he has reserved me as a sacrifice for himself. Let God’s will be done.” “Yesterday,” said he, continuing his speech, “I was told that if I would petition Prince Lichtenstein for pardon my life would be spared. I never offended the prince: I will desire pardon of Him against whom I have committed many sins. I have lived long enough. When I cannot distinguish the taste of meats, or relish the sweetness of drinks; when it is tedious to sit long, and irksome to lie; when I cannot walk unless I lean on a staff, or be assisted by others, what profit would such a life be to me? God forbid that I should be pulled from this holy company of martyrs.”

On the day of execution, when the minister who was to attend him to the scaffold came to him, he said, “I laid this miserable body on a bed, but what sleep could so old a man have? Yet I did sleep, and saw two angels coming to me, who wiped my face with fine linen, and bade me make ready to go along with them. But I trust in my God that I have these angels present with me, not by a dream, but in truth, who minister to me while I live, and shall carry my soul from the scaffold to the bosom of Abraham. For although I am a sinner, yet am I purged by the blood of my Redeemer, who was made a propitiation for our sins.”

Having put on his usual attire, he made a robe of the finest linen be thrown over him, covering his entire person. “Behold, I put on my wedding garment,” he said. Being called, he arose, put on a velvet cloak, bade adieu to all, and went forth at a slow pace by reason of his great age. Fearing lest in mounting the scaffold he should fall, and his enemies flout him, he craved permission of the minister to lean upon him when ascending the steps. Being come to the fatal spot, he had much ado to kneel down, and his head hung so low that the executioner feared to do his office. “My lord,” said Pastor Rosacius, “as you have commended your soul to Christ, do you now lift up yourself toward heaven.” he raised himself up, saying, “Lord Jesus, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” The executioner now gave his

[2]Comenius, cap. 63.

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stroke, his gray head sank, and his body lay prostrate on the scaffold.[3]

The fifth to fall beneath the executioner’s sword was Procopius Dworschezky, of Olbramowitz On receiving his sentence he said, “If the emperor promises himself anything when my head is off, let it be so.” On passing before the judges he said, “Tell the emperor, as I now stand at his tribunal, the day comes when he shall stand before the judgment-seat of God.” He was proceeding in his address, when the drums beat and drowned his words. When he had undressed for the executioner, he took out his purse containing a Hungarian ducat, and gave it to the minister who attended him, saying, “Behold my last riches! these are unprofitable to me, I resign them to you.” A gold medal of Frederick’s coronation, that hung round his neck, he gave to a bystander, saying, “When my dear King Frederick shall sit again upon his throne, give it to him, and tell him that I wore it on my breast till the day of my death.” He kneeled down, and the sword falling as he was praying, his spirit ascended with his last words to God.[4]

Otto Losz, Lord of Komarow, came next. A man of great parts, he had traveled much, and discharged many important offices. When he received his sentence he said, “I have seen barbarous nations, but what cruelty is this! Well, let them send one part of me to Rome, another to Spain, another to Turkey, and throw the fourth into the sea, yet will my Redeemer bring my body together, and cause me to see him with these eyes, praise him with this mouth, and love him with this heart.” When Rosacius entered to tell him that he was called to the scaffold, “he rose hastily out of his seat,” says Comenius, “like one in an ecstasy, saying, ‘O, how I rejoice to see you, that I may tell you what has happened to me! As I sat here grieving that I had not one of my own communion [the United Brethren] to dispense the Eucharist to me, I fell asleep, and behold my Savior appeared unto me, and said, ‘I purify thee with my blood,’ and then infused a drop of his blood into my heart; at the feeling of this I awaked, and leaped for joy:now I understand what that is, Believe, and thou hast eaten. I fear death no longer.”

As he went on his way to the scaffold, Rosacius said to him, “That Jesus who appeared to you in your sleep, will now appear to you in his glory.” “Yes,” replied the martyr, “he will meet me with his angels, and conduct me into the banqueting-chamber of an everlasting marriage.” Being come to the scaffold, he fell on his face, and prayed in silence. Then rising up, he yielded himself to the executioner.

He was followed on the scaffold by Dionysius Czernin, of Chudenitz. This sufferer was a Romanist, but his counsels not pleasing the Jesuits, he fell under the suspicion of heresy; and it is probable that the Fathers were not sorry to see him condemned, for his death served as a pretext for affirming that these executions were for political, not religious causes. When the other prisoners were declaring their faith, Czernin protested that this was his faith also, and that in this faith did he die. When the others received the Lord’s Supper, he stood by dissolved in tears, praying most fervently, he was offered the Eucharistic cup; but smiting on his breast, and sighing deeply, he said, “I rest in that grace which hath come unto me.” He was led to the scaffold by a canon and a Jesuit, but gave small heed to their exhortations. Declining the “kiss of peace,” and turning his back upon the crucifix, he fell on his face, and prayed softly. Then raising himself, and looking up into the heavens, he said, “They can kill the body, they cannot kill the soul; that, O Lord Jesus, I commend to thee,” and died.

There followed other noblemen, whose behavior on the scaffold was equally courageous, and whose dying words were equally impressive, but to record them all would unnecessarily prolong our narration. We take a few examples from among the citizens whose blood was mingled with that of the nobles in defense of the religion and liberty of their native land. Valentine Kochan, a learned man, a Governor of the University, and Secretary of Prague, protested, when Ferdinand II was thrust upon them, that no king should be elected without the consent of Moravia and Silesia. This caused him to be marked out for vengeance. In his last hours he bewailed the divisions that had prevailed among the Protestants of Bohemia, and which had opened a door for their calamities. “O!” said he, “if all the States had employed more thought and diligence in maintaining union; if there had not been so much hatred on both sides; if one had not sought preference before another, and had not given way to mutual suspicions; moreover, if the clergy and the laity had assisted each other with counsel and action, in love, unity, and peace, we should never have been thus far misled.”[5] On the

[3]Comenius, cap. 64. The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 1., pp. 416, 417.

[4]Comenius, cap. 65.

[5]The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 1., p. 423

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scaffold he sang the last verse of the sixteenth Psalm: “Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fullness of joy, at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore;” and then yielded his head to the executioner.

Tobias Steffek was a man of equal modesty and piety. He had been chosen to fill important trusts by his fellow-citizens. “Many a cup of blessing,” said he, “have I received from the hand of the Lord, and shall I not accept this cup of affliction? I am going by a narrow path to the heavenly kingdom.” His time in prison was mostly passed in sighs and tears. When called to go to the scaffold, he looked up with eyes suffused with weeping, yet with the hope shining through his tears that the same stroke that should sever his head from his body would wipe them away for ever. In this hope he died.

John Jessenius, professor of medicine, and Chancellor of the University of Prague, was the next whose blood was spilt. He was famed for his medical skill all over Europe. He was the intimate friend of the illustrious Tycho Brahe, and Physician in Ordinary to two emperors-Rudolph and Matthias. He it was, it is said, who introduced the study of anatomy into Prague. Being a man of eloquent address, he was employed on an important embassy to Hungary, and this made him a marked object of the vengeance of Ferdinand II.

His sentence was a cruel one. He was first to have his tongue cut out, then he was to be beheaded, and afterwards quartered. His head was to be affixed to the Bridge-tower, and his limbs were to be exposed on stakes in the four quarters of Plague. On hearing this sentence, he said, “You use us too cruelly; but know that there will not be wanting some who will take down the heads you thus ignominiously expose, and lay them in the grave.”[6]

The Jesuits evinced a most lively desire to bring this learned man over to their side. Jessenius listened as they enlarged on the efficacy of good works. “Alas!” replied he, “my time is so short that I fear I shall not be able to lay up such a stock of merits as will suffice for my salvation.” The Fathers, thinking the victory as good as won, exclaimed, “My dear Jessenius, though you should die this very moment, we promise you that you shall go straight to heaven.” “Is it so?” replied the confessor; “then where is your Purgatory for those who are not able to fill up the number of their good deeds here?” Finding themselves but befooled, they departed from him.

On mounting the scaffold, the executioner approached him, and demanded his tongue. He at once gave it-that tongue which had pleaded the cause of his country before princes and States. It was drawn out with a pair of tongs. He then dropped on his knees, his hands tied behind his back, and began to pray, “not speaking, but stuttering,” says Comenius. His head was struck off, and affixed to the Bridge-tower, and his body was taken below the gallows, and dealt with according to the sentence. One of the lights, not of Bohemia only, but of Europe, had been put out.

Christopher Khobr was the next whose life was demanded. He was a man of heroic mind. Speaking to his fellow-sufferers, he said, “How glorious is the memory of Huss and Jerome! And why? because they laid down their lives for the truth.” He cited the words of Ignatius-“I am the corn of God, and shall be ground with the teeth of beasts.” “We also,” he added, “are the corn of God, sown in the field of the Church. Be of good cheer, God is able to raise up a thousand witnesses from every drop of our blood.” He went with firm step, and face elate, to the place where he was to die. Standing on the scaffold, he said, “Must I die here? No! I shall live, and declare the works of the Lord in the land of the living.” Kneeling down, he gave his head to the executioner and his spirit to God.

He was followed by John Schulz, Burgomaster of Kuttenberg. On being led out to die, he sent a message to his friends, saying, “The bitterness of this parting will make our reunion sweet indeed.” On mounting the scaffold, he quoted the words of the Psalm, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” When he had gone a few paces forward, he continued, “Trust in God, for I shall yet praise him.” Advancing to the spot where he was to die, he threw himself on his face, and spread forth his hands in prayer. Then, rising up, he received that stroke which gave him at once temporal death and eternal life.

In this procession of kingly and glorious spirits who travel by the crimson road of the scaffold to the everlasting gates, there are others whom we must permit to pass on in silence. One other martyr only shall we notice; he is the youngest of them all, and we have seen him before. He is John Kutnauer, senator of Old Prague, the same whom

[6]This anticipation was realized in 1631. After the victory of Gustavus Adolphus at Leipsic, Prague was entered, and Count Thorn took down the heads from the Bridge-tower, and conveyed them to the Tein Church, followed by a large assemblage of nobles, pastors, and citizens, who had returned from exile. They were afterwards buried, but the spot was concealed from the knowledge of the Romanists. (Comenius, cap. 73.)

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we saw praying that there might be given some “token” to the martyrs, and who, when the bow appeared a little after sunrise spanning the heavens above Prague, accepted it as the answer to his prayer.[7] No one of all that heroic company was more courageous than Kutnauer. When the Jesuits came round him, he said, “Depart, gentlemen; why should you persist in labor so unprofitable to yourselves, and so troublesome to us?” One of the Fathers observed, “These men are as hard as rocks.” “We are so, indeed,” said the senator, “for we are joined to that rock which is Christ.”

When summoned to the scaffold, his friends threw themselves upon him, overwhelming him with their embraces and tears. He alone did not weep. “Refrain,” he said, “let us be men; a little while, and we shall meet in the heavenly glory.” And then, says the chronicler, “with the face of a lion, as if going to battle, he set forward, singing in his own tongue the German hymn: ‘Behold the hour draws near,’ etc.”

Kutnauer was sentenced to die by the rope, not by the sword. On the scaffold he gave his purse to the executioner, and then placed himself beneath the beam from which he was to be suspended. He cried, or rather, says the chronicler, “roared,” if haply he might be heard above the noise of the drums and trumpets, placed around the scaffold on purpose to drown the last words of the sufferers. “I have plotted no treason,” he said; “I have committed no murder; I have done no deed worthy of death. I die because I have been faithful to the Gospel and my country. O God, pardon my enemies, for they know not what they do. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” He was then thrown off the ladder, and gave up the ghost.[8]

We close this grand procession of kings, this march of palm-bearers. As they pass on to the axe and the halter there is no pallor on their countenances. Their step is firm, and their eye is bright. They are the men of the greatest talents and the most resplendent virtues in their nation. They belong to the most illustrious families of their country. They had filled the greatest offices and they wore the highest honors of the State; yet we see them led out to die the death of felons. The day that saw these men expire on the scaffold may be said to have witnessed the obsequies of Bohemia.

[7]This bow is mentioned by both Protestant and Popish writers. The people, after gazing some time at it, admiring its beauty, were seized with fear, and many rushed in terror to their houses.

[8]Comenius, cap. 78. The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 1., pp. 429, 430.

Chapter 10: Suppression of Protestantish in Bohemia

Policy of Ferdinand II—Murder of Ministers by the Troops—New Plan of Persecution—Kindness and its Effects—Expulsion of Anabaptists from Moravia—The Pastors Banished—Sorrowful Partings—Exile of Pastors of Kuttenberg—The Lutherans “Graciously Dismissed”—The Churches Razed—The New Clergy—Purification of the Churches—The Schoolmasters Banished—Bibles and Religious Books Burned—Spanish Jesuits and Lichtenstein’s Dragoons—Emigration of the Nobles—Reign of Terror in the Towns—Oppressive Edicts—Ransom-Money—Unprotestantizing of Villages and Rural Parts—Protestantism Trampled out—Bohemia a Desert—Testimony of a Popish Writer

Picture: View of the Grosse Ring Prague, where the Martyrs were Executed

The sufferings of that cruel time were not confined to the nobles of Bohemia. The pastors were their companions in the horrors of the persecution. After the first few months, during which the conqueror lured back by fair promises all who had fled into exile, or had hidden themselves in secret places, the policy of Ferdinand II and his advisers was to crush at once the chief men whether of the nobility or of the ministry, and afterwards to deal with the common people as they might find it expedient, either by the rude violence of the hangman or the subtle craft of the Jesuit. This astute policy was pursued with the most unflinching resolution, and the issue was the almost entire trampling out of the Protestantism of Bohemia and Moravia. In closing this sad story we must briefly narrate the tortures and death which were inflicted on the Bohemian pastors, and the manifold woes that befell the unhappy country.

Even before the victory of the Weissenberg, the ministers in various parts of Bohemia suffered dreadfully from the license of the troops. No [213] sooner had the Austrian army crossed the frontier, than the soldiers began to plunder and kill as they had a mind. Pastors found preaching to their flocks were murdered in the pulpit; the sick were shot in their beds; some were hanged on trees, others were tied to posts, and their extremities scorched with fire, while others were tortured in various cruel ways to compel them to disclose facts which they did not know, and give up treasure which they did not possess. To the barbarous murder of the father or the husband was sometimes added the brutal outrage of his family.

But when the victory of the Weissenberg gave Bohemia and its capital into the power of Ferdinand, the persecution was taken out of the hands of the soldiers, and committed to those who knew how to conduct it, if not more humanely, yet more systematically. It was the settled purpose of the emperor to bring the whole of Bohemia back to Rome. He was terrified at the spirit of liberty and patriotism which he saw rising in the nation; he ascribed that spirit entirely to the new religion of which John Huss had been the great apostle, since, all down from the martyr’s day, he could trace the popular convulsions to which it had given rise; and he despaired of restoring quiet and order to Bohemia till it should again be of one religion, and that religion the Roman. Thus political were blended with religious motives in the terrible persecution which Ferdinand now commenced.

It was nearly a year till the plan of persecution was arranged; and when at last the plan was settled, it was resolved to baptize it by the name of “Reformation.” To restore the altars and images which the preachers of the new faith had cast out, and again plant the old faith in the deformed churches, was, they affirmed, to effect a real Reformation. They had a perfect right to the word. They appointed a Commission of Reformers, having at its head the Archbishop of Prague and several of the Bohemian grandees, and united with them was a numerous body of Jesuits, who bore the chief burden of this new Reformation. After the executions, which we have described, were over, it was resolved to proceed by kindness and persuasion. If the Reformation could not be completed without the axe and the halter, these would not be wanting; meanwhile, mild measures, it was thought, would best succeed. The monks who dispersed themselves among the people assured them of the emperor’s favor should they embrace the emperor’s religion. The times were hard, and such as had fallen into straits were assisted with money or with seed-corn. The Protestant poor were, on the other hand, refused alms, and at times could not even buy bread with money. Husbands were separated from their wives, and children from their parents. Disfranchisement, expulsion from corporations and offices, the denial of burial, and similar oppressions were inflicted on those who evinced a disposition to remain steadfast in their Protestant profession. If any one declared that he would exile himself rather than apostatize, he was laughed at for his folly. “To what land will you go,” he was asked, “where you shall find the liberty you desire? Everywhere you shall find heresy proscribed. One’s native soil is sweet, and you will be glad to return to yours, only, it may be, to find the door of the emperor’s clemency closed.” Numerous conversions were effected before the adoption of a single harsh measure; but wherever the Scriptural knowledge of Huss’s Reformation had taken root, there the monks found the work much more difficult.

The first great tentative measure was the expulsion of the Anabaptists from Moravia. The most unbefriended, they were selected as the first victims. The Anabaptists were gathered into some forty-five communities or colleges, where they had all things in common, and were much respected by their neighbors for their quiet and orderly lives. Their lands were skillfully cultivated, and their taxes duly paid, but these qualities could procure them no favor in the eyes of their sovereign. The order for their banishment arrived in the beginning of autumn, 1622, and was all the more severe that it inferred the loss of the labours of the year. Leaving their fields unreaped and their grapes to rot upon the bough, they arose, and quitted house and lands and vineyards. The children and aged they placed in carts, and setting forward in long and sorrowful troops, they held on their way across the Moravian plains to Hungary and Transylvania, where they found new habitations. They were happy in being the first to be compelled to go away; greater severities awaited those whom they left behind.

Stop the fountains, and the streams will dry up of themselves. Acting on this maxim, it was resolved to banish the pastors, to shut up the churches, and to burn the books of the Protestants.

In pursuance of this program of persecution, the ministers of Prague had six articles laid before them, to which their submission was demanded, as the condition of their remaining in the country. The first called on them to collect among themselves a sum of several thousand pounds, and give it as a loan to the emperor for the payment of the troops employed in suppressing the rebellion. The remaining five articles amounted to an abandonment [214] of the Protestant faith. The ministers replied unanimously that “they would do nothing against their consciences.” The decree of banishment was not long deferred. To pave the way for it, an edict was issued, which threw the whole blame of the war upon the ministers. They were stigmatized as “turbulent, rash, and seditious men,” who had “made a new king,” and who even now “were plotting pernicious confederacies,” and preparing new insurrections against the emperor. They must therefore, said the edict, be driven from a kingdom which could know neither quiet nor safety so long as they were in it. Accordingly on the 13th of December, 1621,[1] the decree of banishment was given forth, ordering all the ministers in Prague within three days, and all others throughout Bohemia and the United Provinces within eight days, to remove themselves beyond the bounds of the kingdom, “and that for ever.” If any of the proscribed should presume to remain in the country, or should return to it, they were to suffer death, and the same fate was adjudged to all who should dare to harbor them, or who should in the least favor or help them.[2]

But, says Comenius, “the scene of their departure cannot be described,” it was so overwhelmingly sorrowful. The pastors were followed by their loving flocks, bathed in tears, and so stricken with anguish of spirit, that they gave vent to their grief in sighs and groans. Bitter, thrice bitter, were their farewells, for they knew they should see each other no more on earth. The churches of the banished ministers were given to the Jesuits.

The same sorrowful scenes were repeated in all the other towns of Bohemia where there were Protestant ministers to be driven away; and what town was it that had not its Protestant pastor? Commissaries of Reformation went from town to town with a troop of horse, enforcing the edict. Many of the Romanists sympathized with the exiled pastors, and condemned the cruelty of the Government; the populations generally were friendly to the ministers, and their departure took place amid public tokens of mourning on the part of those among whom they had lived. The crowds on the streets were often so great that the wagons that bore away their little ones could with difficulty move forward, while sad and tearful faces looked down upon the departing troop from the windows. On the 27th of July, 1623, the ministers of Kuttenberg were commanded to leave the city before break of day, and remove beyond the bounds of the kingdom within eight days. Twenty-one ministers passed out at the gates at early morning, followed by some hundreds of citizens. After they had gone a little way the assembly halted, and drawing aside from the highway, one of the ministers, John Matthiades, preached a farewell sermon to the multitude, from the words, “They shall cast you out of the synagogues.” Earnestly did the preacher exhort them to constancy. The whole assembly was drowned in tears. When the sermon had ended, “the heavens rang again,” says the chronicler, “with their songs and their lamentations, and with mutual embraces and kisses they commended each other to the grace of God.”[3] The flocks returned to the city, and their exiled shepherds went on their way.

The first edict of proscription fell mainly upon the Calvinistic clergy and the ministers of the United Brethren. The Lutheran pastors were left unmolested as yet. Ferdinand II hesitated to give offense to the Elector of Saxony by driving his co-religionists out of his dominions. But the Jesuits took the alarm when they saw the Calvinists, who had been deprived of their own pastors, flocking to the churches of the Lutheran clergy. They complained to the monarch that the work was only half done, that the pestilence could not be arrested till every Protestant minister had been banished from the hind, and the urgencies of the Fathers at length prevailed over the fears of the king. Ferdinand issued an order that the Lutheran ministers should follow their brethren of the Calvinistic and Moravian Communion into exile. The Elector of Saxony remonstrated against this violence, and was politely told that it was very far indeed from being the fact that the Lutheran clergy had been banished-they had only received a “gracious dismissal.”[4]

The razing of the churches in many places was consequent on the expulsion of the pastors. Better that they should be ruinous heaps than that they should remain to be occupied by the men who were now brought to fill them. The lowest of the priests were drafted from other places to enjoy the vacant livings, and fleece, not feed, the desolate flocks. There could not be found so many curates as there were now empty churches in Bohemia; and two, six, nay, ten or a dozen parishes were committed to the care of one man. Under these hirelings the people learned the value of that Gospel which they had, perhaps too easily, permitted to be taken from them,

[1]Comenius, cap. 51, p. 184.

[2]Ibid.

[3]“Tandem cantu et fictu resonante caelo, amplexibus et osculis mutuis Divinae se commendarunt gratiae.” (Comenius, p. 195.)

[4]The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia. vol. 2., pp. 32, 33.

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in the persons of their banished pastors. Some churches remained without a priest for years; “but the people,” says Comenius, “found it a less affliction to lack wholesome instruction than to resort to poisoned pastures, and become the prey of wolves.”[5]

A number of monks were imported from Poland, that country being near, and the language similar, but their dissolute lives were the scandal of that Christianity which they were brought to teach. On the testimony of all historians, Popish as well as Protestant, they were riotous livers, insatiably greedy, and so shamelessly profligate that abominable crimes, unknown in Bohemia till then, and not fit to be named, say the chroniclers, began to pollute the land. Even the Popish historian Pelzel says, “they led vicious lives.” Many of them had to return to Poland faster than they had come, to escape the popular vengeance which their misdeeds had awakened against them. Bohemia was doubly scourged: it had lost its pious ministers, and it had received in their room men who were fitter to occupy the culprit’s cell than the teacher’s chair.

The cleansing of the churches which had been occupied by the Protestant ministers, before being again taken possession of by the Romish clergy, presents us with many things not only foolish, but droll. The pulpit was first whipped, next sprinkled with holy water, then a priest was made to enter it, and speaking for the pulpit to say, “I have sinned.” The altars at which the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper had been dispensed were dealt with much in the same way. When the Jesuits took possession of the church in Prague which had been occupied by the United Brethren, they first strewed gunpowder over its floor, and then set fire to it, to disinfect the building by flame and smoke from the poison of heresy. The “cup,” the well-known Bohemian symbol, erected over church portals and city gates, was pulled down, and a statue of the Virgin put up fit its stead. If a church was not to be used, because it was not needed, or because it was inconveniently situated, it was either razed or shut up. If only shut up it was left unconsecrated, and in that dreadful condition the Romanists were afraid to enter it. The churchyards shared the fate of the churches. The monumental tablets of the Protestant dead were broken in pieces, the inscriptions were effaced, and the bones of the dead in many instances were dug up and burned.[6]

After the pastors, the iron hand of persecution fell upon the schoolmasters. All teachers who refused to conform to the Church of Rome, and teach the new catechism of the Jesuit Canisius, were banished. The destruction of the Protestant University of Prague followed. The non-Catholic professors were exiled, and the building was delivered over to the Jesuits. The third great measure adopted for the overthrow of Protestantism was the destruction of all religious books. A commission traveled from town to town, which, assembling the people by the tolling of the bells, explained to them the cause of their visit, and “exhorted them,” says George Holyk, “in kind, sweet, and gentle words, to bring all their books.” If gentle words failed to draw out the peccant volumes, threats and a strict inquisition in every house followed. The books thus collected were examined by the Jesuits who accompanied the commissioners, and while immoral works escaped, all in which was detected the slightest taint of heresy were condemned. They were carried away in baskets and carts, piled up in the market-place, or under the gallows, or outside the city gates, and there burned. Many thousands of Bohemian Bibles, and countless volumes of general literature, were thus destroyed. Since that time a Bohemian book and a scarce book have been synonymous. The past of Bohemia was blotted out; the great writers and the illustrious warriors who had flourished in it were forgotten; the noble memories of early times were buried in the ashes of these fires; and the Jestuits found it easy to make their pupils believe that, previous to their arrival, the country had been immersed in darkness, and that with them came the first streaks of light in its sky.[7]

The Jesuits who were so helpful in this “Reformation” were Spaniards. They had brought with them the new order of the Brethren of Mercy, who proved their most efficient coadjutors. Of these Brethren of Mercy, Jacobeus gives the following graphic but not agreeable picture:-“They were saints abroad, but furies at home; their dress was that of paupers, but their tables were those of gluttons; they had the maxims of the ascetic, but the morals of the rake.” Other allies, perhaps even more efficient in promoting conversions to the Roman Church, came to the aid of the Jesuits. These were the well-known Lichtenstein dragoons. These men had never faced an enemy, or learned on the battle-field to be at once brave and merciful.

[5]Comenius, cap. 54, p. 192.

[6]The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 2., pp. 16-19.

[7]Comenius, cap. 105. The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 2., chap. 3.

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They were a set of vicious and cowardly ruffians, who delighted in terrifying, torturing, and murdering the pious peasants. They drove them like cattle to church with the saber. When billeted on Protestant families, they conducted themselves like incarnate demons; the members of the household had either to declare themselves Romanists, or flee to the woods, to be out of the reach of their violence and the hearing of their oaths. As the Jesuits were boasting at Rome in presence of the Pope of having converted Bohemia, the famous Capuchin, Valerianus Magnus, who was present, said, “Holy Father, give me soldiers as they were given to the Jesuits, and I will convert the whole world to the Catholic faith.”[8]

We have already narrated the executions of the most illustrious of the Bohemian nobles. Those whose lives were spared were overwhelmed by burdensome taxes, and reiterated demands for sums of money, on various pretexts. After they had been tolerably fleeced, it was resolved to banish them from the kingdom. On Ignatius Loyola’s day, the 31st of July, in the year 1627, an edict appeared, in which the emperor declared that, having “a fatherly care for the salvation of his kingdom,” he would permit none but Catholics to live in it, and he commanded all who refused to return to the Church of Rome, to sell their estates within six months, and depart from Bohemia. Some there were who parted with “the treasure of a good conscience” that they might remain in their native land; but the greater part, more steadfastly-minded, sold their estates for a nominal price in almost every instance, and went forth into exile.[9] The decree of banishment was extended to widows. Their sons and daughters, being minors, were taken forcible possession of by the Jesuits, and were shut up in colleges and convents, and their goods managed by tutors appointed by the priests. About a hundred noble families, forsaking their ancestral domains, were dispersed throughout the neighboring countries, and among these was the gray-headed baron, Charles Zierotin, a man highly respected throughout all Bohemia for his piety and courage.

The places of the banished grandees were filled by persons of low degree, to whom the emperor could give a patent of nobility, but to whom he could give neither elevation of soul, nor dignity of character, nor grace of manners. The free cities were placed under a reign of terrorism. New governors and imperial judges were appointed to rule them; but from what class of the population were these officials drawn? The first were selected from the new nobility; the second, says Comenius-and his statement was not denied by his contemporaries-were taken from “banished Italians or Germans, or apostate Bohemians, gluttons who had squandered their fortunes, notorious murderers, bastards, cheats, fiddlers, stage-players, mutineers, even men who were unable to read, without property, without home, without conscience.”[10] Such were the judges to whom the goods, the liberties, and the lives of the citizens were committed. The less infamous of the new officials, the governors namely, were soon removed, and the “gluttons, murderers, fiddlers, and stage-players” were left to tyrannize at pleasure. No complaint was listened to; extortionate demands were enforced by the military; marriage was forbidden except to Roman Catholics; funeral rites were prohibited at Protestant burials; to harbor any of the banished ministers was to incur fine and imprisonment; to work on a Popish holiday was punishable with imprisonment and a fine of ten florins; to laugh at a priest, or at his sermon, inferred banishment and confiscation of goods; to eat flesh on prohibited days, without an indulgence from the Pope, was to incur a fine of ten florins; to be absent from Church on Sunday, or on festival-mass days, to send one’s son to a non-Catholic school, or to educate one’s family at home, was forbidden under heavy penalties; non-Catholics were not permitted to make a will; if nevertheless they did so, it was null and void; none were to be admitted into arts or trades unless they first embraced the Popish faith. If any should speak unbecomingly of the “Blessed Virgin the Mother of God,” or of the “illustrious House of Austria,” “he shall lose his head, without the least favor or pardon.” The poor in the hospitals were to be converted to the Roman Catholic faith before the feast of All Saints, otherwise they were to be turned out, and not again admitted till they had entered the Church of Rome. So was it enacted in July, 1624, by Charles, Prince of Lichtenstein, as “the constant and unalterable will of His Sacred Majesty Ferdinand II.”[11]

In the same year (1624) all the citizens of Prague who had not renounced their Protestant faith, and entered the Roman communion, were informed by public edict that they had forfeited their estates by rebellion. Nevertheless, their

[8]The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 2., p. 114.

[9]Comenius, cap. 89.

[10]“Lurcones qui sua decoxerant, homicidas infames, spurios, mangones, fidicines, comaedos, ciniflones, quosdam etiam alphabeti ignaros homines,” etc. (Comenius, cap. 90, p. 313.)

[11]Comenius, cap. 91.

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gracious monarch was willing to admit them to pardon. Each citizen was required to declare on oath the amount of goods which he possessed, and his pardon-money was fixed accordingly. The “ransom” varied from 100 up to 6,000 guilders. The next “thunderbolt” that fell on the non-Catholics was the deprivation of the rights of citizenship. No one, if not in communion with the Church of Rome, could carry on a trade or business in Prague. Hundreds were sunk at once by this decree into poverty. It was next resolved to banish the more considerable of those citizens who still remained “unconverted.” First four leading men had sentence of exile recorded against them; then seventy others were expatriated. Soon thereafter, several hundreds were sent into banishment; and the crafty persecutors now paused to mark the effect of these severities upon the common people. Terrified, ground down into poverty, suffering from imprisonment and other inflictions, and deprived of their leaders, they found the people, as they had hoped, very pliant. A small number, who voluntarily exiled themselves, excepted, the citizens conformed. Thus the populous and once Protestant Prague bowed its neck to the Papal yoke.[12] In a similar way, and with a like success, did the “Commissioners of the Reformation” carry out their instructions in all the chief cities of Bohemia.

After the same fashion were the villages and rural parts “unprotestantized.” The Emperor Matthias, in 1610, had guaranteed the peasantry of Bohemia in the free exercise of the Protestant religion. This privilege was now abolished, beginning was made in the villages, where the flocks were deprived of their shepherds. Their Bibles and other religious books were next taken from them and destroyed, that the flame might go out when the fuel was withdrawn. The ministers and Bibles out of the way, the monks appeared on the scene. They entered with soft words and smiling faces. They confidently promised lighter burdens and happier times if the people would only forsake their heresy. They even showed them the beginning of this golden age, by bestowing upon the more necessitous a few small benefactions. When the

[12]Comenius, cap. 92.

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conversions did not answer the fond expectations of the Fathers, they changed their first bland utterances into rough words, and even threats. The peasantry were commanded to go to mass. A list of the parishioners was given to the clerk, that the absentees from church might be marked, and visited with fine. If one was detected at a secret Protestant conventicle, he was punished with flagellation and imprisonment. Marriage and baptism were next forbidden to Protestants. The peasants were summoned to the towns to be examined and, it might be, punished. If they failed to obey the citation they were surprised overnight by the soldiers, taken from their beds, and driven into the towns like herds of cattle, where they were thrust into prisons, towers, cellars, and stables; many perishing through the hunger, thirst, cold, and stench which they there endured. Other tortures, still more horrible and disgusting, were invented, and put in practice upon these miserable creatures. Many renounced their faith. Some, unwilling to abjure, and yet unable to bear their prolonged tortures, earnestly begged their persecutors to kill them outright. “No,” would their tormentors reply, “the emperor does not thirst for your blood, but for your salvation.” This sufficiently accounts for the paucity of martyrs unto blood in Bohemia, notwithstanding the lengthened and cruel persecution to which it was subject. There were not wanting many who would have braved death for their faith; but the Jesuits studiously avoided setting up the stake, and preferred rather to wear out the disciples of the Gospel by tedious and cruel tortures. Those only whose condemnation they could color with some political pretext, as was the case with the noblemen whose martyrdoms we have recorded, did they bring to the scaffold. Thus they were able to suppress the Protestantism of Bohemia, and yet they could say, with some little plausibility, that no one had died for his religion.

But in trampling out its Protestantism the persecutor trampled out the Bohemian nation. First of all, the flower of the nobles perished on the scaffold. Of the great families that remained 185 sold their castles and hinds and left the kingdom. Hundreds of the aristocratic families followed the nobles into exile. Of the common people not fewer than 36,000 families emigrated. There was hardly a kingdom in Europe where the exiles of Bohemia were not to be met with. Scholars, merchants, traders, fled from a land which was given over as a prey to the disciples of Loyola, and the dragoons of Ferdinand. Of the 4,000,000 who inhabited Bohemia in 1620, a miserable remnant, amounting not even to a fifth, were all that remained in 1648.[13] Its fanatical sovereign is reported to have said that he would rather reign over a desert than over a kingdom peopled by heretics. Bohemia was now a desert.

This is not our opinion only, it is that of Popish historians also. “Until that time,” says Pelzel, “the Bohemians appeared on the field of battle as a separate’ nation, and they not infrequently earned glory. They were now thrust among other nations, and their flame has never since resounded on the field of battle.... Till that time, the Bohemians, taken as a nation, had been brave, dauntless, passionate for glory, and enterprising; but now they lost all courage, all national pride, all spirit of enterprise. They fled into forests like sheep before the Swedes, or suffered themselves to be trampled under foot.... The Bohemian language, which was used in all public transactions, and of which the nobles were proud, fell into contempt.... As high as the Bohemians had risen in science, literature, and arts, in the reigns of Maximilian and Rudolph, so low did they now sink in all these respects. I do not know of any scholar who, after the expulsion of the Protestants, distinguished himself in any learning.... With that period the history of the Bohemians ends, and that of other nations in Bohemia begins.”[14]

[13]Ludwig Hausser, Period of the Reformation, vol. 2., p. 107; Lond., 1873.

[14]Pelzel, Geschichte von Bohmen, p. 185 et seq. Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 158.

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Book 20: Protestantism in Hungary and Transylvania

Chapter 1: Planting of Protestantism

Early History of Hungary—Entrance of Protestantism—Its Rapid Diffusion—Causes—First Preachers—Henkel and Queen Mary of Hungary—Persecuting Edicts—The Turk Appears—John Zapolya—Louis II—Count Pemflinger—Battle of Mohacz—Slaughter ofKing and Nobility—Protestantism Progresses—Zapolya and Ferdinand Contest the Sovereignty—Matthias Devay—His Zeal and Success as a Reformer—Imprisoned—The Blacksmith—Count Nadasdy—His Efforts for the Reform of Hungary—Discussion before Ferdinand I—Defeat and Wrath of the Bishops—The King Protects Devay—Character of Ferdinand I

Picture: Soliman the Magnificent.

Picture: Roumanian Peasants of Transylvania

Crossing the frontier of Bohemia, we enter those far-extending plains which, covered with corn and the vine, watered by the Danube, the Theiss, and other great rivers, and enclosed by the majestic chain of the Carpathians, constitute the Upper and Lower Hungary. Invaded by the Romans before the Christian era, this rich and magnificent territory passed under a succession of conquerors, and was occupied by various peoples, till finally, in the ninth century, the Magyars from Asia took possession of it. The well-known missionaries, Cyrillus and Methodius, arriving soon after this, found the inhabitants worshipping Mars, and summoning their tribes to the battle-field by sending round a sword. In the tenth century, the beams of a purer faith began to shine through the pagan darkness that covered them. The altars of the god of war were forsaken for those, of the “Prince of Peace,” and this warlike people, which had been wont to carry back captives and blood-stained booty from their plundering excursions into Germany and France, now began to practice the husbandry and cultivate the arts of Western Europe. The Christianity of those days did not go deep into either the individual or the national heart; it was a rite rather than a life; there were 150 “holy places” in Hungary, but very few holy lives; miracles were as common as virtues were rare; and soon the moral condition of the nation under the Roman was as deplorable as it had been under the pagan worship. Hungary was in this state, when it was suddenly and deeply startled by the echoes from Luther’s hammer on the church door at Wittemberg. To a people sunk in physical oppression and spiritual misery, the sounds appeared like those of the silver trumpet on the day of Jubilee.

Perhaps in no country of Europe were the doctrines of the Reformation so instantaneously and so widely diffused as in Hungary. Many causes contributed to this. The spread of the doctrines of Huss in that country a century previous, the number of German settlers in Hungarian towns, the introduction of Luther’s tracts and hymns by the German soldiers, who came to fight in the Hungarian armies against the Turk, the free civil constitution of the kingdom-all helped to prepare the soil for the reception of the Reformation. Priests in different parts of the land, who had groaned under the yoke of the hierarchy, appeared all at once as preachers of the Reformed faith. “The Living Word, coming from hearts warmed by conviction, produced a wondrous effect, and in a short time whole parishes, villages, and towns-yes, perhaps the half of Hungary, declared for the Reformation.”[1]

In 1523 we find Grynaeus and Viezheim both in the Academy of Ofen (Buda-Pesth), in Hungary, teaching the doctrines of Luther. Two years afterwards we find them in exile-the former in Basle, teaching philosophy; and the latter at Wittemberg, as professor of Greek. John Henkel, the friend of Erasmus, and the chaplain of Queen Mary-the sister of Charles V, and wife of Louis II-was a friend of the Gospel, and he won over the queen to the same side. We have already met her at the Diet at Augsburg, and seen her using her influence with her brother, the emperor, in behalf of the Protestants. She always carried about with her a Latin New Testament, which was afterwards found to be full of annotations in her own handwriting. In several of the free cities, and among the Saxons of Transylvania, the reception given to the Reformed doctrines was instant and cordial. Merchants

[1]History of the Protestant Church in Hungary, compiled from original and authentic Documents. Translated by the Reverend Dr. Craig, Hamburg; with Preface by Dr. Merle D’Aubigne. Page 33. Lond., 1854.

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and hawkers brought the writings of Luther to Hermanstadt. The effect which their perusal produced was greatly deepened by the arrival of two monks from Silesia, converts of Luther, who, joined by a third, John Surdaster, preached, sometimes in the open air, at other times in the Elizabethan church, to great crowds of citizens, including the members of the town council. After dismissing their congregations they held catechizings in the public squares and market-places. Thus was the fire kindled in the heart of the mountains of Transylvania. Many of the citizens began to scoff at the Popish ceremonies. “Do our priests suppose God to be blind,” said they, when they saw the magnificent procession of Corpus Christi sweeping past, “seeing they light candles to him at midday?” Others declared that the singing of the “hours” to Our Lady in the cathedral was folly, for the Lord had taught them to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven.” The priests were occasionally ridiculed while occupied in the performance of their worship; some of them were turned out of office, and Protestant preachers put in their room; and others, when they came to gather in their tithes were sent away without their “ducks and geese.” This cannot be justified; but surely it ill becomes Rome, in presence of her countless crimes, to be the first to cast a stone at these offenders.

Rome saw the thunder-cloud gathering above her, and she made haste to dispel it before it should burst. At the instigation of the Papal legate, Cajetan, Louis II. issued the terrible edict of 1523, which ran as follows:

- “All Lutherans, and those who favor them, as well as all adherents to their sect, shall ]have their property confiscated, and themselves be punished with death, as heretics, and foes of the most holy Virgin Mary.” A commission was next appointed to search for Lutheran books in the Transylvanian mountains and the Hungarian towns, and to burn hem. Many an auto-da-fe of heretical volumes blazed in the public squares; but these spectacles did not stop the progress of heresy. “Hermanstadt became a second Wittemberg. The Catholic ministers themselves confessed that the new doctrine was not more powerful in the town where Luther resided.”[2] It was next resolved to burn, not Lutheran books merely, but Lutherans themselves. So did the Diet of 1525 command:-“All Lutherans shall be rooted out of the land; and wherever they are found, either by clergymen or laymen, they may be seized and burned.”[3]

These two decrees appeared only to inflame the courage of those whom they so terribly menaced. The heresy, over which the naked sword was now suspended, spread all the faster. Young men began to resort to Wittemberg, and returned thence in a few years to preach the Gospel in their native land. Meanwhile the king and the priests, who had bent the bow and were about to let fly the arrow, found other matters to occupy them than the execution of Lutherans.

It was the Turk who suddenly stepped forward to save Protestantism in Hungary, though he was all unaware of the service which he performed. Soliman the Magnificent, setting out from Constantinople on the 23rd of April, 1526, at the head of a mighty army, which, receiving accessions as it marched onward, was swollen at last to 300,000 Turks, was coming nearer and nearer Hungary, like the “wasting levin.” The land now shook with terror. King Louis was without money and without soldiers. The nobility were divided into factions; the priests thought only of pursuing the Protestants; and the common people, deprived of their laws and their liberty, were without spirit and without patriotism. Zapolya, the lord of seventy-two castles, and by far the most powerful grandee in the country, sat still, expecting if the king were overthrown to be called to mount the vacant throne. Meanwhile the terrible Turk was approaching, and demanding of Louis that he should pay him tribute, under the threat of planting the Crescent on all the churches of Hungary, and slaughtering him and his grandees like “fat oxen.”

The edict of death passed against the Protestants still remained in force, and the monks, in the face of the black tempest that was rising in the east, were stirring up the people to have the Lutherans put to death. The powerful and patriotic Count Pemflinger had received a message from the king, commanding him to put in execution his cruel edicts against the heretics, threatening him with his severest displeasure if he should refuse, and promising him great rewards if he obeyed. The count shuddered to execute these horrible commands, nor could he stand silently by and see others execute them. He set out to tell the king that if, instead of permitting his Protestant subjects to defend their country on the battle-field, he should drag them to the stake and burn them, he would bring down the wrath of Heaven upon himself and his kingdom. On the road to Buda, where the king resided, Pemflinger was met by terrible news.

While the count was exerting himself to shield the Protestants, King Louis had set out to stop the advance of the powerful Soliman. On the

[2]Secret History of the Austrian Government, compiled from Official Documents, by Alfred Michiels. Page 91. Lond., 1859.

[3]Baronius, Annal., art. 4, ann. 1525.

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29th of August his little army of 27,000 met the multitudinous hordes of Turkey at Mohacz, on the Danube. Soliman’s force was fifteen times greater than that of the king. Louis gave the command of his army to the Archbishop of Cologne-an ex-Franciscan monk, more familiar with the sword than the chaplet, and who had won some glory in the art of war. When the king put on his armor on the morning of the battle he was observed to be deadly pale. All foresaw the issue. “Here go twenty-seven thousand Hungarians,” exclaimed Bishop Perenyi, as the host defiled past him, “into the kingdom of heaven, as martyrs for the faith.” He consoled himself with the hope that the chancellor would survive to see to their canonization by the Pope.[4]

The issue was even more terrible than the worst anticipations of it. By evening the plain of Mohacz was covered with the Hungarian dead, piled up in gory heaps. Twenty-eight princes, five hundred nobles, seven bishops, and twenty thousand warriors lay cold in death. Escaping from the scene of carnage, the king and the Papal legate sought safety in flight. Louis had to cross a black pool which lay in his course; his horse bore him through it, but in climbing the opposite bank the steed fell backward, crushing the monarch, and giving him burial in the marsh. The Papal nuncio, like the ancient seer from the mountains of Aram, was taken and slam. Having trampled down the king and his army, the victorious Soliman held on his way into Hungary, and slaughtered 200,000 of its inhabitants.

This calamity, which thrilled all Europe, brought rest to the Protestants. Two candidates now contested the scepter of Hungary-John Zapolya, the unpatriotic grandee who saw his king march to death, but sat still in his castle, and the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. Both caused themselves to be crowned, and hence arose a civil war, which, complicated with occasional appearances of Soliman upon the scene, occupied the two rivals for years, and left them no leisure to carry out the persecuting edicts. In the midst of these troubles Protestantism made rapid progress. Peter Perenyi, a powerful noble, embraced the Gospel, with his two sons. Many other magnates followed his example, and settled Protestant ministers upon their domains, built churches, planted schools, and sent their sons to study at Wittemberg. The greater number of the towns of Hungary embraced the Reformation.

At this time (1531) a remarkable man returned from Wittemberg, where he had enjoyed the intimacy, as well as the public instructions, of Luther and Melancthon. Matthias Devay was the descendant of an ancient Hungarian family, and having attained at Wittemberg to a remarkably clear and comprehensive knowledge of the Gospel, he began to preach it to his countrymen. He commenced his ministry at Buda, which, connected by a bridge with Pesth, gave him access to the population of both cities. Only the year before (1530) the Augsburg Confession had been read by the Lutheran princes in presence of Ferdinand of Austria, and many Hungarian nobles;[5] and Devay began his ministry at a favorable moment. Other preachers, trained like Devay at Wittemberg, were laboring in the surrounding districts, and nobles and whole villages were embracing the Gospel. Many of the priests were separating themselves from Rome. The Bishops of Neutra and Wesprim laid aside rochet and mitre to preach the Gospel.[6] Those who had bowed before the idol, rose up to cast it down.

Devay, anxious to diffuse the light in other parts, removed to Upper Hungary; but soon his eloquence and success drew upon him the wrath of the priests. He was thrown into prison at Vienna, and ultimately was brought before Dr. Faber, then bishop of that city, but he pleaded his cause in a manner so admirable that the court dared not condemn him.

On his release he returned to Buda, and again commenced preaching. The commotion in the capital of Hungary was renewed, and the wrath of the priests grew hotter than ever. They accused him to John Zapolya, whose sway was owned in this part of the kingdom, and the Reformer was thrown into prison. It happened that in the same prison was a blacksmith, who in the shoeing had lamed the king’s favorite horse, and the passionate Zapolya had sworn that if the horse died the blacksmith should pay the forfeit of his life. Trembling from fear of death, the evangelist had pity upon him, and explained to him the way of salvation. As the Philippian gaoler at the hearing of Paul, so the blacksmith in the prison of Buda believed, and joy took the place of terror. The horse recovered, and the king, appeased, sent an order to release the blacksmith. But the man would not leave his prison. “My fellow-sufferer,” said he, “has made me a partaker with him in his faith, and I will be a partaker with him in his death.” The magnanimity of the blacksmith so touched

[4]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 40.

[5]See ante, vol. 1., book 10., chap. 23.

[6]Michiels, Secret Hist., p. 92.

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the king that he commanded both to be set at liberty.[7]

The powerful Count Nadasdy, whose love of learning made him the friend of scholars, and his devotion to the Gospel the protector of evangelists, invited Devay to come and rest awhile in his Castle of Satvar. In the library of the count the evangelist set to work and composed several polemical pieces. He had no printing-press at his command. This placed him at disadvantage, for his enemies replied in print while his own writings slumbered in manuscript. He went to Wittemberg in search of a printer. Truly refreshed was he by seeing once more in the flesh his old instructors, Luther and Melancthon, and they were not less so by hearing the joyful news from Hungary. He passed on to Basle, and among its learned and munificent printers, he found the means of issuing some of his works. He returned again to Buda, in the end of 1537, and found his former patron, Nadasdy, occupied in the reformation of the old schools, and the erection of new ones. The Reformer asked Nadasdy for a printing-press. The request was at once conceded, and the press was set up by the side of one of the schools. It was the first printing-press in Hungary, and the work which Devay now issued from it-a book for children, in which he taught at once the rudiments of the language and the rudiments of the Gospel-was the first ever printed in the language of the country.

[7]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, pp. 50, 51.

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From these more private, but fundamental and necessary labours, Devay turned to put his hand once more to the work of public evangelization. He preached indefatigably in the district between the right bank of the Danube and Lake Balaton. Meanwhile his former field of labor the Upper Hungary, was not neglected. This post was energetically filled by Stephen Szantai, a zealous and learned preacher. His success was great, and the bishops denounced Szantai, as they had formerly done Devay, to the king, demanding that he should be arrested and put to death. Ferdinand, ever since his return from Augsburg, where he had listened to the famous Confession, had been less hostile to the new doctrines; and he replied, to the dismay of the bishops, that he would condemn no man without a hearing, and that he wished to hold a public discussion on the disputed points. The prelates looked around for one competent to maintain their cause against Szantai, and fixed on a certain monk, Gregory of Grosswardein, who had some reputation as a controversialist. The king having appointed two umpires, who he thought would act an enlightened and impartial part, the conference took place (1538) at Schasburg.

It lasted several days, and when it was over the two umpires presented themselves before the king, to give in their report. “Sire,” they said, “we are in a great strait. All that Szantai has said, he has proved from Holy Scripture, but the monks have produced nothing but fables. Nevertheless, if we decide in favor of Szantai, we shall be held to be the enemies of religion; and if we decide in favor of the monks, we shall be condemned by our own consciences. We crave your Majesty’s protection in this difficulty!” The king promised to do his utmost for them, and dismissed them.[8]

The king was quite as embarrassed as the umpires. In truth, the only parties who saw their way were the priests, and they saw it very clearly. On the afternoon of that same day, the prelates and monks demanded an audience of Ferdinand. On being admitted to the presence, the Bishop of Grosswardein, acting as spokesman, said: “Sire, we are the shepherds of the flock, and it behooves us to guard from wolves the sheep committed to our care. For this reason we demanded that this heretic should be brought here and burned, as a warning to those who speak and write against the Church. Instead of this, your Majesty has granted to this wretched man a public conference, and afforded opportunity to others to suck in his poison. What need of such discussions? has not the Church long since pronounced on all matters of faith, and has she not condemned all such miserable heretics? Assuredly our Holy Father, the Pope, will not be pleased by what you have done.”

The king replied, with dignity, “I will put no man to death till he has been proved guilty of a capital crime.”

“Is it not enough,” cried Startitus, Bishop of Stuhlweissenburg, “that he declares the mass to be an invention of the devil, and would give the cup to the laity, which Christ meant only for priests? Do not these opinions deserve death?”

“Tell me, my lord bishop,” said the king, “is the Greek Church a true Church?” The bishop replied in the affirmative. “Very well,” continued Ferdinand, “the Greeks have not the mass: cannot we also do without it? The Greeks take the Communion in both kinds, as Chrysostom and Cyril taught them to do: may not we do the same?” The bishops were silent. “I do not defend Szantai,” added Ferdinand, “his cause shall be examined; I cannot punish an innocent man.”

“If your Majesty do not grant our request,” said the Bishop of Grosswardein, “we shall find other remedies to free us from this vulture.” The bishops left the royal presence in great wrath.

The king passed some anxious hours. At nine o’clock at night he gave an audience, in presence of two councilors, to Szantai, who was introduced by the Burgomaster of Kaschau. “What really is, then, the doctrine that you teach?” inquired the king. The evangelist gave a plain and clear exposition of his doctrine, which he said was not his own, but that of Christ and his apostles, as recorded in the Scriptures of truth. The king had heard a similar doctrine at Augsburg. Had not his confessor too, when dying, acknowledged that he had not led him in the right path, and that it was the truth which Luther taught? Ferdinand was visibly disturbed for some moments. At last he burst out, “O my dear Stephen! if we follow this doctrine, I greatly fear that some calamity will befall both of us. Let us commit the matter to God. But, my friend, do not tarry in my dominions. If you remain here the princes will deliver you up to death; and should I attempt to save you, I would but expose myself to danger. Sell what thou hast, and go; depart into Transylvania, where you will have liberty to profess the truth.”[9]

Having given the evangelist some presents towards the expenses of his journey, the king turned

[8]The Spanish Hunt, a rare book, gives a full account of this discussion. See also Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, pp. 53-57.

[9]The Spanish Hunt.

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to the Burgomaster of Kaschau, and desired him to take Szantai away secretly by night, and to conduct him in safety to his own people.

In this transaction all the parties paint their own characters. We can read the fidelity and courage of the humble evangelist, we see the overgrown insolence of the bishops, and not less conspicuous is the weakness of Ferdinand. Of kindly disposition, and aiming at being upright as a king, Ferdinand I. nevertheless, on the great question that was moving the world, was unable to pursue any but an inconsistent and wavering course. Ever since the day of Augsburg he had halted between Wittemberg and Rome. He was not, however, without some direction in the matter, for something within him told him that truth was at Wittemberg; but on the side of Rome he saw two lofty personages-the Pope, and his brother the Emperor Charles-and he never could make up his mind to break with that august companionship, and join himself to the humble society of Reformers and evangelists. Of double mind, he was unstable in all his ways.

Chapter 2: Protestantism Flourishes in Hungary and Transylvania

Characteristic of the Reformation in Hungary, its Silence and Steadiness—Edition of the New Testament in Hungarian—Rivalship betweenZapolya and Ferdinand favorable to Protestantism—Death of Zapolya—His Son proclaimed King—The Turk Returns—He Protects Protestantism—Progress of Reformation—Conflicts between the Lutherans and the Calvinists—Synod of Erdoed—Its Statement of Doctrines—The Confession of the Five Cities—Formation of the Helvetian and Lutheran Churches—The Diet, by a Majority of Votes, declares for the Reformation—The Preacher Szegedin—Count Petrovich—Reforms—Stephen Losonczy—The Mussulman again Rescues Protestantism—Grants Toleration—Flourishing State of Protestantism in Transylvania and Hungary

One very remarkable characteristic of the progress of Protestantism in Hungary, was its silence and its steadiness. No one heard the fall of the Roman hierarchy: there was no crash as in other countries, and yet it was overthrown. The process of its removal was a dissolution rather than a destruction. The uprising of the new fabric was attended with as little noise as the falling of the old: the Bible, the pulpit, and the school did their work; the light waxed clearer every hour, the waters flowed wider around every day, and ere men were aware, the new verdure covered all the land. Young evangelists, full of knowledge and faith, returned from the Protestant schools in Germany and Switzerland, and began to publish the Gospel. Some labored among the mountains of Transylvania, others evangelized on the plains and amid the towns of Hungary; and from the foot of the Carpathians to the borders of Turkey and the confines of Germany, the seeds of truth and life were being scattered. As Luther, and Zwingle, and Calvin had been the teachers of these men, they in their turn became the instructors of the curates and priests, who lacked the opportunity or the will to visit foreign lands and learn Divine knowledge from those who had drawn it from its original fountains. In proportion as they discovered the way of life, did they begin to make it known to their flocks, and thus whole parishes and districts gradually and quietly passed over to Protestantism, carrying with them church, and parsonage, and school. In some instances where the people had become Protestant, but the pastor continued to be Popish, the congregation patiently waited till his death, and then called a preacher of the Word of God.

Three things at this time contributed to the progress of Protestant truth in Hungary. The first was the conference at Schasburg. The news spread through the country that the priests had been unable to maintain their cause before the evangelist Szantai, and that the king had stood by the preacher. After this many began to search into the truth of the new doctrines, who had hitherto deemed inquiry a crime. The second favorable circumstance was the publication, in 1541, of an edition of the New Testament in the Hungarian language. This was the work of John Sylvester, assisted by Count Nadasdy, to whom Melancthon had given Sylvester a letter of recommendation. The Epistles of Paul had been published in the Hungarian vernacular, [226] at Cracow, in 1533,[1] but now the whole New Testament was placed within reach of the people. The third thing that favored the Reformation was the division of the country under two rival sovereigns. This was a calamity to the kingdom, but a shield to its Protestantism. Neither Ferdinand I. nor John Zapolya dared offend their great Protestant nobles, and so their persecuting edicts remained a dead letter.

It seemed at this moment as if the breach were about to be closed, and the land placed under one sovereign, whose arm, now greatly more powerful, would perchance be stretched out to crush the Gospel. In the same year in which the conference was held at Schasburg, it was arranged by treaty between the two kings that each should continue to sway his scepter over the States at that moment subject to him; but on the death of John Zapolya, without male issue, Hungary and Transylvania should revert to Ferdinand I. When the treaty was framed Zapolya had no child. Soon thereafter he married the daughter of the King of Poland, and next year, as he lay on his death-bed, word was brought him that his queen had borne him a son. Appointing the Bishop of Grosswardein and Count Petrovich the guardians of his new-born child, Zapolya solemnly charged them not to deliver up the land to Ferdinand. This legacy, which was in flagrant violation of the treaty, was equally terrible to his son and to Hungary.

The widow, not less ambitious than her deceased husband, caused her son to be proclaimed King of Hungary. Feeling herself unable to contend in arms with Ferdinand I, she placed the young prince under the protection of Soliman, whose aid she craved. This led to the reappearance of the Turkish army in Hungary. The country endured, in consequence, manifold calamities; many of the Protestant pastors fled, and the evangelization was stopped. But these disorders lasted only for a little while. The Turks were wholly indifferent to the doctrinal controversies between the Protestants and the Papists. In truth, had they been disposed to draw the sword of persecution, it would have been against the Romanists, whose temples, filled with idols, were specially abhorrent to them. The consequence was that the evangelizing agencies were speedily resumed. The pastors returned, the Hungarian New Testament of Sylvester was being circulated through the land, the progress of Protestantism in Hungary became greater, at least more obvious, than ever, and under the reign of Islam the Gospel had greater quietness in Hungary, and flourished more than perhaps would have been the case had the kingdom been governed solely by the House of Austria.

A more disturbing conflict arose in the Protestant Church of Hungary itself. A visit which Devay, its chief Reformer, made at this time to Switzerland, led him to change his views on the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. On his return he let his change of opinion, which was in the direction of Zwingle, or rather of Calvin, be known, to the scandal of some of his brethren, who having drawn their theology from Wittemberg, were naturally of Luther’s opinions. A flame was being kindled.[2] No greater calamity befell the Reformation than this division of its disciples into Reformed and Lutheran. There was enough of unity in essential truth on the question of the Eucharist to keep them separate from Rome, and enough, we submit, to prevent them remaining separate from one another. Both repudiated the idea that the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was a sacrifice, or that the elements were transubstantiated, or that they were to be adored; and both held that the benefit came through the working of the Spirit, and the faith of the recipient. The great essentials of the Sacrament were here, and it was not in the least necessary to salvation that one should either believe or deny Luther’s superadded idea, which he never could clearly explain, of consubstantiation. The division, therefore, was without any sufficient ground, and was productive of manifold evils in Hungary, as in all the countries of the Reformation.

From this time dates the formation of two Protestant Churches in Hungary-the Reformed and the Lutheran. In 1545 a synod was held in the town of Erdoed, Comitat of Szmathmar, in the north of Transylvania. It consisted of twenty-nine ministers who were attached to the Helvetian Confession, and who met under the protection of the powerful magnate Caspar Dragfy. They confessed their faith in twelve articles, of which the headings only are known to us. The titles were-Of God; The Redeemer; Justification of the Sinner before God; Faith; Good Works; The Sacraments; Confession of Sin; Christian Liberty; The Head of the Church; Church Government; The Necessity of Separating from Rome.[3] To this statement of their views they added, in conclusion, that in other matters they agreed with the Augsburg Confession.

In the following year (1546) five towns of Upper Hungary convened at Eperies for the purpose of

[1]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 51.

[2]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 60.

[3]Lampe, lib. 2., anno 1545, p. 93; Traj. Rhen., 1728. Ribini, Memorabilia, p. 67.

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drawing up a Confession of their faith. They drafted sixteen articles, the doctrine of which was substantially that of the Augsburg Confession. This document became famous in Hungary as the Pentapolitan, or Confession of the Five Cities. The synod added to their Confession several regulations with the view of guarding the soundness of the ministers, and the morals of the members of the Church. A pastor who should teach doctrine contrary to that set forth in the Pentapolitan was to be deposed from office; no one was to be admitted to the Communion-table without examination; and in order to render the exercise of church discipline, especially excommunication, the less necessary, the magistrate was exhorted to be vigilant in the repression of vice, and the punishment of crime.

We now see two Protestant communions on the soil of Hungary, but the separation between them was, as yet, more in name than in reality. They felt and acted toward one another as if still members of the same Church, though differing in their views on the one question of the Eucharist, and not till an after-period did the breach widen and heats arise. This epoch is, too, that of the formal separation of the Protestants of Hungary from the Church of Rome. Up to this time their clergy had been ordained by the Popish bishop of the diocese, or appointed by the professors at the German universities; but now the Hungarian Protestants themselves chose superintendents, by whom their ministers were ordained, and they convoked assemblies from time to time for the regulation of all matters appertaining to their Church.[4]

The progress of Protestantism in Transylvania was henceforward rapid indeed. The Diet of 1553 declared by a majority of votes in favor of the Reformation. One consequence of this was that the neighboring free city of Huns, at that time an important fortress, became entirely Protestant, and in the following year (1554) the last Popish priest left; the town, as a shepherd who had no flock. The Palatine,[5] Thomas Nadasdy, and others of nearly as exalted a rank, were among the accessions to Protestantism at this time. Nor must we omit to mention the impulse given to the movement by the conversion of the powerful and learned bishop, Francis Thurzo, from the Church of Rome; nor the yet greater aid contributed by Francis Cis, or Szegedin, who was equally great as a theologian and as all orator. His activity and success drew upon him the wrath of the Romanists, and after being set upon and nearly beaten to death by an officer of the Bishop of Grosswardein’s body-guard, he was driven out of the country. This great preacher was recalled, however, by Count Peter Petrovich, a zealous friend of the Reformation, who now governed Transylvania in the name of the young son of King Zapolya. Petrovich, wielding for the time the supreme power in Transylvania, took steps for completing its Reformation, and in the prosecution of this great object he found Szegedin a most efficient ally. The preacher proclaimed the faith, and the governor removed all hindrances to the reception and profession of it. Petrovich took away all the images from the churches, converted the monasteries into schools, removed the Popish priests from their parishes, coined the gold and silver vessels into money, appropriated the Church property in the name of the State, and secured three-fourths of it for the salaries of the Protestant clergy. Thus was the whole of Transylvania, with the consent and co-operation of the people, freed from the jurisdiction of the Romish hierarchy,[6] and the vast majority of its inhabitants passed over to the Protestant Confessions.

There came a momentary turning of the tide. In 1557 the reforming Count Petrovich was obliged to give way to Stephen Losonczy. The latter, a mere man of war, and knowing only enough of the Gospel to fear it as a cause of disturbance, drove away all its preachers. Not only was the eloquent and energetic Szegedin sent into exile, but all his colleagues were banished from the country along with him. The sequel was not a little remarkable. Scarcely had the ministers quitted the soil of Transylvania, when the Turks burst across its frontier. They marched on Temeswar, besieged and took the fortress, and slaughtered all the occupants, including the unhappy Losonczy himself. The ministers would probably have perished with the rest, had not the governor, with the intent of ruining them, forced them beforehand into a place of safety.[7]

Again the Protestants found the scepter of the Turks lighter than the rod of the Papists. The pashas were besieged by solicitations and bribes to put the preachers to death, or at least to banish them; but their Turkish rulers, more just than their Christian opponents, refused to condemn till first they had made inquiry; and a short interrogation

[4]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 67.

[5]The Palatine was the officer appointed by the Diet to execute its decrees when not in session. He was for the time chief administrator.

[6]Hist. Prot. Ch. in Hungary, p. 69. Lampe, lib. 2., p. 99.

[7]Scaricaus, Vita Szegedini.-Hist Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 64.

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commonly sufficed to make patent the fact that, while the Romanists worshipped by images, the Protestants bowed to God alone. This was enough for the Mussulman governor. Without seeking to go deeper into the points of difference, he straightway gave orders that no hindrance should be offered to the preaching of that Gospel which the great Mufti of Wittemberg had discovered; and thus, in all the Transylvanian towns and plains under the Moslem, the Protestant faith continued to spread.

Scarcely less gratifying was the progress of the truth in those portions of Hungary which were under the sway of Ferdinand I. In Komorn, on the angle formed by the junction of the Wang with the Danube, we find Michael Szataray and Anthony Plattner preaching the Gospel with diligence, and laying the foundation of what was afterwards the great and flourishing Church of the Helvetian Confession. In the free city of Tyrnau, to the north of Komorn, where Simon Grynaeus and the Reformer Devay had scattered the seed, the writings of the Reformers were employed to water it, and the majority of the citizens embraced the Protestant faith in its Lutheran form. In the mining towns of the mountainous districts the Gospel flourished greatly. These towns were held as the private property of the Protestant Queen Mary, the widow of Louis II, who had perished at the battle of Mohacz, and while under her rule the Gospel and its preachers enjoyed perfect security. But the queen transferred the cities to her brother Ferdinand, and the priests thought that they now saw how they could reach their heretical inhabitants. Repairing to Ferdinand, they represented these towns as hotbeds of sectarianism and sedition, which he would do well to suppress. The accusation kindled the zeal of the Protestants; they sent as their defense, to the monarch, a copy of their Confession (Pentapolitana), of which we have spoken above. Ferdinand found it the echo of that to which he had listened with so much interest at Augsburg twenty years before, and he commanded that those whose faith this Confession expressed should not be molested.[8]

Everywhere we find the greatest ferment and activity prevailing. We see town councils inviting preachers to come and labor in the cities under their jurisdiction, and opening the churches for their use. School-houses are rising, and wealthy burgomasters are giving their gardens in free grant for sites. We see monks throwing off the cloak and betaking themselves, some to the pulpit, others to the school, and others to handicrafts. We find archbishops launching fulminatory letters, which meet with no response save in their own idle reverberations. The images are vanishing from the churches; the tapers are being extinguished at the altar; the priest departs, for there is no flock; processions cease from the streets and highways; the begging friar forgets to make his round; the pilgrim comes no more to his favorite shrine; relics have lost their power; and the evening air is no longer vexed by the clang of convent bells, thickly planted all over the land. “Alas! alas!” cry monk and nun, their occupation being gone, “the glory is departed.”

“Only three families of the magnates adhered still to the Pope. The

nobility were nearly all Reformed, and the people were, nearly

thirty to one, attached to the new doctrine.”[9]

[8]Ribini, Memorabilia, 1., p. 78. Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, pp. 65, 66.

[9]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 73.

Chapter 3: Ferdinand II and the Era of Persecution

The Reformation of Hungary not Perfected—Defects—Intestine War—“Formula of Concord”—The Jesuits—Their Show of Humility—Come to Tyrnau—Settle in Raab—Ferdinand II Educated by the Jesuits—His Devotion to Mary—His Vow—His Mission—A Century of Protestantism—Tragedies—Ferdinand II hopes to Extinguish Protestantism—Stephen Bethlen—Diet of Neusohl—Decrees Toleration—War between Bethlen and Ferdinand II—Bethlen Declines the Crown of Hungary—Renews the War—Peace—Bethlen’s Sudden Death—Plan for Extirpating Protestantism—Its Execution Postponed—Ferdinand’s Death

PICTURE: View of a Mining Village in Transylvania

Picture: View of Old Gate at Kolosvar: Transylvania

As the morning spreads light, and the spring verdure over the earth, so Protestantism, with its soft breath, was diffusing light and warmth over the torpid fields of Hungary. Nevertheless the crown was not put upon the Reformation of that land. The vast majority of the population, it is true, had embraced Protestantism, but they failed to reach [229] the goal of a united and thoroughly organized Protestant Church. Short of this, the Hungarian Protestants were hardly in a condition to resist the terrible shocks to which they were about to be exposed. The Latin nations have ever shown a superior genius in organizing-a talent which they have received from Old Rome-and this is one reason, doubtless, why the Protestant Churches of Latin Christendom were more perfect in their autonomy than those of Saxon Christendom. The moment we cross the Rhine and enter among Teutonic peoples, we find the Protestants less firmly marshaled, and their Churches less vigorously governed, than in Western Europe. The Protestant Church of Hungary had a government-she was ruled by superintendents, seniors, pastors, and deacons-but the vigor and efficiency of this government rested mainly with one man; there was no machinery for rallying promptly the whole force of the body on great emergencies; and so when Rome had had time to construct her opposition and bring it into play, first individual congregations and pastors, and ultimately the whole Church, succumbed to the fire of her artillery.

Another defect cleaving to the Hungarian Church was the want of a clear, definite, and formal line of separation from the Romish Church. The hierarchy of Rome was still in the land; the bishops claimed their dues from the Protestant pastors, and in most cases received them, and occasional efforts on the part of Romish dignitaries to exercise jurisdiction over the Protestants were tamely submitted to. This state of matters was owing partly to causes beyond the control of the Protestants, and partly to the quiet and easy manner in which the Reformation had diffused itself over the country. There had been no convulsion, no period of national agony to wrench the Hungarians, as a people, from the communion of Rome, and to teach them the wisdom, not only of standing apart, but of putting their Church into a posture of defense against the tempests which might arise in the future. The [230] mariner who has never sailed save on calm seas, is apt to leave matters negligently arranged on board, and to pay the penalty of his carelessness when at last the horizon blackens, and his bark becomes the sport of the mountainous billows.

It was a yet greater calamity that a bitter intestine war was weakening the strength and destroying the unity of the Hungarian Church. In its early days, the Lutherans and Calvinists had dwelt together in peace; but soon the concord was broken, not again to be restored. The tolerant Ferdinand I had gone to the grave: he had been followed first on the throne, and next to the tomb, by his son Maximilian II, the only real friend the Protestants ever had among the kings of the Hapsburg line: and now the throne was filled by the gloomy and melancholy Rudolph II. Engrossed, as we have seen, in the stark studies of astrology and alchemy, he left the government of his kingdom to the Jesuits. The sky was darkening all round with gathering storms. At Vienna, in Styria, and in other provinces, Cardinal Hosius and the Jesuits were initiating the persecution, in the banishment of pastors and the closing of churches. But, as though the violence which had begun to desolate neighboring churches were to be restrained from approaching them, the Hungarians continued to convoke synod after synod, and discuss questions that could only stir up strife. In 1577 the famous “Formula of Concord” was drafted and published, in the hope that a general concurrence in it would end the war, and bring in a lasting peace. What was that Formula? It made the subscriber profess his belief in the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature. So far from healing the breach, this “Formula of Concord” became the instrument of a wider division.[1] The war raged more furiously than ever, and the Protestants, alas! intent on their conflict with one another, hoard not the mustering of the battalions who were preparing to restore peace by treading both Lutheran and Calvinist into the dust.

These various evils opened the door for the entrance of a greater, by which the Protestantism of Hungary was ultimately crushed out. That greater evil was the Jesuits, “the troops of Hades,” as they are styled by a writer who is not a Protestant.[2] With quiet foot, and down-cast eyes, the Jesuits glided into Hungary. In a voice lowered to the softest tones, they announced their mission, in terms as beneficent as the means by which it was to be accomplished were gentle. As the nurse deals with her child-coaxing it, by promises which she has no intention to fulfil, to part with some deadly weapon which it has grasped-so the Jesuits were to coax, gently and tenderly, the Hungarians to abandon that heresy to which they clung so closely, but which was destroying their souls. We have already seen that when these pious men first came to Vienna, so far were they, in outward show, from seeking riches or power, that they did not care to set up house for themselves, but were content to share the lodgings of the Dominicans. Their rare merit, however, could not be hid, and soon these unambitious men were seen at court. The emperor ere long was kneeling at the feet of their chief, Father Bobadilla. They first entered Hungary in 1561. Four priests and a lay brother settled in the town of Tyrnau, where they began to build a college, but before their edifice was finished a fire broke out in the city, and laid their not yet completed fabric in ashes, along with the neighboring dwellings. Their general, Father Borgia, not having money to rebuild what the flames had consumed, or not caring to expend his treasures in this restoration, interpreted the catastrophe into an intimation that it was not the will of Heaven that they should plant themselves in Tyrnau, and the confraternity, to the great joy of the citizens, left the place.

Thirteen years elapsed before a Jesuit was again seen on the soil of Hungary. In 1579 the Bishop of Raab imported a single brother from Vienna, whose eloquence as a preacher made so many conversions that the way was paved, though not till after seven years, for the establishment of a larger number of this sinister community. The rebellion of Stephen Botskay, the dethronement of Rudolph II, the accession of his brother Matthias-mainly by the arms of the Protestants-restrained the action of the Jesuits for some years, and delayed the bursting of the storm that was slowly gathering over the Protestant Church. But at last Ferdinand II, “the Tiberius of Christianity,” as he has been styled, mounted the throne, and now it was that the evil days began to come to the Protestant Churches of the empire, and especially to the Protestant Church of Hungary.

Ferdinand II was the son of the Archduke Charles, and grandson of Ferdinand I. After the death of his father, he was sent in 1590 to Ingolstadt, to be educated by the Jesuits. These cunning artificers of human tools succeeded in making him one of the most pliant that even their hands ever wielded, as his whole after-life proved. From Ingolstadt, Ferdinand returned to his patrimonial estates in Styria and Carinthia, with the firm resolve, whatever it might cost himself or others, that foot of Protestant should not defile the

[1]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, chap. 16, pp. 100, 101.

[2]Alfred Michiels.

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territories that called him master. He would rather that his estates should become the abode of wolves and foxes than be the dwelling of heretics. Soon thereafter he set out on a pilgrimage to Loretto, to invoke the protection of the “Queen of Heaven,” visiting Rome by the way to receive grace from the “Holy Father,” to enable him to fulfill his vow of thoroughly purging his dominions. In his fortieth year (1517) he made a pilgrimage to a similar shrine; and as he lay prostrate before the image of Mary, a violent storm came on, the lightening flashed and the thunders rolled, but above the roar of the elements Ferdinand heard, distinct and clear, a voice saying to him, “Ferdinand, I will not leave thee.” Whose voice could it be but Mary’s? He rose from the earth with a double consecration upon him. This, however, did not hinder his subscribing, on the day of his coronation as King of Bohemia (16th March, 1618), the article which promised full protection to the Protestant Church, adding that “he would sooner lose his life than break his word”-a gratifying proof, as his former preceptors doubtless regarded it, that he had not forgotten the lessons they had taught him at Ingolstadt.

On his return from the Diet at Frankfort (1619), clothed with the mantle of the Caesars, he held himself as elected in the sight of Christendom to do battle for the Church. What did the imperial diadem, so suddenly placed on his brow, import, if not this, that Heaven called him to the sublime mission of restoring the empire to the pure orthodoxy of early days, and its twin-institute, the Pontifical chair, to its former peerless splendor? Protestantism had fulfilled its century; for it was rather more than a hundred years since Luther’s hammer had summoned from the abyss, as Ferdinand deemed, this terrible disturber of the world-this scourge of Rome, and terror of kings-which no sword seemed able to slay. Charles V had staked empire and fame against it; but the result was that he had to hide his defeat in a monastery. A life of toil had he undergone for Rome, and received as recompense-oh! dazzling reward-a monk’s cowl. Philip II had long battled with it, but worn out he at last laid him down in the little closet that looks into the cathedral-church of the Escorial, and amid a heap of vermin, which issued from his own body, he gave up the ghost. Leaving these puissant monarchs to rot in their marble sepulchres, Protestantism starts afresh on its great career. It enters the dark cloud of the St. Bartholomew, but soon it emerges on the other side, its garments dripping, but its life intact. It is next seen holding its path amid the swimming scaffolds and the blazing stakes of the Netherlands. The cords with which its enemies would bind it are but as green withes upon its arm. But now its enemies fondly think that they see its latter end drawing nigh. From the harbors of Spain rides forth galley after galley in proud array, the “invincible Armada,” to chase from off the earth that terrible thing which has so long troubled the nations and their monarchs. But, lo! it is the Armada itself that has to flee. Careering specter-like, it passes between the Protestant shores of England on the one hand, and Holland on the other, hastening before the furious winds to hide itself in the darkness of the Pole.

Such are the tragedies of the first century of Protestantism. No one has been able to weave a chain so strong as to hold it fast; but now Ferdinand believes that he has discovered the secret of its strength, and can speak the “hitherto, but no farther.” The Jesuits have furnished him with weapons which none of his predecessors knew, to combat this terrible foe, and long before Protestantism shall have completed the second century of its existence, he will have set bounds to its ravages. The nations will return to their obedience, kings will sleep in peace, and Rome will sway her scepter over a subjugated Christendom.

We have already seen after what terrible fashion he inaugurated his attempt. The first act was the scaffold at Prague, on which twenty-seven magnates, the first men of the land, and some of them the most illustrious of the age, poured out their blood. This terrible day was followed by fifteen terrible years, during which judicial murders, secret torturings, banishments, and oppressions of all kinds were wearing out the Protestants of Bohemia, till at last, as we have seen, the nation and its Protestantism sank together. But in the other provinces of his dominions Ferdinand did not find the work so easy. In Austria proper, the States refused to submit. The Hungarians felt that the circle around their religious and civil rights was being drawn tighter every day. The Jesuits had returned. Something like the Spanish Inquisition had been set up at Tyrnau. The Romish magnates were carrying it with a high hand. Count Stephen Pallfy of Schutt-Somerain erected a gallows, declaring that he would hang on it all Protestant clergymen called to churches in Schutt without his leave. In this state of matters, the Prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bethlen, a zealous Protestant, and a general of equal bravery and skill, took up arms. In the end of 1619 he took the towns of Kaschau and Presburg. In the castle of the latter place he found the crown of Hungary, with the state [232] jewels; and had he worn them as king, as at an after-stage of his career he was urged to do, the destinies of Hungary might have been happier.

Passing on in his victorious career toward the southeast, Bethlen received the submission of the town and castle of Oldenburg. He finally arrived at Gratz, and here a truce was agreed on between him and Ferdinand. In the following year (1620) a Diet was held at Neusohl. On the motion of the Palatine Thurzo, the Diet unanimously resolved to proclaim Bethlen King of Hungary. He declined the crown; mad the earnest entreaties of the Diet, seconded by the exhortations of his own chaplain, were powerless to induce him to alter his resolution. At this Diet important measures were adopted for the peace of Hungary. Toleration was enacted for all creeds and confessions; tithes and first-fruits were to fall to the Roman and Protestant clergy alike; three Popish bishops were recognized as sufficient for the country: one at Erlau for Upper Hungary; a second at Neutra, for Hungary on this side the Danube; and a third at Raab, beyond the river. The Jesuits were banished; and it was resolved to complete the organization of the Protestant Church in those districts where it had been left unfinished. The Protestants now breathed freely. They thought that they had, as the infallible guarantees of their rights, the victorious sword of the Prince Bethlen, and the upright administration of the Palatine Thurzo, and that they were justified in believing that an era of settled peace had opened upon them.[3]

Their prosperity was short-lived. First the Protestant Palatine, Count Thurzo, died suddenly; and the popular suspicion attributed his death to poison. Next came the cry of the franc horrors which had opened in Bohemia. Prince Bethlen again grasped the sword, and his bravery and patriotism extorted a new peace from the persecutor, which was arranged at Nikolsburg in 1621. On this occasion Bethlen delivered up to Ferdinand the crown of Hungary, which had remained till now in his possession. The jewel which Bethlen had declined to wear passed to the head of the spouse of Ferdinand, who was now crowned Queen of Hungary.

Scarcely had the joy-bells ceased to ring for the peace of Nikolsburg, when crowds of wretched creatures, fleeing from the renewed horrors in Bohemia, crossed the frontier. Their cries of wrong, and their miserable appearance, excited at once compassion and indignation. Bethlen reproached the king for this flagrant infraction of the peace, before the ink in which it was signed was dry; but finding that while the king’s ear was open to the Jesuits it was closed to himself, he again girded on the sword, and took the field at the head of a powerful army. He was marching on Vienna when the new Palatine was sent to stop him with renewed offers of peace. The terms were a third time accepted by the Prince of Transylvania. They seemed as satisfactory, and were destined to be as fruitless, as on the two former occasions. Had Bethlen cherished that “distrust of tyrants” which Demosthenes preached, and William the Silent practiced, he would have turned the achievements of his sword to better account for his countrymen. There was no amount of suspicion which would not have been justified by the character of the man he was transacting with, and the councilors who surrounded him. Nor were the signs on the social horizon such as foreboded a lengthened tranquillity. The Jesuits were multiplying their hives, and beginning to swarm like wasps. Flourishing gymnasiums were being converted into cow-houses. Parsonages were unreeled, and if the incumbent did not take the hint, he and his family were carted out of the district. Protestant congregations would assemble on a Sunday morning to find the door and windows of their church smashed, or the fabric itself razed to the ground. These were isolated eases, but they gave sure prognostication of greater oppressions whenever it would be in the power of the enemy to inflict them.

This latter peace was agreed on in 1628 at Presburg; and Prince Bethlen bound himself never again to take up arms against the House of Hapsburg, on condition of religious liberty being guaranteed. The Thirty Years’ War, which will engage our attention a little further on, had by this time broken out. The progress of that great struggle had brought Ferdinand’s throne itself into peril, and this made him all the readier to hold out the hand of peace to his victorious vassal. But Ferdinand’s promise was forgotten as soon as made, and next year Prince Bethlen is said to have been secretly preparing for war when he was attacked with indisposition. Ferdinand, professing to show him kindness, sent him a physician chosen by the Jesuits. The noble-minded prince suspected no evil, though he daily grew worse. “The hero who had taken part in thirty-two battles without receiving a wound,” says Michiels, “soon died from the attentions paid him.”[4]

[3]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, chap. 4, pp. 140, 142.

[4]Veshe, Geschichte des Oesterreichischen Hofes, vol 4., p. 71. Michiels, Secret Hist., p. 104.

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Three years before this (1626) the plan to be pursued in trampling out Protestantism in all the provinces of the empire had been discussed and determined upon at Vienna, but circumstances too strong for Ferdinand and his Jesuits compelled them to postpone from time to time the initiation of the project. Towards the close of 1626 a small council assembled in the palace of the Austrian prime minister Eggenberg, whom colic and gout confined to his cabinet. At the table, besides Ferdinand II, were the ambassador of Spain, the envoy of Florence, the privy councilor Harrack, the gloomy Wallenstein, and one or two others. Count Agnate, the Spanish ambassador, rose and announced that his master had authorized him to offer 40,000 chosen men for forty years in order to the suppression of heresy, root and branch, in Hungary. He further recommended that foreign governors should be set over the Hungarians, who should impose upon them new laws, vex and oppress them in a thousand different ways, and so goad them into revolt. The troops would then come in and put down the rising with the strong hand, mercilessly inflicting a general slaughter, and afterwards taking off at leisure the heads of the chief persons. In this way the spirit of the haughty and warlike Magyars would be broken, and all resistance would be at an end. The proposal seemed good in the eyes of the king and his councilors, and it was resolved to essay a beginning of the business on occasion of the approaching great fair at Sintau-on-the-Waag.[5] The saturnalia of slaughter were to open thus: disguised emissaries were to proceed to the fair, mingle with the crowd, pick quarrels with the peasants, and manage to create a tumult. Wallenstein and his troops, drawn up in readiness, were then to rush upon the multitude, sword in hand, and cut down all above twelve years of age. It was calculated that the melee would extend from village to town, till the bulk of the able-bodied population, including all likely to lead in a rebellion, were exterminated. A terrible program truly! but second thoughts convinced its authors that the hour had not yet arrived for attempting its execution. Bethlen still lived, and the brave leader was not likely to sit still while his countrymen were being butchered like sheep. Ferdinand, occupied in a mortal struggle with the north of Europe and France, had discernment enough, blinded though he was by the Jesuits, to see that it would be madness at this moment to add to the number of his enemies by throwing down the gage of battle to the Hungarians. The Jesuits must therefore wait. But no sooner was Prince Bethlen laid in the grave than persecution was renewed. But more lamentable by far than the vexations and sufferings to which the Protestant pastors and their flocks were now subjected, were the numerous defections that began to take place among the nobles from the cause of the Reformation. What from fear, what from the hope of preferment, or from dislike to the Protestant doctrine, a stream of conversions began to flow steadily in the direction of Rome, and the number of the supporters of Protestantism among the Hungarian magnates was daily diminishing. So did things continue until the year 1637. On the 17th of February of that year Ferdinand II died.

“In Magdeburg,” say the authors of the History of the Protestant

Church in Hungary, “were twenty-six thousand, corpses of men,

women, and children, who had perished under the hand of his general, Tilly, with his hordes of Croatian military. Bohemia, Moravia, and a great part of Hungary were miserably oppressed, and morality itself almost banished, by the manner in which the war had been conducted. And what had he gained? A few stone churches and schools stolen from the Lutherans and Calvinists; a hundred thousand converts brought over to the Church of Rome by the unapostolical means of sword, prison, fine, or bribery; and a depopulation of his monarchy amounting to more than a million of human beings.”[6]

[5]For text of the ambassador’s speech see Cornelius, Historia Hungarica; and Maelath, Geschichte der Magyren, vol. 5., p. 161. Michiels, Secret Hist., p. 102.

[6]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, chap. 6, p. 150.

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Chapter 4: Leopold I. and the Jesuits

Ferdinand III—Persecution—The Pastor of Neustadt—Insurrection of Rakotzy—Peace of Linz—Leopold I—His Training—Devotion to the Jesuits—The Golden Age of the Jesuits—Plan of Persecution begins to be Acted on—Hungary Occupied by Austrian Soldiers—Prince Lobkowitz—Bishop Szeleptsenyi—Two Monsters—Diet of Presburg—Petition of the Protestants—Their Complaints—Robbed of their Churches and Schools—Their Pastors and Schoolmasters Banished—Enforced Perversion of the Inhabitants—Count Francis Nadasdy—A Message from the Fire—Protestants Forbidden the Rights of Citizenship—Their Petitions to the King Neglected

Picture: Leopold I...

GREAT hopes were entertained by the Protestants of was reputed a lover of learning, and it was expected Ferdinand’s son and successor, Ferdinand

III. He that he would pursue a wise and liberal policy. [235]

These expectations were realized only in part. His reign opened with the appointment of two perverts from the Protestant faith the one to the palatinate, and the other to the Popish See of Erlau. These were the two posts of greatest influence, civil and ecclesiastical, in Hungary, and the persons now filling them owed their elevation to the Jesuits, and were not likely to be other than subservient to their patrons. The Protestants had been weakened by the secession of thirty magnates to Rome, and of the nobles who still remained on their side many had become lukewarm in the cause of the Reformation. Persecution took a stride in advance. The powerful Romish party utterly disregarded all promises and compacts. The king was unable in many instances to give effect to his own edicts. The churches, schools, and manses in many places were taken possession of, and the pastors and schoolmasters driven away. The Prebend of Neustadt-on-the-Waag, for instance, was forcibly seized by Count Hommono, with all its heritages and fruits. The superintendent, being an old man, was put in a chair, and carried out by the soldiers. But here a difficulty arose. The unhoused minister was unable to walk, and the soldiers were unwilling to transport their burden to a greater distance. What was to be done? They took up the aged man, carried him back, and set him down once more at his own hearth, consoling themselves that he had not long to live. All the property and dues, however, appertaining to the church, which comprehended several villages with their mills, the tenth and sixteenth of the grain grown on the lands, and a tenth of all the fowls, were retained by the count. Hommono’s example was followed by other nobles, who freely made a spoil of the Protestant property [236] on their estates, and left it to the owners to utter complaints to which no attention was paid.

From the same quarter from which their fathers had so often obtained help in the time of their sore need, came a deliverer to the Protestants. Prince George Rakotzy of Transylvania, unable longer to witness in silence these cruel outrages upon his brethren in the faith, proclaimed war against Ferdinand III in 1644. He was aided by the Swedes, whose armies were then in the field, engaged in the Thirty Years’ War. The short but bloody campaign that ensued between Rakotzy and Ferdinand ended with the Peace of Linz, which gave toleration to the Protestants of Hungary, and brought back great part of the property of which they had been violently dispossessed.[1] There remained, however, 300 churches of which they had been despoiled, and which nothing could induce the Romanists to give up.

Four years afterwards (1648) came the Peace of Westphalia. This famous arrangement ended the Thirty Years’ War, and gave the Protestants of Germany, and of Western Europe generally, the guarantee of public law for their civil and religious rights. Unhappily, the Austrian Empire did not share in the benefits flowing from that peace. The Protestants whose misfortune it was to live under the House of Hapsburg were left to the tender mercies of their rulers, who suffered themselves to be entirely led by the Jesuits; and now to the Reformed Church of Hungary there came a bitterer cup than any she had yet drunk of, and we have to record a sadder tale, though it must be briefly told, than we have yet had to recount of the sufferings of that unhappy Church and nation.

In 1656, Ferdinand III died in the flower of his age, and was succeeded by his second son, Leopold I, then a youth of seventeen. Destined by his father to be Bishop of Passau, Leopold, till his brother’s death, had been educated for the Church. He had as preceptor the Jesuit Neidhard, who, eventually returning to his native Spain, there became Grand Inquisitor. Leopold was fitter for the confessor’s box than for the throne. While yet a lad his delight was to brush the dust from the images of the saints, and to deck out mimic altars. In him the Jesuits had a king after their own heart. Every morning he heard three masses, one after the other, remaining all the while on his knees, without once lifting his eyes. On fete-days he insisted on all the ambassadors at his court being present at these services, and those who were not so young, or whose devotion was not so ardent as his own, were in danger of succumbing under so lengthened a performance, and were tempted to evade the infliction by soliciting employment at the court of some sovereign less pious than Leopold. The approach of Lent was a terror to the courtiers, for some eighty offices had to be gone through during that holy season. The emperor held monk and priest in all reverence. Did one with a shorn crown approach him, the pious king humbly doffed his hat and held out his hand to be kissed. Phlegmatic as a Mussulman, and an equally firm believer in fate, he was on no occasion either sad or elate, but submitted to events which he construed as omens. On one occasion, when sitting down to dinner, the lightning entered the apartment. Leopold coldly said, “As Heaven calls us not to eat, but to fast and pray, remove the dishes.” So saying he retired to his chapel, his suite following him with what grace they could.

His appearance was as unkingly as it is possible to imagine. Diminutive in stature, his lower jaw protruding horribly, his little bald head enveloped in an immense peruke, surmounted by a hat shaded with a black feather, his person wrapped in a Spanish cloak, his feet thrust into red shoes, and his thin tottering legs encased in stockings of the same color,[2] “as if,” says Michiels, “he had been walking up to the knees in blood,” he looked more like one of those uncouth figures which are seen in booths than the living head of the Holy Roman Empire.

He had a rooted aversion to business, and the Jesuits relieved him of that burden. He signed without reading the papers brought him. Music, the theater, the gambling-table, the turning-lathe, alchemy, and divination furnished him by turns with occupation and amusement. Sooth-sayers and miracle-mongers had never long to wait for an audience: it was only Protestants who found the palace-gates strait. Oftener than once a notice was found affixed to the doors of the palace, bearing the words, “Leopolde, sis Caesar et non Jesuita” (Leopold, be an Emperor and not a Jesuit).[3]

A puppet on the throne, the Jesuits were the masters of the kingdom. It was their golden age in Austria, and they were resolved not to let slip the opportunity it offered. The odious project drawn up thirty years ago still remained a dead letter, but the hour for putting it in execution had at last arrived. But they would not startle men by a too

[1]Frid. Adolph. Lampe, Hist. Eccles. Reform. in Hungaria et Transylvania, anno. 1664, pp. 392, 393.

[2]Carlyle calls him “The solemn little Herr in red stockings.” (History of Frederick the Great, People’s Ed., 67.)

[3]Michiels, Secret Hist., p. 107.

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sudden zeal; they would not set up the gallows at once; petty vexations and subtle seductions would gain over the weaker spirits, and the axe and the cord would be held in reserve for the more obstinate. Austrian soldiers were distributed in the forts, the cities, and the provinces of Hungary. This military occupation by foreign troops was in violation of Hungarian charters, but the Turk served as a convenient pretext for this treachery. “You are unable,” said Leopold’s ministers, “to repel the Mussulman, who is always hovering on your border and breaking into your country; we shall assist you.” It mattered little, however, to keep out the Turk while the Jesuit was allowed to enter; the troops were no sooner introduced than they began to pillage and oppress those they had come to protect, and the Hungarians soon discovered that what the Court of Vienna sought was not to defend them from the fanatical Moslem, but to subjugate them to the equally fanatical Jesuit.

When a great crime is to be done it is often seen that a fitting tool for its execution turns up at the right moment. So was it now. The Jesuits found, not one, but two men every way qualified for the atrocious business on which they were embarking. The first was Prince Lobkowitz, owner of an immense fortune, which his father had amassed in the Thirty Years’ War. He was a proud, tyrannical, pitiless man, and being entirely devoted to the Jesuits, he was to Hungary what Lichtenstein had been to Bohemia. At the same time that this ferocious man stood up at the head of the army, a man of similar character appeared in the Church. The See of Gran became vacant, and the Government promoted to it an ardent adversary of the Reformed faith, named Szeleptsenyi. This barbarous name might have been held as indicative of the barbarous nature of the man it designated. Unscrupulous, merciless, savage, this Szeleptsenyi was a worthy coadjutor of the ferocious Lobkowitz. As men shudder when they behold nature producing monsters, or the heavens teeming with ill-omened conjunctions, so did the Hungarians tremble when they saw these two terrible men appear together, the one in the civil and the other in the ecclesiastical firmament of Austria. We shall meet them afterwards. Their vehemence would have vented itself at once, and brought on a crisis, but the firm hand of the Jesuits, who held them in leading-strings, checked their impetuosity, and taught them to make a beginning with something like moderation.

In 1562 a Diet was held at Presburg, and the petition which the Hungarians presented to it enables us to trace the progress of the persecution during the thirteen previous years. During that term the disciples of the Gospel in Hungary had been deprived by force of numerous churches, and of a great amount of property. These acts of spoliation, in open violation of the law, which professed to grant them freedom of worship, extended over seventeen counties, and fifty-three magnates, prelates, and landowners were concerned in the perpetration of them. Within the three past years they had been robbed of not fewer than forty churches;[4] and when they complained, instead of finding redress, the deputy-lieutenants only contrived to terrify and weary them.

To be robbed of their property was only the least of the evils they were called to suffer; their consciences had been outraged; dragoons were sent to convert them to the Roman faith. The superior judge, Count Francis Nadasdy, harassed them in innumerable ways. On one occasion he sent a party of soldiers to a village, with orders to convert every man in it from the Protestant faith. The inhabitants fled on the approach of the military, and a chase ensued. Overtaken, the entire crowd of fugitives were summarily transferred into the Roman fold. On another occasion the same count sent a servant with an armed force to the village of Szill, to demand the keys of the church. They were given up at his summons, and some days after, the bell began tolling. The parishioners, thinking that worship was about to be celebrated, assembled in the church, and sat waiting the entrance of the pastor. In a few minutes a priest appeared, attired in canonicals, and carrying the requisites for mass, which he straightway began to read, and the whole assembly, in spite of their tears and protestations, were compelled to receive the Communion in its Popish form.

The active zeal of Nadasdy suggested to him numerous expedients for converting men to the Roman faith; some of them were very extraordinary, and far from pleasant to those who were the subjects of them. The Protestants who lived in Burgois were accustomed to go to church in the neighboring town of Nemesker. The count thought that he would put a stop to a practice that displeased him. He gave orders to the keeper of his forests to lie in wait, with his assistants, for the Protestants on their way back. The worshippers on their return from church were seized, stripped of their clothes, and sent home in a state of perfect nudity. Upon another occasion, having extruded Pastor Stephen Pilarick, of Beczko, he seized all his

[4]Frid. Adolph. Lampe, Hist. Eccles. Reform. in Hungaria et Transylvania, p. 427.

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books, and transporting them to his castle, burned them on the hall-floor. The Bible was reserved for a special auto-da-fe. It was put upon a spit and turned round before the fire, the count and his suite standing by and watching the process of its slow combustion. A sudden gust of wind swept into the apartment, stripped off a number of the half-burned leaves and, swirling them through the hall, deposited one of them upon the count’s breast. Baron Ladislaus Revay caught at it, but the count anticipating him took possession of it, and began to read. The words were those in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah: “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God shall stand for ever.” The Count Nadasdy, turning pale, immediately retired.[5] Not fewer than 200 Protestant Churches, on his estates, did he contrive to ruin, either partially or wholly. “For these feats,” say the historians of the Protestant Church of Hungary, “he became the darling of the Jesuits at the Court of Vienna.”[6] His good deeds, however, were not remembered by the Fathers in the hour of his calamity. When shortly after the count was drawn into insurrection, and condemned to die, they left him to mount the scaffold. Before laying his head on the block, he said, “The Lord is just in all his ways.” These words the Jesuits interpreted into an acknowledgment of the justice of his sentence; but the Protestants saw in them, with more probability, an expression of sorrow for forsaking the faith of his youth.[7]

In Eisenberg county, Count George Erdody turned the Pastor of Wippendorf out of doors in the depth of winter, and threw his furniture on the street. All the Protestants on his estates were ordered to return to the Church of Rome, under penalty of banishment, with only four florins for their journey. When this threat failed, the rude Wallachian soldiery were billeted upon them; and such as still proved obdurate were thrown into the dungeons of his castle, and kept there until, worn out by cold and hunger and darkness, they at last yielded.

The Jesuits finding that their plan, though it emitted neither flame nor blood, was effectual enough to make consciences bow, resolved to persevere with it. In Neusiedel, in the county of the Wieselburg, there went forth an order from the landlords, John and George Lippay, commanding all the Protestants to worship in the Popish church, and imposing a fine of forty florins for every case of absence. No Protestant widow was permitted to marry. At no Protestant funeral dare psalm or hymn be sung. No Protestant could fill any public office; and if already in such he was to be extruded. Foot of Protestant pastor must not enter the gates of the now orthodox Neusiedel, and if he chose to disregard this prohibition, he was to pay the penalty of his presumption with his life.

The corporate trades of Raab and other towns declared it indispensable to enrolment in a guild, or the exercise of a craft, that the applicant should profess the Romish faith. No Protestant could make a coat, or weave a yard of cloth, or fabricate a pair of shoes, or mould a vessel of clay, or wield the hammer of the armorer or execute the commonest piece of carpenter’s work.

Jealous over the orthodoxy of their lands, and desirous of preserving them from all taint of heresy, the bishops drove into banishment their Protestant tenantry. Nuns were very careful that neither should Protestant plough turn their soils, nor Protestant psalm be sung on their estates; the great magnates showed themselves equally valiant for the Romish faith. They banished all Protestants from their territorial fiefs; they threw the Protestant population of entire villages into prison, loaded them with chains, and kept them in dark and filthy cells till, worn with sickness and broken in spirit, they abjured their faith. Many churches were razed to the ground; others were appropriated to the Romish worship. While Divine service was being celebrated in the Church of Mishdorf, the soldiers broke into it with drawn swords, and barricading the door, made a priest sing mass. This sufficed to make the congregation “Catholic.” Mass had been said in their presence, and both people and church henceforth belonged to Rome. If a Jesuit thought the manse of a Protestant pastor better than his own, he had only to throw the incumbent into the street and take possession of the coveted dwelling. It mattered not if the minister was old, or sick, or dying, he and his family were carted across the boundary of the county and left to shift for themselves. Similar acts of cruelty were being enacted in Transylvania, and in those parts of Hungary connected with the Reformed Church, which under Rakotzy had enjoyed some glorious days.

The petition of the Protestants specified the acts, named the authors of them, supported each averment with proof, and pleaded the law which enacted toleration, and threatened with punishment such outrages as those of which they complained. They approached the throne with this complaint through the Protestant members of the Diet of 1662. Believing

[5]Mica Bury MS., apud Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, pp. 174, 175.

[6]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, pp. 172, 173.

[7]Joann. Bethlen Con. Ejus Aetatis 1670.

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the king to be ignorant of these oppressions, they did not doubt that Leopold would at once grant them redress.

After waiting a week, the royal reply was communicated to the complainants through the prime minister, Prince Portia. It admonished them not to annoy his Majesty with such complaints, and reminded them that the law had arranged all religious matters, and assigned to each transgression its proper punishment.

The hearts of the Protestants sank within them when they read this reply, which reflected even more disgrace on the throne than it inflicted injustice on them. Nevertheless they again presented themselves, through their deputies, in the royal presence. They complained that the law was being every day flagrantly violated, that of the men notoriously guilty of these illegal acts not one had been punished; and that even were sentence given against any such, they despaired of seeing it executed. Their hope was in the king alone. This time they waited longer for an answer, and when at last it came it was even more cold and cruel than the first. Six times did the cry of the Protestants ascend before the throne of their sovereign. Six times were they answered by a voice as inexorably stern as fate. They could no longer hide from themselves that their king was their enemy.

On the 4th of July, 1662, the Palatine Vesselenyi, president of the Diet, handed the paper containing the king’s answer to the Protestant deputies, and accompanied it with these words: “I had rather that the funeral-knell had tolled over me than live to see this day; may the day and the hour be covered with eternal darkness.”[8] There is a Power that keeps a reckoning with thrones and nations, and notes down in silence the days on which great crimes are done, and stamps them in after-ages with a brand of reprobation, by making them the eras of great calamities. Two centuries after Vesselenyi’s words were uttered, the day and hour were darkened to Austria. On the 4th of July, 1866, the fatal field of Koniggratz was stricken, and on that day of slaughter and blood Austria descended from her rank as the first of the German Powers.

[8]Fessler, vol. 9., p. 110-apud Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 178.

Chapter 5: Banishment of Pastors and Desolation of the Church of Hungary

Popish Nobles demand Withdrawal of the Foreign Troops—Refusal of the King-Projected Insurrection—Their Message to the Vizier—Their Plot Discovered—Mysterious Deaths of Vesselenyi and Zriny—Attempt to Poison the King—The Alchemist Borri—Introduced to the King—Effects his Cure—Insurrection Suppressed—New Storm on Protestants—Raid of Szeleptsenyi—Destruction of Churches, etc—Martyrdom of Drabicius -Abolition of the Ancient Charters—Banishment of the Pastors—Thirty-three Ministers Tried, and Resign their Charges—Four Hundred Ministers Condemned—Resolved to Kill, not their Bodies, but their Characters—Their Treatment in Prison—Banishment to the Galleys—Sufferings on their Journey—Efforts for their Release—Delivered from the Galleys by Admiral de Ruyter—Desolation of Hungarian Church

Picture: The Chemist and the Emperor

Picture: The Scala Sancta, or “Holy Stairs,” Rome

Picture: Ejecting a Hungarian Protestant Pastor in the Winter time.

Picture: View of Presburg.

The troops billeted on Hungary were intended to oppress the Protestants, but that did not hinder their being almost as great an oppression to the Romanists. The soldiers, in their daily pillagings and acts of violence, were at little pains to distinguish between the professors of a heretical and the adherents of an immaculate creed, and were as ready, on many occasions, to appropriate the property and spill the blood of the Papist as of the Protestant.

The magnates who belonged to the Romish faith, seeing the country consuming in the slow fire of a military occupation, petitioned the Government for the withdrawal of the troops. But the court of Vienna was in no humor to listen to the request.

The Jesuits, who inspired the royal policy, were not displeased to see those haughty Magyars compelled to hold their heads a little less high, and that province weakened in the soil of which the seeds of heresy had been so plentifully scattered. The courtiers openly said, “How gaily do these Hungarian nobles strut about with their heron’s plumes waving in their caps, and their silken pelisses clasped with gold and silver! We shall teach them less lofty looks. We shall replace their heron’s plume with a feather from the wing of a humbler bird; and instead of a pelisse, we shall make them content [240] with a plain Bohemian coat with leaden buttons.” Not only were the German troops not withdrawn, but a disgraceful peace was made with the Turks, and new subsidies were demanded for building new forts and paying more soldiers. When this was seen, the wrath of the Hungarian magnates knew no bounds. They held a secret assembly at Neusohl, and deliberated on their course of action. They resolved on the bold step of raising new levies, throwing off the yoke of the Emperor Leopold, and placing themselves under the suzerainty of the sultan, Mohammed IV. The leaders in this projected insurrection were the Palatine Vesselenyi, Count Francis Nadasdy, and others, all bitter per-secutors of the Protestants. In the circumstances in which these magnates had placed themselves with their countrymen, their scheme of conspiracy was rash to infatuation. Had they unfurled their standard a few years earlier, Protestant Hungary would have rallied round it: city and village would have poured out soldiers in thousands to combat for their religion and liberty. But it was otherwise now. The flower of the Hungarian nation were pining in prisons, or wandering in exile. The very men who would have fought their battles, these nobles had driven away; and now they were doomed to learn, by the disasters that awaited them, what an egregious error they had committed in the persecution of their Protestant countrymen. From the first day their enterprise had to contend with adverse fortune.

They sent a messenger to the grand vizier to solicit assistance. They knew not that a spy in the vizier’s suite was listening to all they said, and would hasten to report what he had heard to the court at Vienna. This was enough. “Like a night-bird, hidden in the darkness,” Prince Lobkowitz, having penetrated their secret, henceforth kept an eye on the conspirators.[1] If he did not nip the rebellion in the bud, it was because he wished to give it a little time to ripen, in order that it might conduct its authors to the scaffold. Its chiefs now began to be taken off mysteriously. The Palatine Vesselenyi was suddenly attacked with fever, and died in his castle in the heart of the Carpathians.

[1]Michiels, Secret Hist., p. 115.

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He was soon followed to the grave by another powerful leader of the projected rebellion, Nicholas Zriny, Ban of the Croats. The Ban was found covered with wounds, in a forest near his own residence, and the report was given forth that he had been torn by a wild boar, but the discovery of a bullet in his head upset the story. The suspicions awakened by these mysterious deaths were deepened by a tragic occurrence now in progress in the palace of Vienna. Leopold fell ill: his disease baffled his physicians; novenas, paternesters, and relics were powerless to arrest his malady, and it began to be suspected that a secret poison was undermining the emperor’s strength. While the king was rapidly approaching the grave, the celebrated alchemist, the Chevalier Francis Borri, of Milan, who had been proscribed by Rome, was seized by the Papal nuncio in Moravia, and brought to Vienna. The king, who [242] was himself addicted to the study of alchemy, hearing Borri was in his capital, commanded his attendance.

The chevalier was introduced after night-fall. Indescribably gloomy was the chamber of the royal patient: the candles looked as if they burned in a tomb; the atmosphere was mephitic; the king’s face wore the ghastliness of the grave; his sallow skin and sunken cheeks, with the thirst which nothing could assuage, gave indubitable signs that some unknown poison was at work upon him. The chemist paused and looked round the room. He marked the red flame of the tapers the white vapor which, they emitted, and the deposit they had formed on the ceiling. “You are breathing a poisoned air,” said he to the king. The patient’s apartment was changed, other candles were brought, and from that hour the king began to recover. When the lights were analyzed it was found that the wick had been steeped in a strong solution of arsenic. It is hard to imagine what motive the Jesuits could have for seeking to take off a monarch so obsequious to them, and the affair still remains one of the mysteries of history.

The man who had saved the king’s life had earned, one would think, his own liberty. But nothing in those days could atone for heresy, or even the suspicion of it. Borri, having completed the monarch’s cure, was given back to the Papal nuncio, who claimed him as his prisoner, carried him to Rome, and threw him into the dungeons of St. Angelo, where, after languishing fifteen years, he died. The procurator of the Jesuits was also made to disappear so as never to be heard of more. The king would not have dared, even in thought, to have suspected the Fathers, much less to have openly accused them. But whoever were the authors of this attempt, it was upon the Hungarians that its punishment was made to fall, for Leopold being led to believe that his Protestant subjects had been seeking to compass his death, fear and dread of them were now added to his former hatred. From this hour, the work of crushing the conspirators was pushed forward with vigour. Troops were marched on Hungary from all sides: the insurgents were overwhelmed by numbers, and the chiefs were arrested before they had time to take the field. The papers seized were of a nature to comprise half Hungary. Lobkowitz reveled in the thought of the many heads that would have to be taken off, and not less delighted was he at the prospect of the rich estates that would have to be confiscated. About 300 nobles were apprehended and thrown into dungeons. The leaders were brought to trial, and finally executed. The magnates who thus perished on the scaffold were nearly all Romanists, and had been the most furious persecutors of the Protestant Church of their native land; but their deaths only opened wider the door for the Austrian Government to come in and crush Hungarian Protestantism.

Hardly had the scaffolds of the magnates been taken down when the storm burst afresh (1671) upon the Protestants of Hungary. The Archbishop of Gran-the ecclesiastic with the barbarous name Szeleptsenyi-accompanied by other bishops, and attended by a large following of Jesuits and dragoons, passed, like a desolating tempest, over the land, seizing churches and schools, breaking open their doors, re-consecrating them, painting red crosses upon their pillars, installing the priests in the manses and livings, banishing pastors and teachers, and if the least opposition was offered to these tyrannical proceedings, those from whom it came were cast into prison, and sometimes hanged or impaled alive. Cities and counties which the activity of Archbishop Szeleptsenyi, vast as it was, failed to overtake, were visited by other bishops, attended by a body of wild Croats. Colleges were dismantled, and the students dispersed: in the royal cities all Protestant councilors were deposed, and Papists appointed in their room the citizens were disarmed, the walls of towns leveled, the pastors prohibited, under pain of death, performing any official act; and whenever this violence was met by the least resistance, it was made a pretext for hanging, or breaking on the wheel, or otherwise maltreating and murdering the Protestant citizens.[2]

One of the most painful of these many tragic scenes, was the execution of an old disciple of eighty-four. Nicholas Drabik, or Drabicius, was a native of Moravia, and one of the United Brethren. Altogether unlettered, he knew only the Bohemian tongue. He had fled from the persecution in Moravia in 1629, and had since earned a scanty living by dealing in woolen goods. He had cheered his age and poverty with the hope of returning one day to his native land. He published a book, entitled Light out of Darkness, which seems to have been another “Prophet’s Roll,” every page of it being laden with lamentations and woes, and with prophecies of evil against “the cruel and perjured” House of Austria, which he designated the House of Ahab. Against Papists in general he foretold a speedy and utter desolation.[3]

[2]Frid. Adolph. Lampe, Hist. Eccles. Reform. in Hungaria et Transylvania, p. 427; Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1728.-A full account of thesetransactions will be found in a work by Stephen Pilarik, entitled Curru Jehovae Mirabili. See also Fesseler, vol. 9., pp. 223, 228; as also Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, chap. 11.

[3]Frid. Adolph. Lampe, Hist. Eccles. Reform. in Hungaria et Transylvania, pp. 444, 445.-The book translated out of the original Bohemian into Latin, by John Amos Comenius, was published at Amsterdam, 1665, under the title, Lux e Tenebris novis radiis aucta.

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The old man was put into a cart and brought to Presburg, where Szeleptsenyi had opened his court. Unable, through infirmity of body, to stand, Drabicius was permitted to sit on the floor. If the judge was lacking in dignity, the prisoner was nearly as much so in respect; but it was hard to feel reverence for such a tribunal. The interrogatives and replies give us a glimpse into the age and the court.

“Are you the false prophet?” asked the archbishop.-“I am not,” replied Drabicius.

“Are you the author of the book Light out of Darkness?”-“I am,” said the prisoner.

“By whose orders and for what purpose did you write that book?” asked Szeleptsenyi.-“At the command of the Holy Spirit,” answered Drabicius.

“You lie,” said the archbishop; “the book is from the devil.”-“

In this you lie,” rejoined the prisoner, with the air of one who had no care of consequences.

“What is your belief?” asked the judge.-The prisoner in reply repeated the whole Athanasian Creed; then, addressing Szeleptsenyi, he asked him, “What do you believe?”

“I believe all that,” replied the archbishop, “and a great deal more which is also necessary.”-“You don’t believe any such thing,” said Drabicius; “you believe in your cows, and horses, and estates.”

Sentence was now pronounced. His right hand was to be cut off. His tongue was to be taken out and nailed to a post. He was to be beheaded; and his book, together with his body, was to be burned in the market-place. All this was to be done upon him on the 16th of July, 1671.

The Jesuits now came round him. One of them wormed himself into his confidence, mainly by the promise that if he would abjure his Protestantism he would be set at liberty, and carried back to his native Moravia, there to die in peace. He who had been invincible before the terrible Szeleptsenyi was vanquished by the soft arts of the Jesuits. Left of God for a moment, he gave his adherence to the Roman creed. When he saw he had been deceived, he was filled with horror at his vile and cowardly act, and exclaimed that he would die in the faith in which he had lived. When the day came Drabicius endured with firmness his horrible sentence.

The extirpation of Protestantism in Hungary was proceeding at a rapid rate, but not sufficiently rapid to satisfy the vast desires of Szeleptsenyi and his coadjutors. The king, at a single stroke, had abolished all the ancient charters of the kingdom, declaring that henceforth but one law, his own good pleasure, should rule in Hungary. Over the now extinct charters, and the slaughtered bodies of the magnates, the Jesuits had marched in, and were appropriating churches by the score, banishing pastors by the dozen, dismantling towns, plundering, hanging, and impaling. But one great comprehensive measure was yet needed to consummate the work. That measure was the banishment of all the pastors and teachers from the kingdom. This was now resolved on; but it was judged wise to begin with a small number, and if the government were successful with these, it would next proceed to its ulterior and final measure.

The Archbishop of Gran summoned (25th September, 1673), before his vice-regal court in Presburg, thirty-three of the Protestant pastors from Lower Hungary. They obeyed the citation, although they viewed themselves as in no way bound, by the laws of the land, to submit to a spiritual court, and especially one composed of judges all of whom were their deadly enemies. Besides a number of paltry and ridiculous charges, the indictment laid at their door the whole guilt of the late rebellion, which notoriously had been contrived and carried out by the Popish magnates. To be placed at such a bar was but the inevitable prelude to being found guilty and condemned. The awards of torture, beheading, and banishment were distributed among the thirty-three pastors. But their persecutors, instead of carrying out the sentences, judged that their perversion would serve their ends better than their execution, and that it was subtler policy to present Protestantism as a cowardly rather than as an heroic thing. After manifold annoyances and cajolerys, one minister apostatized to Rome, the rest signed a partial confession of guilt and had their lives spared. But their act covered them with disgrace in the eyes of their flocks, and their cowardice tended greatly to weaken and demoralize their brethren throughout Hungary, to whom the attentions of the Jesuits were next directed.

A second summons was issued by the Archbishop of Gran on the 16th of January, 1674. Szeleptsenyi was getting old, and was in haste to finish his work, “as if,” say the chroniclers, “the words of our Lord at the Last Supper had been addressed to him-‘What thou doest, do quickly.’” The archbishop had spread his net wide indeed this time. All the Protestant clergy of Hungary, even those in the provinces subject to the Sultan, had he cited to his bar. The old charge was foisted up [244] - the rebellion, namely, for which the Popish nobles had already been condemned and executed. If these pastors and schoolmasters were indeed the authors of the insurrection, the proof would have been easy, for the thing had not been done in a corner; but nothing was adduced in support of the charge that deserved the name of proof. But if the evidence was light, not so was the judgment. The tribunal pronounced for doom beheading, confiscation, infamy, and outlawry.

The number on whom this condemnation fell was about 400. Again the counsel of the Jesuits was to kill their character and spare their lives, and in this way to inflict the deadliest wound on the cause which these men represented. To shed their blood was but to sow the seed of new confessors, whereas as dishonored men, or even as silent men, they might be left with perfect safety to live in their native land. This advice was again approved, and every art was set to work to seduce them. Three courses were open to the Protestant ministers. They might voluntarily exile themselves: this would so far answer the ends of their persecutors, inasmuch as it would remove them from the country. Or, they might resign their office, and remain in Hungary: this would make them equally dead to the Protestant Church, and would disgrace them in the eyes of their people. Or, retaining their office, they might remain and seize every opportunity of preaching to their former flocks, in spite of the sentence of death suspended above their heads. Of these 400, or thereabouts, 236 ministers signed their resignation, and although they acquired thereby a right to remain in Hungary, the majority went into exile.[4] The rest, thinking it not the part of faithful shepherds to flee, neither resigned their office nor withdrew into banishment, but remained in spite of many threatenings and much ill-usage. To the tyranny of the Government the pastors opposed an attitude of passive resistance.

The next attempt of their persecutors was to terrify them.[5] They were divided into small parties, put into carts, and distributed amongst the various fortresses and goals of the country, the darkest and filthiest cells being selected for their imprisonment. Every method that could be devised was taken to annoy and torment them. They were treated worse than the greatest criminals in the gaols into which they were cast. They were fed on coarse bread and water. They were loaded with chains; nor was any respect had, in this particular, to difference of strength or of age-the irons of the old being just as heavy as those of the young and the able-bodied. The most disgusting offices of the prison they were obliged to perform. In winter, during the intense frosts,[6] they were required to clear away with their naked hands the ice and snow. To see their friends, or to receive the smallest assistance from any one in alleviation of their sufferings, was a solace strictly denied them. To unite together in singing a psalm or in offering a prayer, was absolutely forbidden. Some of them were shut up with thieves and murderers, and not only had they to endure their mockeries when they bent the knee to pray, but they were compelled to listen to their foul and often blasphemous talk. Their sufferings grew at last to such a pitch that they most earnestly wished that their persecutors would lead them forth to a scaffold or to a stake. But the Jesuits had doomed them to a more cruel because a more lingering martyrdom. Seeing their emaciation and despondency, their enemies redoubled their efforts to induce them to abjure. Not a few of them, unable longer to endure their torments, yielded, and renounced their faith, but others continued to bear up under their frightful sufferings.

On the 18th of March, 1675, a little troop of emaciated beings was seen to issue from a secret gateway of the fortress of Komorn. An escort of 400 horsemen and as many foot closed round them and led them away. This sorrowful band was composed of the confessors who had remained faithful, and were now beginning their journey to the galleys of Naples. They were conducted by a circuitous route through Moravia to Leopoldstadt, where their brethren, who had been shut up in that fortress, were brought out to join them in the same doleful pilgrimage. They embraced each other and wept.

This remnant of the once numerous clergy of the Protestant Church of Hungary now began their march from the dungeons of their own land to the galleys of a foreign shore. They walked two and two, the right foot of the one chained to the left ankle of the other. Their daily provision was a quarter of a pound of biscuit, a glass of water, and at times a small piece of cheese. They slept in stables at night. At last they arrived at Trieste. Here the buttons were cut off their coats, their beards shaved off, their heads dipped close, and altogether they were so metamorphosed that they

[4]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 207.

[5]Frid. Adolph. Lampe, Hist. Eccles. Reform. in Hungaria, etc., p. 445.

[6]A Hungarian winter is often from 40 degrees to 60 degrees F. below the freezing-point.

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could not recognize one another save by the voice.[7]

So exhausted were they from insufficiency of food, and heavy irons, that four of the number died in prison at Trieste, two others died afterwards on the road, and many fell sick. On the journey to Naples, one of the survivors, Gregory Hely, became unfit to walk, and was mounted on an ass. Unable through weakness to keep his seat, he fell to the ground and died on the spot. The escort did not halt, they dug no grave: leaving him lying unburied on the road, they held on their way. Three succeeded in making their escape, and be one of these, George Lanyi, who afterwards wrote a narrative of his own and his companions’ sufferings, we are indebted for our knowledge of the particulars of their journey.

Of the forty-one who had set out from Leopoldstadt, dragging their chains, and superfluously guarded by 800 men-at-arms, only thirty entered the gates of Naples. This was the end of their journey, but not of their misery. Sold to the galley-masters for fifty Spanish piastres a-piece, they were taken on board their several boats, chained to the bench, and, in company with the malefactors and convicts with which the Neapolitan capital abounds, they were compelled to work at the oar, exposed to the burning sun by day, and the bitter winds which, descending from the frozen summits of the Apennines, often sweep over the bay when the sun is below the horizon.

Another little band of eighteen, gleaned from the gaols of Sarvar, Kupuvar, and Eberhard, began their journey to the galleys of Naples on the 1st of July of the same year. To recount their sufferings by the way would be to rehearse the same unspeakably doleful tale we have already told. The sun, the air, the mountains, what were they to men who only longed for death? Their eyes grew dark, their teeth fell out, and though still alive, their bodies were decaying. On the road, ten of these miserable men, succumbing to their load of woe, and not well knowing what they did, yielded to the entreaties of their guard, and professed to embrace the faith of Rome. Three died on the way, and their fellow-sufferers being permitted to scoop out a grave, they were laid in it, and the 88th Psalm was sung over their lonely resting-place.

Meanwhile, the story of their sufferings was spreading over Europe. Princes and statesmen, touched by their melancholy fate, had begun to take an interest in them, and were exerting themselves to obtain their release.[8] Representations were made in their behalf to the Imperial Court at Vienna, and also to the Government of Naples. These appeals were met with explanations, excuses, and delays. The Hungarian pastern still continued fix their chains. The hopes of their deliverance were becoming faint when, on the 12th of December, the Dutch fleet sailed into the Bay of Naples. The vice-admiral, John de Staen, stepped on shore, and waiting on the crown-regent with the proof of the innocence of the prisoners in his hand, he begged their release. He was told that they would be set at liberty in three days. Overjoyed, the vice-admiral sent to the galleys to announce to the captives their approaching discharge, and then set sail for Sicily, whither he was called by the war with France. The Dutch fleet being gone, the promise of the crown-regent was forgotten. The third day came and went, and the prisoners were still sighing in their fetters; but there was One who heard their groans, and had numbered and finished the days of their captivity.

Again the Dutch ships were seen in the offing. Ploughing the bay, and sweeping past Capri, the fleet held on its course till it cast anchor before the city, and lay with its guns looking at the castle and palace of St. Elmo. It was Admiral de Ruyter himself. He had been commanded by the States-General of Holland to take up the case of the prisoners. De Ruyter sent the Dutch ambassador to tell the king why he was now in Neapolitan waters. The king quickly comprehended the admiral’s message, and made haste to renew the promise that the Hungarian prisoners should be given up; and again the good news was published in the galleys. But liberty’s cup was to be dashed from the lips of the poor prisoners yet again. The urgency of affairs called the admiral instantly to weigh anchor and set sail, and with the retreating forms of his ships the fetters clasped themselves once more round the limbs of the captives. But De Ruyter had not gone far when he was met by orders to delay his departure from Naples. Putting about helm he sailed up the bay, and finding how matters stood with the prisoners, and not troubling himself to wait a second time on the Neapolitan authorities, he sent his officers aboard the galleys, with instructions to set free the prisoners; and the pastors, like men who walk in their sleep, arose and followed their liberators. On the 11th of February, 1676, they quitted the galleys, singing the 46th, the 114th, and the 125th Psalms.

[7]George Lanyi, Captivitas Papistica-apud Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 213.

[8]Frid. Adolph. Lampe, Hist. Eccles. Reform. in Hungaria, etc., lib. 2., ann. 1676.

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“Putting their lives in their hands, there were a few pastors who either had not been summoned to Presburg, or who had not gone; and in lonely glens, in woods and mountains wild, in ruined castles and morasses inaccessible except to the initiated, these men resided and preached the Gospel to the faithful who were scattered over the land. From the dark cavern, scantily lighted, arose the, psalm of praise sung to those wild melodies which to this day thrill the heart of the worshipper. From lips pale and trembling with disease, arising from a life spent in constant fear and danger, the consolations of the Gospel were proclaimed to the dying. The Lord’s Supper was administered; fathers held up their infants to be devoted in baptism to Him for whom they themselves were willing to lay down their lives; and amid the tears which oppression wrung from them, they joined their hands and looked up to Him who bottles up the tears, and looked forward to a better land beyond the grave.”[9]

During the subsequent reigns of Joseph I, Charles VI, Maria Theresa, and Joseph II, down to 1800, the Protestant Church of Hungary continued to drag out a struggling existence. Brief intervals of toleration came to vary her long and dark night of persecution. The ceaseless object of attack on the part of the Jesuits, her privileges continued to be curtailed, her numbers to decrease, and her spiritual life and power to decay, till at last the name of Protestant almost perished from the land.

[9]Hist. Prot. Church in Hungary, chap. 15, p. 220.

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Book 21: The Thirty Years’ War

Chapter 1: Great Periods of the Thirty Years’ War

Dying Utterance of Charles IX of Sweden—Rearing of Gustavus Adolphus—Pacification of Augsburg—“Protestant Union” and “Catholic League:” their Objects—Third Phase of Protestantism in Germany—Beginning of the Thirty Years’ War—Troubles at Prague—Insurrection—March of the Bohemians to Vienna—Their Retreat—War—Numbers of the Host—The Leaders on Both Sides—Oscillations of Victory—First Period of the War, from 1618 to 1630—Second Period, from 1630 to 1634—Third Period, from 1634 to 1648

Standing by the death-bed of Charles IX of Sweden (161l), we saw the monarch, as he ruminated on the conflicts which he but too truly divined the future would bring with it to Protestantism, stretch out his hand, and laying it on the golden locks of his boy, who was watching his father’s last moments, utter the prophetic words, “He will do it.”[1] It was the grandson of the famous Gustavus Vasa, the yet more renowned Gustavus Adolphus, of whom these words were spoken. They fitly foreshadowed, in their incisive terseness, and vague sublimity, the career of the future hero. We are arrived at one of the most terrible struggles that ever desolated the world-the Thirty Years’ War.

In the education of the young Gustavus, who, as a man, was to play so conspicuous a part in the drama about to open, there was nothing lacking which could give him hardiness of body, bravery of spirit, vigor of intellect, and largeness of soul. Though his cradle was placed in a palace, it was surrounded with little of the splendor and nothing of the effeminacy which commonly attend the early lot of those who are royally born. The father was struggling for his crown when the son first saw the light.

Around him, from the first, were commotions and storms. These could admit of no life but a plain and frugal one, verging it may be on roughness, but which brought with it an ample recompense for the inconveniences it imposed, in the health, the buoyancy, and the cheerfulness which it engendered. He grew hale and strong in the pure cold air to which he was continually exposed. “Amid the starry nights and dark forests of his fatherland, he nursed the seriousness which was a part of his nature.”[2]

Meanwhile the mind of the future monarch was developing under influences as healthy and stirring as those by which his body was being braced. His father took him with him both to the senate and the camp. In the one he learned to think as the statesman, in the other he imbibed the spirit of the soldier. Yet greater care was taken to develop and strengthen his higher powers. Masters were appointed him in the various languages, ancient and modern; and at the age of twelve he could speak Latin, French, German, and Italian with fluency, and understood Spanish and English tolerably.[3] We hear of his reading Greek with ease, but this is more doubtful. He had studied Grotius. This was a range of accomplishment which no monarch in Northern Europe of his time could boast. Of the prudence and success with which, when he ascended the throne, he set about correcting the abuses and confusions of half a century in his hereditary dominions, and the rigor with which he prosecuted his first wars, we are not here called to speak. The career of Gustavus Adolphus comes into our view at the point where it first specially touches Protestantism. The Thirty Years’ War had been going on some years before he appeared on that bloody stage, and mingled in its awful strife.

The first grand settlement between the Romanists and the Protestants was the Pacification of Augsburg, in 1555. This Pacification gathered up in one great edict all the advantages which Protestantism had acquired during its previous existence of nearly forty years, and it expressed them all in one single word-Toleration. The same word which summed up the gains of Protestantism also summed up the losses of the empire; for the empire had beam by pronouncing its ban upon Luther and his followers, and now at the end of forty years, and

[1]See ante, vol. 2.

[2]Hallenberg, 1., p. 22. History of Gustavus Adolphus, by B. Chapman, M. A.; p. 47; Lond., 1856.

[3]Geijer, 3., p. 5-apud Chapman, Hist. Gust. Adolph., p. 45.

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after all the great wars of Charles V undertaken against the Protestants, the empire was compelled to say, “I tolerate you.” So far had Protestantism molded the law of Christendom, reared a barrier around itself, and set limits to the intolerant and despotic forces that assailed it from without. But this Toleration was neither Perfect in itself, nor was it faithfully observed. It was limited to Protestantism in its Lutheran form, for Calvinists were excluded from it, and, not to speak of the many points which it left open to opposite interpretations, and which were continually giving rise to quarrels, perpetual infringements were taking place on the rights guaranteed under it. The Protestants had long complained of these breaches of the Pacification, but could obtain no redress; and in the view of the general policy of the Popish Powers, which was to sweep away the Pacification of Augsburg altogether as soon as they were strong enough, a number of Protestant princes joined together for mutual defense. On the 4th of May, 1608, was formed the “Protestant Union.” At the head of this Union was Frederick IV, the Elector of the Palatinate.

The answer to this was the counter-institution, in the following year, of the “Catholic League.” It was formed on July 10th, 1609, and its chief was Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. Maximilian was a fanatical disciple of the Jesuits, and in the League now formed, and the terrible war to which it led, we see the work of the Society of Jesus. The Duke of Bavaria was joined by Duke Leopold of Austria, and the Prince-bishops of Wurzburg, Ratisbon, Augsburg, Constance, Strasburg, Passau, and by several abbots. The leading object of the League was the restoration of the Popish faith over Germany, and the extirpation of Protestantism. This was to be accomplished by force of arms. Any moment might bring the outbreak; and Maximilian had all army of Bavarians, zealots like himself, waiting the summons, which, as matters then stood, could not be long deferred.

We behold Protestantism entering on its third grand phase in Germany. The first was the Illumination. From the open Bible, unlocked by the recovered Hebrew and Greek tongues, and from the closets and pulpits of great theologians and scholars, came forth the light, and the darkness which had shrouded the world for a thousand years began to be dispersed. This was the beginning of that world-overturning yet world-restoring movement. The second phase was that of Confession and Martyrdom. During that period societies and States were founding themselves upon the fundamental principle of Protestantism-namely, submission to the Word of God-and were covering Christendom with a new and higher life, individual and national. Protestantism opens its second century with its third grand phase, which is War. The Old now begins clearly to perceive that the New can establish itself only upon its ruins, and accordingly it girds on the sword to fight. The battle-field is all Germany: into that vast arena descend men of all nations, not only of Europe, but even from parts of Asia: the length of the day of battle is thirty years. Some have preferred this as an indictment against Protestantism; see, it has been said, what convulsions it has brought on. It is true that if Protestantism had never existed this unprecedented conflict would never have taken place, for had the Old been left in unchallenged possession it would have been at peace. It is also true that neither literature nor philosophy ever shook the world with storms like these. But this only proves that conscience alone, quickened by the Word of God, was able to render the service which the world needed; for the Old had to be displaced at whatever cost of tumult and disturbance, that the New, which cannot be shaken, might be set up.

Let us trace the first risings of this great commotion. The “Catholic League” having been formed, and Maximilian of Bavaria placed at the head of it, the Jesuits began to intrigue in order to find work for the army which the duke held in readiness strike. It needed but a spark to kindle a flame. The spark fell. The “Majestats-Brief,” or Royal Letter, granted by Rudolph II, and which was the charter of the Bohemian Protestants, began to be encroached upon. The privileges which that charter conceded to the Protestants, of not only retaining the old churches but of building new ones where they were needed, were denied to those who lived upon the Ecclesiastical States. The Jesuits openly said that this edict of toleration was of no value, seeing the king had been terrified into granting it, and that the time was near when it would be swept away altogether. This sort of talk gave great uneasiness and alarm; alarm was speedily converted into indignation by the disposition now openly evinced by the court to overturn the Majestats-Brief, and confiscate all the rights of the Protestants. Count Thurn, Burgrave of Carlstein, a popular functionary, was dismissed, and his vacant office was filled by two nobles who were specially obnoxious to the Protestants, as prominent enemies of their faith and noted persecutors of their brethren. They were accused of hunting their Protestant tenantry with dogs to mass, of forbidding them the rights of baptism, of marriage, and of burial, and so compelling them to return to the Roman Church. The arm of injustice began to be put forth against the [250] Protestants on the Ecclesiastical States, whose rights were more loosely defined. Their church in the town of Klostergrab was demolished; that at Braunau was forcibly shut up, and the citizens who had opposed these violent proceedings were thrown into prison. Count Thurn, who had been elected by his fellow-Protestants to the office of Defender of the Church’s civil rights, thought himself called upon to organize measures of defense. Deputies were summoned to Prague from every circle of the kingdom for deliberation. They petitioned the emperor to set free those whom he had cast into prison; but the imperial reply, so far from opening the doors of the gaol, justified the demolition of the churches, branded the opposers of that act as rebels, and dropped some significant threats against all who should oppose the royal will. Bohemia was in a flame. The deputies armed themselves, and believing that this harsh policy had been dictated by the two new members of the vice-regal Council of Prate, they proceeded to the palace, and forcing their way into the hall where the Council was sitting, they laid hold-as we have already narrated-on the two obnoxious members, Martinitz and Slavata, and, “according to a good old Bohemian custom,” as one of the deputies termed it, they threw them out at the window. They sustained no harm from their fall, but starting to their feet, made off from their enemies. This was on the 23rd of May, 1618: the Thirty Years’ War had begun.

Thirty directors were appointed as a provisional government. Taking possession of all the offices of state and the national revenues, the directors summoned Bohemia to arms. Count Thurn was placed at the head of the army, and the entire kingdom joined the insurrection, three towns excepted-Budweis, Krummau, and Pilsen-in which the majority of the inhabitants were Romanists. The Emperor Matthias was terrified by this display of union and courage on the part of the Bohemians. Innumerable perils at that hour environed his throne. His hereditary States of Austria were nearly as disaffected as Bohemia itself

- a spark might kindle them also into revolt: the Protestants were numerous even in them, and, united by a strong bond of sympathy, were not unlikely to make common cause with their brethren. The emperor, dreading a universal conflagration, which might consume his dynasty, made haste to pacify the Bohemian insurgents before they should arrive under the walls of Vienna, and urge their demands for redress in his own palace. Negotiations were in progress, with the best hopes of a pacific issue; but just at that moment the Emperor Matthias died, and was succeeded by the fanatical and stern Ferdinand II.

There followed with starting rapidity a succession of significant events, all adverse to Bohemia and to the cause of Protestantism. These occurrences form the prologue, as it were, of that great drama of horrors which we are about to narrate. Some of them have already come before us in connection with the history of Protestantism in Bohemia. First of all came the accession of Silesia and Moravia to the insurrection; the deposition of Ferdinand II as King of Bohemia, and the election of Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate, in his room. This was followed by the victorious march of Count Thurn and his army to Vienna. The appearance of the Bohemian army under the walls of the capital raised the Protestant nobles in Vienna, who, while the Bohemian balls were falling on the royal palace, forced their way into Ferdinand’s presence, and insisted that he should make peace with Count Thurn by guaranteeing toleration to the Protestants of his empire. One of the Austrian magnates was so urgent that he seized the monarch by the button, and exclaimed, “Ferdinand, wilt thou sign it?” But Ferdinand was immovable. In spite of the extremity in which he stood, he would neither flee from his capital nor make concessions to the Protestants. Suddenly, and while the altercation was still going on, a trumpet-blast was heard in the court of the palace. Five hundred cuirassiers had arrived at that critical moment, under General Dampierre, to defend the monarch. This turned the tide. Vienna was preserved to the Papacy, and with Vienna the Austrian dominions and the imperial throne. There followed the retreat of the Bohemian host from under the walls of the capital; the election of Ferdinand, at the Diet of Frankfort, to the dignity of emperor; the equipment of an army to crush the insurrection in Bohemia; and, in fine, the battle of the Weissenburg under the walls of Prague, which by a single stroke brought the “winter kingdom” of Frederick to an end, laid the provinces of Bohemia, Silesia, and Moravia at the feet of Ferdinand, and enabled him to inaugurate an iron era of persecution by setting up the scaffold at Prague, on which the flower of the country’s rank and genius and virtue were offered up in the holocaust we have already described. Such was the series of minor acts which led up to the greater tragedies. Though sufficiently serious in themselves, they are dwarfed into comparative insignificance by the stupendous horrors that tower up behind them.

Before entering on details, we must first of all sketch the general features of this terrible affair. [251] It had long been felt that the antagonism between the old and the new faiths-which every day partook more of passion and less of devotion, and with which so many dynastic and national interests had come to be bound up-would, in the issue, bring on a bloody catastrophe. That catastrophe came at last; but it needed the space of a generation to exhaust its vengeance and consummate its woes. The war was prolonged beyond all previous precedent, mainly from this cause, that no one of the parties engaged in it so far overtopped the others as to be able to end the strife by striking a great and decisive blow. The conflict dragged slowly on from year to year, bearing down before it leaders, soldiers, cities, and provinces, as the lava-flood, slowly descending the mountain-side, buries vineyard and pine-forest, smiling village and populous city, under all ocean of molten rocks.

The armies by which this long-continued and fearfully destructive war was waged were not of overwhelming numbers, according to our modern ideas. The host on either side rarely exceeded 40,000; it oftener fell below than rose above this number; and almost all the great battles of the war were fought with even fewer men. It was then held to be more than doubtful whether a general could efficiently command a greater army than 40,000, or could advantageously employ a more numerous host on one theater. Once, it is true, Wallenstein assembled round his standard nearly 100,000; but this vast multitude, in point of strategical disposition and obedience to command, hardly deserved the name of an army. It was rather a congeries of fighting and marauding bands, scattered over great part of Germany-a scourge to the unhappy provinces, and a terror to those who had called it into existence. Even when the army-roll exhibited 100,000 names, it was difficult to bring into action the half of that number of fighting men, the absentees were always so numerous, from sickness, from desertion, from the necessity of collecting provisions, and from the greed of plunder. The Bohemian army of 1620 was speedily reduced in the field to one-half of its original numbers; the other half was famished, frozen, or forced to desert by lack of pay, not less than four millions and a half of guldens being owing to it at the close of the campaign. No military chest of those days

.-not even that of the emperor, and much less that of any of the princes

.-was rich enough to pay an army of 40,000; and few bankers could be persuaded to lend to monarchs whose ordinary revenues were so disproportionate to their enormous war expenditure. The army was left to feed itself. When one province was eaten up, the army changed to another, which was devoured in its turn. The verdant earth was changed to sackcloth. Citizens and peasants fled in terror-stricken crowds. In the van of the army rose the wail of despair and anguish: in its rear, famine came stalking on in a pavilion of cloud and fire and vapor of smoke.

The masses that swarm and welter in the abyss Germany now became we cannot particularize. But out of the dust, the smoke, and the flame there emerge, towering above the others, a few gigantic forms, which let us name. Ernest of Mansfeld, the fantastic Brunswicker and Bernhard of Weimar form one group. Arrayed against these are Maximilian of Bavaria, and the generals of the League-Tilly and Pappenheim, leaders of the imperial host; the stern, inscrutable Wallenstein, Altringer, and the great Frenchmen, Conde and Turenne; among the Swedes, Horn, Bauer, Torstenson, Wrangel, and over all, lifting himself grandly above the others, is the warrior-prince Gustavus Adolphus. What a prodigious combination of military genius, raised in each case to its highest degree of intensity, by the greatness of the occasion and the wish to cope with a renowned antagonist or rival! The war is one of brilliant battles, of terrible sieges, but of quick alternations of fortune, the conqueror of today becoming often the vanquished of tomorrow. The evolution of political results, however, is slow, and they are often as quickly lost as they had been tediously and laboriously won.

This great war divides itself into three grand periods, the first being from 1618 to 1630. That was the epoch of the imperial victories. Almost defeated at the outset, Ferdinand II brought back success to his standards by the aid of Wallensiein and his immense hordes; and in proportion as the imperial host triumphed, Ferdinand’s claims on Germany rose higher and higher: his object being to make his will as absolute and arbitrary over the whole Fatherland as it was in his paternal estates of Austria. In short, the emperor had revived the project which his ancestor Charles V had so nearly realized in his war with the princes of the Schmalkald League-namely, that of making himself the one sole master of Germany.

At the end of the first period we find that the Popish Power has spread itself like a mighty flood over the whole of Germany to the North Sea. But now, with the commencement of the second period-which extends from 1630 to 1634-the opposing tide of Protestantism begins to set in, and continues to flow, with irresistible force, from north to south, till it has overspread two-thirds of the Fatherland. Nor does the death of its [252] great champion arrest it. Even after the fall of Gustavus Adolphus the Swedish warriors continued for some time to win victories, and still farther to extend the territorial area of Protestantism. The third and closing period of the war extends from 1634 to 1648, and during this time victory and defeat perpetually oscillated from side to side, and shifted from one part of the field to another. The Swedes came down in a mighty wave, which rolled on unchecked till it reached the middle of Germany, the good fortune which attended them receding at times, and then again returning. The French, greedy of booty, spread themselves along the Rhine, hunger and pestilence traversing in their wake the wasted land. In the Swedish army one general after another perished in battle, yet with singular daring and obstinacy the army kept the field, and whether victorious or vanquished in particular battles, always insisted on the former claim of civil and religious liberty to Protestants. In opposition to the Swedes, and quite as immovable, is seen the Prince of the League, Maximilian of Bavaria, and the campaigns which he now fought are amongst the most brilliant which his dynasty have ever achieved. The fanatical Ferdinand II had by this time gone to his grave; the soberer and more tolerant Ferdinand III had succeeded, but he could not disengage himself from the terrible struggle, and it went on for some time longer; but at last peace began to be talked about. Nature itself seemed to cry for a cessation of the awful conflict; cities, towns, and villages were in flames; the land was empty of men; the high-roads were without passengers, and briars and weeds were covering the once richly cultivated fields. Several States had now withdrawn from the conflict: the theater of war was being gradually narrowed, and the House of Hapsburg was eventually so hedged in that it was compelled to come to terms. The countries which had been the seat of the struggle were all but utterly ruined. Germany had lost three-fourths of its population.[4] “Over the brawling of parties a terrible Destiny moved its wings; it lifts up leaders and again casts them down into the bloody mire; the greatest human power is helpless in its hand; at last, satisfied with murder and corpses, it turns its face slowly from the land that is become only a great field of the dead.”[5]

[4]Frederick Schiller, The Thirty Years’’ War, vol. 1., bk. 1.; Edin., 1828. Ludwig Hausser, The Period of the Reformation, vol. 2., part 7., chap. 31; Lond., 1873. B. Chapman, The History of Gustavus Adolphus, and the Thirty Years’’ War, chap. 5; Lond., 1856.

[5]Von Gustav Freytag, Aus dom Jahrhundert grossen Krieges, chap. 1, p. 22; Leipsic, 1867.

Chapter 2: The Army and the Camp

The Battle-fields of the Seventeenth and of the Nineteenth Centuries—All Nationalities drawn into this War—Motley Host around the Banners of the League—Carnage—The Camping-ground—The General’s Tent—Officers’ Tents—Soldiers’ Huts—Change in Method of Fortifying Camps—Sentinels and Outposts—All Languages heard in the Camp—A Flying Plague—Plundering of the Surrounding Country—Prayers and Divine Service—Gambling—Huts of the Sutlers—Camp Signals—Oscillation between Abundance and Famine—Scenes of Profusion—Picture of Famine in the Camp—Superstitions—Morals—Duels

Picture: Market in Nuremberg

Before narrating the successive stages of this most extraordinary war, and summing up its gains to the cause of Protestantism, and the general progress of the world, let us briefly sketch its more prominent characteristics. The picture is not like anything with which we are now acquainted. The battles of our own day are on a vaster scale, and the carnage of a modern field is far greater than was that of the battle-fields of 200 years ago; but the miseries attending a campaign now are much less, and the destruction inflicted by war on the country which becomes its seat is not nearly so terrible as it was in the times of which we write. Altogether, the balance of humanity is in favor of war as carried on in modern times, though it is still, and ever must be, one of the most terrible scourges with which the earth is liable to be visited.

The Thirty Years’ War was not so much German as oecumenical. Not only did individual foreign nationalities respond to the recruiting-drum, as crows flock to a battle-field, lured thither by the effluvia of corpses, but all the peoples of Christian Europe were drawn into its all-embracing vortex. From the west and from the east, from the north [253] and from the south, came men to fight on the German plains, and mingle their blood with the waters of the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe. Englishmen and Scotchmen crossed the sea and hastened to place themselves under one or other of the opposing standards. Danes, Swedes, Finns, crowding to the theater of action, and mingling with the Netherlanders, contended with them in the bloody fray in behalf of the Protestant liberties. The Laplander, hearing amid his snows the bruit of this great conflict, yoked his reindeer, and hurried in his sledge across the ice, bringing with him furs for the clothing of the Swedish troops. The imperial army was even more varied in respect of nationality, of speech, of costume, and of manners. A motley host of Romish Walloons, of Irish adventurers, of Spaniards and Italians were assembled under the banners of the League. Almost every Slav race broke into the land in this day of confusion. The light horseman of the Cossacks was the object of special terror. His movements were rapid, and he passed along plundering and slaughtering without much distinction of friend or foe. There came a mingling of Mohammedans in the corps raised in the provinces which abutted on the Turkish frontier. But most hated of all were the Croats, because they were of all others the most barbarous and the most cruel. So multiform was the host that now covered the Fatherland! We know not where in history another such assemblage of ruffians, plunderers, and murderers is to be beheld as is now seen settling down in Germany. Had the slaughter been confined to the battle-field, the carnage would have been comparatively trifling; but all the land was a battle-field, and every day of the thirty years was a day of battle, for not a day but blood was shed. The times of the Goths furnish us with no such dark picture. When these nations descended from the North to overthrow the Roman Empire, they pressed forward and did not return on their course. The cities, the cultivation, and the men who were trampled down [254] in their march rose up again when they had passed. But the destroying host which we now see collecting from the ends of the earth, and assembling in Germany, does not depart from the land it has invaded. It abides for the space of a generation. It comes to make the land a tomb, and to bury itself in the same vast sepulcher to which it consigned the Germans; for only the merest remnant of that multitudinous host ever returned home. It drew destruction upon itself in the destruction which it inflicted upon the land.

When the field-master received orders to look out for new camping-ground, he chose a spot if possible near a flowing stream, and one capable of being fortified. His first care was to measure off a certain space, in the center of the ground. There was pitched the general’s tent. That tent rose in the midst of the host, distinguished from the others by its superior size and greater grandeur. Over it floated the imperial standard, and there the general abode as in the heart of a fortress. Around this central tent was an open space, on which other tent must not be pitched, and which was walled in by spikes stuck in the ground, and sometimes by a more substantial rampart. Immediately outside the space appropriated to the general and his staff were the tents of the officers. They were made of canvas, and conical in form. Outside these, running in parallel rows or streets, were the huts of the common soldiers. They were composed of boards and straw, and the soldiers were huddled together in them, two and four, with their wives, daughters, boys, and dogs. The whole formed a great square or circle, regiment lying alongside regiment, the encampment being strongly fortified; and out beyond its defense there stretched away a wide cleared space, to admit of the enemy being espied a long while before he could make his near approach.

In former times it had been customary to utilize the baggage wagons in fortifying an encampment. The wagons were ranged all round the tents, sometimes in double, sometimes in treble line; they were fastened the one to the other by iron chains, forming a rampart not easily to be breached by an enemy. Such, as we have already seen, were the fortifications within which the Hussites were wont to encamp. But by the time of which we write this method of defense had been abandoned. Armies in the field now sought to protect themselves by ditches, walls, and other field fortifications. At the outlets or portals of the camp were posted sentinels, who stood grasping in the one hand the musket, its butt-end resting on the ground, and in the other holding the burning torch. At a greater distance were troops of horsemen and pickets of sharp-shooters, to detain the enemy should he appear, and give time to those within the entrenchments to get under arms.

The camp was a city. It was a reproduction of the ancient Babel, for in it were to be heard all the tongues of Europe and some of those of Asia. The German language predominated, but it was almost lost within the encampment by adulteration from so many foreign sources, and especially by the ample addition of oaths and terms of blasphemy. Into the encampment were gathered all the peculiarities, prejudices, and hates of the various nationalities of Europe. These burned all the more fiercely by reason of the narrow space in which they were cooped up, and it was no easy matter to maintain the peace between the several regiments, or even in the same regiment, and prevent the outbreak of war within the camp itself. Other cities cannot change their site, they are tied with their wickedness to the spot on which they stand; but this city was a movable plague, it flitted from province to province, throwing a stream of moral Poison into the air. Even in a friendly country the camp was an insufferable nuisance. Within its walls was, of course, neither seed-time nor harvest, and the provinces, cities, and villages around had to feed it. Hardly had the ground been selected, or the first tent set up, when orders were sent out to all the inhabitants of the surrounding country to bring wood, straw, meat, and provender to the army. On all the roads rolled trams of wagons, laden with provisions, for the camp. Droves of cattle might be seen moving toward the same point. The villages for miles around speedily vanished from sight, the thatch was torn off their roofs, and their woodwork carried away by the soldiers for the building of their own huts, and only the crumbling clay walls were left, to be swept away by the first tempest. Their former inhabitants found refuge in the woods, or with their acquaintances in some remoter village. Besides this general sack a great deal of private plundering and stealing went on; soldiers were continually prowling about in all directions, and Sutlers were constantly driving to and from the camp with what articles they had been able to collect, and which they meant to retail to the soldiers. While the men lounged about in the rows and avenues of the encampment, drinking, gambling, or settling points of national or individual honour with their side-arms, the women cooked, washed, mended clothes, or quarreled with one another, their vituperation often happily unintelligible to the object of it, because uttered in a tongue the other did not understand. [255]

Every morning the drum beat, and an accompanying herald called the soldiers to prayers. This practice was observed even in the imperial camp. On Sunday only did the preacher of the regiment conduct public worship, the soldiers with their families being assembled before him, and seated orderly upon the ground. They were forbidden, during the time of Divine service, to lie about in their huts, or to visit the tents of the Sutlers; and the latter were not to sell drink or food to any one during these hours. In the camp of Gustavus Adolphus prayers were read twice a day. The military discipline enforced by that great leader was much more strict, and the moral decorum of his army far higher, as the comparatively untouched aspect of the fields and villages around bore witness.

In the open space within the enclosure of the camp, near the guard-house, stood the gambling-tables, the ground around being strewed over with mantles, for the convenience of the players. Instead of the slow shuffling of the cards, the speedier throw of the dice was often had recourse to, to decide the stakes; and when the dice were forbidden, the players hid themselves behind hedges and there pursued their game, staking their food, their weapons, their horses, and their booty, when booty they happened to possess. Behind the tent of the upper officer, separated by a broad street, stood the stalls and huts of the Sutlers, butchers, and master of the cook-shops; the price of all foods and drinks being fixed by a certain officer. The luxury and profusion that prevailed in the officers’ tents, where the most expensive wines were drunk, and only viands prepared by a French cook were eaten, offered an indifferent example of economy and carefulness to the common soldier. The military signals of the camp were the beat of a large drum for the foot-soldier, and the peal of a trumpet for the cavalry. When any important operation was to be undertaken on the morrow, a herald, attired in a bright silk robe, embroidered before and behind with the arms of his prince, rode through the host on the previous evening, attended by the trumpeter, and announced the order for the coming day. This was fatal to discipline, inasmuch as it gave warning to the lounger and the plunderer to set out during the night in search of booty.

The camp oscillated between overflowing abundance and stark famine. When the army had won a battle, and victory gave them the plunder of a city as the recompense of their bravery, there came a good time to the soldiers. Food and drink were then plentiful, and of course cheap. In the last year of the war a cow might be bought in the Bavarian host for almost literally the smallest coin. Then, too, came good times to the merchants in the camp, for then they could command any amount of sale, and obtain any price for their wares. The soldiers tricked themselves out with expensive feathers, scarlet hose, with gold lacings, and rich sables, and they purchased showy dresses and mules for the females of their establishments. Grooms rode out dressed from head to heel in velvet. The Croats in the winter of 1630-31 were so amply supplied with the precious metals that not only were their girdles filled and distended with the number of their gold coins, but they wore golden plates as breast-plates. Paul Stockman, Pastor of Lutzen, a small town in Saxony, relates that before the battle of Lutzen one soldier rode a horse adorned with gold and silver stars, and another had his steed ornamented with 300 silver moons.[1] The camp-women, and sometimes the horsemen, arrayed themselves in altar-cloths, mass-robes, and priests’ coats. The topers pledged one another in the most expensive wines, which they drank out of the altar-cups; and from their stolen gold they fabricated long chains, from which they were accustomed to wrench off a link when they had a reckoning to discharge or a debt to pay.

The longer the war continued, the less frequent and less joyous became these halcyon days. Want then began to be more frequent in the camp than superfluity. “The spoiling of the provinces avenged itself frightfully on the spoilers themselves. The pale specter of hunger, the forerunner of plague, crept through the lanes of the camp, and raised its bony hand before the door of every straw hut. Then the supplies from the neighborhood stopped; neither fatted ox nor laden cart was now seen moving towards the camp. The price of living became at these times exorbitant; for example, in 1640 a loaf of bread could not be purchased by the Swedish army in the neighborhood of Gotha for a less sum than a ducat. The sojourn in the camp became, even for the most inured soldier, unendurable. Everywhere were hollow-eyed parchment faces; in every row of huts were sick and dying; the neighborhood of the camp was infected by the putrid bodies of dead horses and mules; all around was a desert of untilled fields, and blackened ruins of villages, and the camp itself became a dismal city of the dead. The accompaniments of the host, the women and children namely, speedily vanished in the burial-trenches; only the most wretched dogs

[1]Gustav. Freytag, Jahrhundert dem grossen Krieges, chap. 2, p. 72.

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kept themselves alive on the most disgusting food; the others were killed and eaten.[2] At such a time the army melted quickly away, and no skill of the ablest leader could avert its ruin.”[3]

There arose a mingled and luxuriant crop of Norse, German, and Roman superstitions in the camp. The soldiers had unbounded faith in charms and incantations, and sought by their use to render their weapons powerful and themselves invulnerable. They had prayers and forms of words by which they hoped to obtain the mastery in the fight, and they wore amulets to protect them from the deadly bullet and the fatal thrust of dagger. The camp was visited by gypsies and soothsayers, who sold secret talismans to the soldiers as infallible protections in the hour of danger. Blessings, conjurations, witchcrafts, in all their various forms abounded in the imperial army as much as did guns and swords and pikes. The soldiers fell all the same in the deadly breach, in the shock of battle, and in the day of pale famine, The morals of the camp were without shame, speaking generally. Almost every virtue perished but that of soldierly honour and fidelity to one’s flag, so long as one served under it; for the mercenary often changed his master, and with him the cause for which he fought. The mood of mind prevalent in the camp is well hit off by Schiller’s Norseman’s song-“A sharp sword is my field, plunder is my plough, the earth is my bed, the sky is my covering, my cloak is my house, and wine is my eternal life.” Duels were of daily occurrence, and when at last they were forbidden, the soldiers sought secret places beyond the lines, where they settled their quarrels. Gustavus Adolphus punished dueling with death, even in the case of his highest officers, but no law could suppress the practice.

[2]From the parish registers of Seebergen, near Gotha-apud Gustav. Freytag.

[3]Gustav. Freytag, pp. 72, 73.

Chapter 3: The March and its Devastations

Germany before the War—Its Husbandry—Its Villages—Its Cities—Dress, etc., of the Citizens—Schools—Its Protestantism—Memories of the Past—Foreign Soldiers Enter Thuringia—Their Oppressions of the Peasants—Exactions—Portents—Demoralization of Society—Villagers Driven into Hiding-places—Cruelties on Protestant Pastors—Michel Ludwig—George Faber—John Otto—Andrew Pochmann—The Pastor of Stelzen

Picture: Storm on a Moor in Saxony

Picture: In Nuremberg

To know the desolation to which Germany was reduced by the long war, it is necessary to recall the picture of what it was before it became the theater of that unspeakable tragedy. In 1618, the opening year of a dismal era, Germany was accounted a rich country. Under the influence of a long peace its towns had enlarged in size, its villages had increased in number, and its smiling fields testified to the excellence of its husbandry. The early dew of the Reformation was not yet exhaled. The sweet breath of that morning gave it a healthy moral vigor, quickened its art and industry, and filled the land with all good things. Wealth abounded in the cities, and even the country people lived in circumstances of comfort and ease.

In Thuringia and Franconia the villages were numerous. They were not left open and without defense. Some of them were surrounded with a broad trench or ditch; others were defended with stone walls, in which were openings or gateways opposite all the principal streets, with heavy doors to shut them in at night. Nor was the churchyard left unprotected; walls enclosed the resting-places of the dead; and these, oftener than once, formed the last refuge of the living. As a further security against surprise or molestation, village and meadow were patrolled night and day by watchmen. The houses were built of wood or clay; they stood close to each other, ranged in narrow streets, and though their exteriors were mean, within they were not deficient in furnishings and comfort.

The fruit-trees stood round the village, perfuming the air with their spring blossoms, and delighting the eye with their autumn fruits. At the village gates, or under the boughs of one of its embowering trees, a fountain would gush out, and pour its crystal waters into a stone trough. Here weary traveller might halt, and here ox or horse, toiling under the load, might drink. The quiet courtyards were filled with domestic fowls; squadrons of white geese sallied across the stubble-fields, or, like fleet at anchor, basked in the sun; teams of horses [257] were ranged in the stalls, and among them might be some great hard-boned descendant of the old charger. But the special pride of the husbandman were the flocks of sheep and oxen that roamed in the meadow, or grazed on the hill-side. Besides the ordinary cereals, crops of flax and hops covered his fields. It is believed that the cultivation of Germany in 1618 was not inferior to its cultivation in 1818.

The cities were strongly fortified: their walls were not infrequently double, flanked by towers, and defended by broad and deep moats. It was observed that stone walls crumbled under the stroke of cannon-balls, and this led to the adoption of external defenses, formed of earthen mounds, as in the case of the Antwerp citadel. Colleges, gymnasia, and printing-presses flourished in the towns, as did trade and commerce. The great road passing by Nuremberg, that ancient entrepot of the commerce of the West, diffused over Germany the merchandise which still continued to flow, in part at least, in its old channel. The Sunday was not honoured as it ought to have been within their gates. When Divine service was over, the citizens were wont to assemble on the exchange, where amusement or business would profane the sacred hours. They were much given to feasting: their attire was richer than at the present day: the burghers wore velvets, silks, and laces, and adorned themselves with feathers, gold and silver clasps, and finely mounted side-arms. The table of the citizen was regulated by a sumptuary law: the rich were not to exceed the number of courses prescribed to them; and the ordinary citizen was not to dine in plainer style than was appointed his rank. Dancing parties were forbidden after sunset. Those who went out at night had to carry lanterns or torches: ultimately torches were interdicted, and a metal basket fixed at the street-corners, filled with blazing tar-wood, would dispel the darkness.

Since the Reformation, a school had existed in every town and village in which there was a church. In the decline of the Lutheran Reformation, the incumbent discharged, in many cases, the duties of both pastor and schoolmaster. He instructed the youth on the week-days, and preached to their parents on the Sunday. Sometimes there was also a schoolmistress. A small fee was exacted from the scholars. The capacity of reading and writing was pretty generally diffused amongst the people. Catechisms, Psalters, and Bibles were common in the houses of the Protestants. The hymns of Luther were sung in their sanctuaries and dwellings, and might often be heard resounding from garden and rural lane. The existing generation of Germans were the grandchildren of the men who had been the contemporaries of Luther. They loved to recall the wonders of the olden time, when more eyes were turned upon Wittemberg than upon Rome, and the Reformer filled a larger space in the world’s gaze than either the emperor or the Pope. As they sat under the shade of their linden-trees, the father would tell the son how Tetzel came with his great red cross; how a monk left his cell to cry aloud that “God only can forgive sin,” and how the pardon-monger fled at the sound of his voice; how the Pope next took up the quarrel, and launched his bull, which Luther burned; how the emperor unsheathed his great sword, but instead of extinguishing, only spread the conflagration wider. He would speak of the great day of Worms, of the ever-memorable victory at Spires; and how the princes and knights of old were wont to ride to the Diet, or march to battle, singing Luther’s hymns, and having verses of Holy Scripture blazoned on their banners. He would tell how in those days the tents of Protestantism spread themselves out till they filled the land, and how the hosts of Rome retreated and pitched their encampment afar off. But when he compared the present with the past, he would heave a sigh. “Alas!” we hear the aged narrator say, “the glory is departed.” The fire is now cold on the national hearth; no longer do eloquent doctors and chivalrous princes arise to do battle for the Protestantism of the Fatherland. Alas! the roll of victories is closed, and the territory over which the Reformation stretched its scepter grows narrower every year. Deep shadows gather on the horizon, and through its darkness may be seen the shapes of mustering hosts, while dreadful sounds as of battle strike upon the ear. It is a night of storms that is descending on the grandchildren of the Reformers.

At last came the gathering of foreign troops, and their converging march on the scene of operations. Startling forms began to show themselves on the frontiers of Thuringia, and its vast expanse of glade and forest, of village and town, became the scene of oft-repeated alarms and of frightful sufferings. Foreign soldiers, with the savage looks of battle, and raiment besmeared with blood, marched into its villages, and entering its thresholds, took possession of house and bed, and terrifying the owner and family, peremptorily demanded provisions and contributions. Not content with what was supplied them for their present necessities, they destroyed and plundered whatever their eyes lighted upon. After 1626, these scenes continued year by year, growing only the worse each successive year. Band followed band, and more than one army seated itself in the villages of Thuringia [258] for the winter. The demands of the soldiery were endless, and compliance was enforced by blows and cruel torturings. The peasant most probably had hidden his treasures in the earth on the approach of the host; but he saw with terror the foreign man-at-arms exercising a power, which to him seemed magical, of discovering the place where his hoards were concealed. If it happened that the soldier was baffled in the search, the fate of the poor man was even worse, for then he himself was seized, and by torments which it would be painful to describe, was compelled to discover where his money and goods lay buried. On the fate of his wife and his daughters we shall be silent. The greatest imaginable horrors were so customary that their non-perpetration was a matter of surprise. Of all was the unhappy husbandman plundered. His bondman was carried off to serve in the war; his team was unyoked from the plough to drag the baggage or the cannon; his flocks and herds were driven off from the meadow to be slaughtered and eaten by the army; and the man who had risen in affluence in the morning, was stripped of all and left penniless before night.

It was not till after the death of Gustavus Adolphus that the sufferings of the country people reached their maximum. The stricter discipline maintained by that great leader had its effect not only in emboldening the peasants, and giving them some little sense of security in these awful times, but also in restraining the other military corps, and rendering their license less capricious and reckless than it otherwise would have been. There was some system in the levying of supplies and the recruiting of soldiers during the life of Gustavus; but after the fall of the Swedish king these bonds were relaxed, and the greatest sufferings of the past appeared tolerable in comparison with the evils that now afflicted the Germans. In addition to their other endurances, they were oppressed by superstitious terrors and forebodings. Their minds, full of superstition, became the prey of credulous fancies. They interpreted everything, if removed in the least from the ordinary course, into a portent of calamity. They saw terrible sights in the sky, they heard strange and menacing voices speaking out of heaven and specters gliding past on the earth. In the Dukedom of Hildburghausen, white crosses lighted up the firmament when the enemy approached. When the soldiers entered the office of the town clerk, they were met by a spirit clothed in white, who waved them back. After their [259] departure, there was heard during eight days, in the choir of the burned church, a loud snorting and sighing. At Gumpershausen was a girl whose visions and revelations spread excitement over the whole district. She had been visited, she said, by a little angel, who appeared first in a red and then in a blue mantle, and who, sitting in her sight upon the bed, cried, “Woe!” to the inhabitants, and admonished them against blasphemy and cursing, and foretold the most frightful shedding of blood if they did not leave off their wickedness.[1] After the terror came defiance and despair. An utter demoralization of society followed. Wives deserted their husbands, and children their parents. The army passed on, but the vices and diseases which they had brought with them continued to linger in the devastated and half- peopled villages behind them. To other vices, drunkenness was added. Excess in ardent spirits had deformed the German peasantry since the period of the Peasant-war, and now it became a prevalent habit, and regard for the rights and property of one’s neighbor soon ceased. At the beginning of the war, village aided village, and mutually lightened each other’s calamities so far as was in their power. When a village was robbed of its cattle, and sold to the adjoining one by the marauding host, that other village returned the oxen to their original owners on repayment of the price which they had paid to the soldiers. Even in Franconia these mutual services were frequently exchanged between Popish and Protestant communities. But gradually, their oppression and their demoralization advancing step by step, the country people began to steal and plunder like the soldiers Armed bands would cross the boundaries of their commune, and carry off from their neighbors whatsoever they coveted. Brigandage was now added to robbery. They lurked in the woods and the mountain passes, lying in wait for the stragglers of the army, and often took a red revenge. How sad the change! The woodman, who had once on a time awakened all the echoes of the forest glades with his artless songs, now terrified them with the shrieks of his victim. A bunting hatred arose between the soldiers and the peasantry, which lasted till the very end of the war, and the frightful traces of which long survived the conflict.

So long as their money lasted, the villagers bought themselves off from the obligation of having the soldiers billeted upon them; but when their money was spent they were without defense. Watchmen were stationed on the steeples and high places in the neighborhood, who gave warning the moment they descried on the far-off horizon the approach

[1]Gustav. Freytag, chap. 3, p. 111.

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of the host. The villagers would then bring out their furniture and valuables, and convey them to hiding-places selected weeks before, and themselves live the while in these places a most miserable life. They dived into the darkest parts of the forests; they burrowed in the bleakest moors; they lurked in old clay pits and in masses of fallen masonry; and to this day the people of those parts show with much interest the retreats where their wretched forefathers sought refuge from the fury of the soldiery. The peasant always came back to his village-too commonly to find it only a ruin; but his attachment to the spot set him eagerly to work to rebuild his overturned habitation, and sow the little seed he had saved in the down-trodden soil. He had been robbed of his horse, it may be, but he would harness himself to the plough, and obeying the force of habit, would continue the processes of tilling and sowing, though he had but small hopes of reaping. The little left him he was careful to conceal, and strove to look even poorer than he was. He taught himself to live amid dirt and squalor and apparent poverty, and he even extinguished the fire on his hearth, lest its light, shining through the casement, should attract to his dwelling any straggler who might be on the outlook for a comfortable lodging for the night. “His scanty food he concealed in places from which even the ruthless enemy turned away in horror, such as graves, coffins, and amongst skulls.”[2]

The clergy were the chief consolers of the people in these miserable scenes, and at the same time the chief sufferers in them. The flint brunt of the imperial troops fell on the village pastor; his church was first spoiled, then burned down, and his flock scattered. He would then assemble his congregation, or such as remained of them, for worship in a granary or similar place, or on the open common, or in a wood. Not infrequently were himself and his family singled out by the imperial soldiers as the special objects of rudeness and violence. His house was commonly the first to be robbed, his family the first to suffer outrage; but generally the pastors took patiently the spoiling of their goods and the buffetings of their persons, and by their heroic behavior did much to support the hearts of the people in those awful times.

We give a few instances extracted from the brief registers of those times. Michel Ludwig was pastor in Sonnenfeld since 1633. When the times of suffering came he preached in the wood, under the open heaven, to his flock. He summoned his congregation with the drum, for bell he had none, and armed men were on the outlook while he preached. He continued these ministrations during eight years, till his congregation had entirely disappeared. A Swedish colonel invited the brave man to be preacher to the regiment, and he became at a later date president of the field consistory near Torstenson, and superintendent at Weimar.

Instances occur of studious habits pursued through these unsettled times. George Faber, at Gellershausen, preached to a little flock of some three or four at the constant peril of life. He rose every morning at three, studied and carefully committed to memory his sermon, besides writing learned commentaries on several books of the Bible.

John Otto, Rector of Eisfeld in 1635, just married, in addition to the duties of his office had to teach the public school during eight years, and supported himself by threshing oats, cutting wood, and similar occupations. The record of these vicissitudes is contained in jottings by himself in his Euclid. Forty-two years he held his office in honour. His successor, John Schmidt, was a famous Latin scholar, and owed his appointment to the fact of his being found reading a Greek poem in the guard-house, to which he had been taken by the soldiers.

The story of Andrew Pochmann, afterwards superintendent, illustrates the life led in those times, so full of deadly dangers, narrow escapes, and marvelous interpositions, which strengthened the belief of the men who experienced them in a watchful Providence which protected them, while millions were perishing around them. Pochmann was an orphan, who had been carried off with two brothers by the Croats. Escaping with his brothers during the night, he found means of entering a Latin school. Being a second time taken by the soldiers, he was made quarter-master gunner. In the garrison he continued his studies, and finding among his comrades scholars from Paris and London, he practiced with them the speaking of Latin. Once, when sick, he lay down by the watch-fire with his powder-flask, containing a pound and a half of powder, under his sleeve. As he lay, the fire reached his sleeve and burned a large portion of it, but without exploding his powder-flask. He awoke to find himself alone in the deserted camp, and without a farthing in his pocket. Among the ashes of the now extinct watch-fire he found two thalers, and with these he set out for Gotha. On the way he halted at Langensalza, and turned into a small and lonely house on the wall. He was received by an old woman, who, commiserating his wretched plight, as shown in his haggard looks and emaciated frame, laid him upon a bed to rest. His

[2]Gustav. Freytag, p. 116.

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hostess chanced to be a plague nurse, and the couch on which he was laid had but recently been occupied by a plague patient. The disease was raging in the town; nevertheless, the poor wanderer remained unattacked, and went on his way, to close his life amid happier scenes than those that had marked its opening.

The village and Pastor of Stelzen will also interest us. The spring of the Itz was a holy place in even pagan times. It rises at the foot of the mountains, where they sink down in terraces to the banks of the Maine, and gushes out from the corner of a cave, which is overshadowed by ancient beeches and linden-trees. Near this well stood, before the era of the Reformation, a chapel to the Virgin; and at times hundreds of nobles, with an endless retinue of servants, and troops of pilgrims would assemble on the spot. In 1632 the village in the neighborhood of the well was burned down, and only the church, school-house, and a shepherd’s hut remained standing. The pastor, Nicolas Schubert, was reduced to extreme misery. In the ensuing winter we find him inditing the following heart-rending letter to the magistrate:-“I have nothing more, except my eight small naked children; I live in a very old and dangerously dilapidated school-house, without floors or chimneys, in which I find it impossible to study, or to do anything to help myself. I am in want of food, clothes-in short, of everything.-Given at the place of my misery-Stelzen.-Your respectful, poor, and burned-up pastor.”

Pastor Schubert was removed, whether to a richer living we know not-a poorer it could not be. His successor was also plundered, and received in addition a blow from a dagger by a soldier. A second successor was unable to keep himself alive. After that, for fourteen years the parish had no pastor. Every third Sunday the neighboring clergyman visited and conducted Divine service in the destroyed village. At last, in 1647, the church itself was burned to the bare walls. Such was the temporal and spiritual destitution that now overwhelmed that land which, half a century before, had been so full of “the bread that perisheth,” and also of that “which endures to eternal life.”[3]

[3]Gustav. Freytag, pp. 119-122.

Chapter 4: Conquest of North Germany by Ferdinand II and the “Catholic League”

Ferdinand II’s Aims—Extinction of Protestantism and the German Liberties—Ban of the Empire pronounced on Frederick V—Apathy of the Protestant Princes—They Withdraw from the Protestant Union—Count Mansfeld—Duke of Brunswick—The Number and Devastation of their Armies—Heidelberg Taken—The Palatinate Occupied—James I of England—Outwitted by Ferdinand and Philip II—Electorate of the Rhine Given to the Duke of Bavaria—Treaty between England, Holland, and Denmark—Christian IV of Denmark—Leads the Protestant Host—Ferdinand II Raises an Army—Wallenstein—His Character—Grandeur—Personal Appearance -His Method of Maintaining an Army—Movements of the Campaign of 1626—Battle of Lutter—Victory of Tilly—Campaign of 1627—North Germany Occupied by the League—Further Projects of Ferdinand II

Picture: Under the Linden-trees

Picture: Albrecht von Wallenstein.

From this general picture of the war, which shows us fanaticism and ruffianism holding saturnalia inside the camp, and terror and devastation extending their gloomy area from day to day outside of it, we turn to follow the progress of its campaigns and battles, and the slow and gradual evolution of its moral results, till they issue in the Peace of Westphalia, which gave a larger measure of toleration to the Protestants than they had ever hitherto enjoyed.

The iron hand of military violence, moved by the Jesuits, was at this hour crushing out Protestantism in Bohemia, in Hungary, in Transylvania, in Styria, and in Carinthia. Dragonnades, confiscations, and executions were there the order of the day. The nobles were dying on the scaffold, the ministers were shut up in prison or chained to the galleys, churches and school-houses were lying in ruins, and the people, driven into exile or slaughtered by soldiers, had disappeared from the land, and such as remained had found refuge within the pale of the Church of Rome. But the extermination of the Protestant faith in his own dominions could not satisfy the vast zeal of Ferdinand II. He aimed at nothing less than its overthrow throughout all Germany. When there would not be one Protestant church or a single Lutheran throughout that whole extent of territory lying between the German Sea and the Carpathian [262] chain, then, and only then, would Ferdinand have accomplished the work for which the Jesuits had trained him, and fulfilled the vow he made when he lay prostrate before the Virgin of Loretto. But ambition was combined with his fanaticism. He aimed also at sweeping away all the charters and constitutions which conferred independent rights on the German States, and subjecting both princes and people to his own will. Henceforward, Germany should know only two masters: the Church of Rome was to reign supreme and uncontrolled in things spiritual, and he himself should exercise an equally absolute sway in things political and civil. It was a two-fold tide of despotism that was about to overflow the countries of the Lutheran Reformation.

Having inaugurated a reaction on the east of Germany, Ferdinand now set on foot a “Catholic restoration” on the west of it. He launched this part of his scheme by fulminating against Frederick V, Palatine of the Rhine, the ban of the empire. Frederick had offended by assuming the crown of Bohemia. After reigning during only one winter he was chased from Prague, as we have seen, by the arms of the Catholic Leslie. But the matter did not end there: the occasion offered a fair pretext for advancing the scheme of restoring the Church of Rome once more to supreme and universal dominancy in Germany. Ferdinand accordingly passed sentence on Frederick, depriving him of his dominions and dignities, as a traitor to the emperor and a disturber of the public peace. He empowered Maximilian of Bavaria, as head of the League, to execute the ban-that is, to take military possession of the Palatinate. Now was the time for the princes of the Protestant Union to unsheathe the sword, and by wielding it in defense of the Palatine, their confederate, who had risked more in the common cause than any one of them all, to prove their zeal and sincerity in the great object for which they were associated. They would, at the same time, shut the door at which the triumphant tide of armed Romanism was sure to flow in and overwhelm their own dominions. But, unhappily for themselves and their cause, instead of acting in the spirit of their Confederacy, they displayed an extraordinary degree of pusillanimity and coldness. The terror of Ferdinand and the Catholic Leslie had fallen upon them, and they left their chief to his fate, congratulating themselves that their superior prudence had saved them from the disasters by which Frederick was overtaken. The free cities of the Confederacy forsook him; and, as if to mark still more their indifference to the cause to which they had so lately given their most solemn pledge, they withdrew from the Union, and the example of cowardly defection thus set by them was soon followed by the princes. How sure a sign of the approach of evil days! We behold zeal on the Popish side, and only faint-heartedness and indifference on that of the Protestants.

The troops of the League, under Duke Maximilian’s famous general, Tilly, were now on their march to the Palatinate; but the Protestant princes and free cities sat still, content to see the fall of that powerful Protestant province, without lifting a finger on its behalf. At that moment a soldier of fortune, whose wealth lay in his sword, assembled an army of 20,000, and came forward to fill the vacant place of the cities and princes. Ernest, Count Mansfeld, offered battle to the troops of Spain and Bavaria, on behalf of the Elector Frederick. Mansfeld was soon joined by the Margrave of Baden, with a splendid troop. Christian, Duke of Brunswick, who had conceived a romantic passion for Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Electress-Palatine, whose glove he always wore in his hat, also joined Count Mansfeld, with an army of some 20,000, which he had raised in Lower Saxony, and which he maintained without pay, a secret he had learnt from Mansfeld.

These combined hosts, which the hope of plunder, quite as much as the desire of replacing Frederick V on his throne, had drawn together, could not be much if at all below 50,000. They were terrible scourges to the country which became the scene of their marches and of their battles. They alighted like a flock of vultures on the rich chapters and bishoprics of the Rhine. During the summers of 1621 and 1622, they marched backwards and forwards, as the fortune of battle impelled them, in that rich valley, robbing the peasantry, levying contributions upon the towns, slaughtering their opponents, and being themselves slaughtered in turn. When hard pressed they would cross the river into France, and continue, in that new and unexhausted field, their devastations and plunderings. But ultimately the arms of Tilly prevailed. After murderous conflicts, in which both sides sustained terrible loss, the bands of Mansfeld retreated northward, leaving the cities and lands of the Palatinate to be occupied by the troops of the League. On the 17th of September, 1622, Heidelberg was taken, after a terrible storm; its magnificent palace was partially burned, its university was closed, and the treasures of its world-renowned library were carried away in fifty wagon-loads to Rome. The rich city of Mannheim was taken by the soldiers of the League in the November following Thus the gates of the Palatinate [263] were opened to the invading hosts, and they entered and gleaned where the troops of Mansfeld and Brunswick had reaped the first rich harvest.

The man whom we have seen first driven from the throne of Bohemia, and next despoiled of his hereditary dominions was, as our readers know, the son-in-law of the King of England. It is with some astonishment that we see James I standing by a quiet spectator of the ruin of his daughter’s husband. Elizabeth, and the great statesmen who gave such glory to her throne, would have seen in the swelling wave, crested with victory, that was setting in upon Germany, peril to England; and, even though the happiness of no relation had been at stake, would, for the safety of her throne and the welfare of her realm, have found means of moderating, if not arresting, the reaction, before it had overwhelmed those princes and lands where she must ever look for her trustiest allies. But James I and his minister Buckingham had neither the capacity to devise, nor the spirit to pursue, so large a policy as this. They allowed themselves to be befooled by the two leading Popish Powers. Ferdinand of Austria buoyed up the English monarch with hopes that he would yet restore his son-in-law to his Electorate, although he had already decided that Frederick should see his dominions no more; and Philip II took care to amuse the English king with the proposal of a Spanish marriage for his son, and James was mean-spirited enough to be willing to wed the heir of his crown to the daughter of the man who, had he been able to compass his designs, would have left him neither throne nor kingdom. The dupe of both Austria and Spain, James I. sat still till the ruin of the Elector Frederick was almost completed. When he saw what had happened he was willing to give both money and troops, but it was too late. The occupation of Frederick’s dominions by the army of the League made the proffered assistance not only useless it gave it even an air of irony. The Electorate of the Rhine was bestowed upon the Duke of Bavaria, as a recompense for his services.[1] The territory was added to the area of Romanism, the Protestant ministers were driven out, and Jesuits and priests crowded in flocks to take possession of the newly subjugated domains. The former sovereign of these domains found asylum in a corner of Holland. It was a bitter cup to Elizabeth, the wife of Frederick, and the daughter of the King of England, who is reported to have said that she would rather live on bread and water as a queen than, occupying a lower station, inhabit the most magnificent mansion, and sit down at the most luxurious table.[2]

Other princes, besides the King of England, now opened their eyes. The Elector of Saxony, the descendant of that Maurice who had chased Charles

V. across the Alps of the Tyrol, and wrested from him by force of arms the Treaty of Passau, which gave toleration to the Lutherans, was not only indifferent to the misfortunes of the Elector Frederick, but saw without concern the cruel suppression of Protestantism in Bohemia. Content to be left in peace in his own dominions, and not ill-pleased, it may be, to see his rivals the Calvinists humbled, he refused to act the part which his descent and his political power made incumbent upon him. The Elector of Brandenburg, the next in rank to Saxony, showed himself at this crisis equally unpatriotic and shortsighted. But now they saw-what they might have foreseen long before, but for the blindness that selfishness ever inflicts that the policy of Ferdinand had placed them in a new and most critical position.[3] East and west the Catholic reaction had hemmed them in; Protestantism had disappeared in the kingdoms beyond the Danube, and now the Rhine Electorate had undergone a forced conversion. On all sides the wave of a triumphant reaction was rolling onward, and how soon it might sweep over their own territories, now left almost like islands in the midst of a raging sea, they could not tell. The tremendous blunder they had committed was plain enough, but how to remedy it was more than their wisdom could say.

At this moment the situation of affairs in England changed, and a prospect began to open up of a European coalition against the Powers of Spain and Austria. The “Spanish sleeping-cup,” as the English nation termed it, had been rudely dashed from the lip of James I, and the monarch saw that he had been practiced upon by Philip II. The marriage with the Infanta of Spain was broken off at the last moment; there followed a rapture with that Power, and the English king, smarting from the insult, applied to Parliament (February, 1624) for the means of reinstating Frederick in the Palatinate by force of arms.[4] The Parliament, who had felt the nation lowered, and the Protestant cause brought into peril, by the truckling of the king,

[1]Chapman, Hist. of Gustavus Adolphus, p. 151.

[2]Schiller, The Thirty Years’’ War, bk. 2., pp. 161-173. Chapman, Hist. of Gustavus Adolphus, chap. 5, pp. 142-150. Ludwig Hausser, The Period of the Reformation, vol. 2., pp. 108,109.

[3]Schiller, The Thirty Years’’ War, vol. 1., pp. 145, 146, 163. Ludwig Hausser, The Period of the Reformation, vol. 2., pp. 110, 111.

[4]Schiller, The Thirty Years’’ War, vol. 1., p. 165. Ludwig Hausser, The Period of the Reformation, vol. 2., p. 112.

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heartily responded to the royal request, and voted a liberal subsidy. Mansfeld and Brunswick came over to London, where they met with a splendid reception. A new army was provided for them, and they sailed to begin operations on the Rhine; but the expedition did not prosper. Before they had struck a single blow the plague broke out in the camp of Mansfeld, and swept away half his army, amid revolting horrors. Brunswick had no better fortune than his companion. He was over-taken by Tilly on the Dutch frontier, and experienced a tremendous defeat. During the winter that followed, the two generals wandered about with the remains of their army, and a few new recruits, whom they had persuaded to join their banners, but they accomplished nothing save the terror they inspired in the districts which they visited, and the money given them by the inhabitants, on the condition of their departure with their banditti.

Charles I having now succeeded his father on the throne of England, the war was resumed on a larger scale, and with a more persistent energy. On the 9th of December, 1625, a treaty was concluded at the Hague between England, Holland, and Denmark, for opposing by joint arms the power of Hapsburg, and reinstating the Elector Frederick.[5] It was a grave question who should head the expedition as leader of its armies. Proposals had been made to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, but at that moment he had on his hands a war with Poland, and could not embark in

[5]Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., p. 112. Schiller, vol. 1., pp. 172, 173.

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another and more onerous campaign. England was not in a condition for carrying on hostilities in Germany on her own account. Holland had not yet ended its great struggle with Spain, and dared not expend on other countries the strength so much needed within itself. Of the three contracting Powers, Denmark was the one which was most at liberty to charge itself with the main burden of the enterprise. It was ultimately arranged that the Danish king should conduct the campaign, and the support of the joint enterprise was distributed among the parties as follows:-Denmark was to raise an army of 30,000, or thereabouts; England was to furnish L 30,000, and Holland L 5,000, month by month, as subsidy. The latter engaged, moreover, should the imperial army press upon the King of Denmark, to make a diversion next summer by placing a fair army in the field, and by contributing a number of ships to strengthen the English fleet on the coast.[6]

Christian IV of Denmark, who was now placed at the head of the Protestant armies in this great war, was one of the most courageous, enlightened, and patriotic monarchs of his time. He hid under a rough exterior and bluff manners a mind of great shrewdness, and a generous and noble disposition. He labored with equal wisdom and success to elevate the condition of the middle class of his subjects. He lightened their burdens, he improved their finance, and he incited them to engage in the pursuits of commerce and trade. These measures, which laid the foundations of that material prosperity which Denmark long enjoyed, made him beloved at home, and greatly raised his influence abroad. His kingdom, he knew, had risen by the Reformation, and its standing, political and social, was fatally menaced by the Popish reaction now in progress. As Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, he was a prince of the German Empire, and might therefore, without wounding the self-love of others, take a prominent position in checking a movement which threatened the liberties of all Germany, as well as the independence of his own dominions.

The appearance of Christian IV at the head of the army of the Protestant Confederacy makes it necessary that we should introduce ourselves to another-a different, but a very powerful figure-that now stood up on the other side. The combinations on the one side rendered it advisable that Ferdinand should make a new disposition of the forces on his. Hitherto he had carried on the war with the arms of the Catholic League. Maximilian of Bavaria and his general, Tilly, occupied the foreground, and were the most prominent actors in the business. Ferdinand now resolved to come to the front in person, by raising an army of his own, and appointing a general to lead it. But a formidable obstacle met him on the threshold of his new project-his military chest was empty. He had gathered many millions front his confiscations in Bohemia, but these had been swallowed up by the Jesuits, or spent on the wars in Hungary, and nothing remained wherewith to fight the battles of the “Restoration.” In his difficulty, he applied to one of his generals, who had served with distinction against the Turks and Venetians, and had borne arms nearer home in Bohemia and Hungary. This soldier was Albrecht von Wallenstein, a man of undeniable abilities, but questionable designs. It was this gloomy personage who gave Ferdinand an army.

The same war-like race which had sent forth Zisca to fight the battles of the Hussite Reformers, gave Wallenstein to Rome. He was born on the 15th of September, 1583, of Protestant parents, who had, indeed, been Calixtines through several generations. Being early left an orphan, he was adopted by an uncle, who sent him to the Jesuit college at Olmutz. The Fathers could have no difficulty in discerning the genius of the boy, and they would spare no pains to adapt that genius to the purposes in which they might afterwards have occasion to employ it. The Jesuits had already fashioned a class of men for the war, of whom they had every reason to be proud, and who will remain to all time monuments of their skill and of the power of their maxims in making human souls pliant and terrible instruments of their will. Ferdinand of Austria, Maximilian of Bavaria, and his general, Tilly, were their handiwork. To these they were about to add a fourth. With a dark soul, a resolute will, and a heart which ambition had rendered hard as the nether mill-stone, the Jesuits beheld in Wallenstein a war-machine of their own creating, in the presence of which they themselves at times trembled. The same hands which had fashioned these terrible instruments put them forth, and moved them to and fro over the vast stage which we see swimming in blood.

Wallenstein was now in the prime of life. He had acquired in former campaigns great experience in the raising and disciplining of troops. To his fame as a soldier he now added the prestige of an enormous fortune. An exceedingly rich old widow had fallen in love with him, and overcome by the philter she gave him, and not, it is to be presumed, by the love of her gold, he married her. Next came the confiscations of estates in Bohemia, and

[6]Chapman, pp. 159, 160.

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Wallenstein bought at absurdly low prices not fewer than sixty-seven estates.[7] Ferdinand gave him in addition the Duchy of Friedland, containing nine towns, fifty-seven castles, and villages. After the king, he was the richest landed proprietor in Bohemia Not content with these hoards, he sought to increase his goods by trading with the bankers, by lending to the court, and by imposing taxes on both friend and foe.

But if his revenues were immense, amounting to many millions of florins annually, his expenditure was great. He lived surrounded by the pomp of an Eastern monarch. His table was sumptuous, and some hundred guests sat down at it daily. Six gates gave entrance to his palace, which still stands on the right bank of the Moldau, on the slope of the Hradschin at Prague. The pile is immense, and similar chateaux were erected on his numerous estates elsewhere. His chamberlains were twenty-four, and were selected from the noblest families in Bohemia. Sixty pages, in blue velvet dresses bordered with gold, waited on him. Fifty men-at-arms kept guard, day and night, in his antechamber. A thousand persons formed the usual complement of his household. Upwards of a thousand homes filled the stalls of his stables, and fed from marble mangers. When he journeyed, ten trumpeters with silver bugles preceded the march; there followed a hundred carriages, laden with his servants and baggage; sixty carriages and fifty led homes conveyed his suite; and last of all, suitably escorted, came the chariot of the man who formed the center of all this splendor.

Wallenstein, although the champion of Rome, neither believed her creed nor loved her clergy. He would, admit no priest into his camp, wishing, doubtless, to be master there himself. He issued his orders in few but peremptory words, and exacted instant and blind obedience. The slightest infraction of discipline brought down swift and severe chastisement upon the person guilty of it. But though rigid in all matters of discipline, he winked at the grossest excesses of his troops outside the camp, and shut his ear to the oft-repeated complaints of the pillagings and murders which they committed upon the peasantry. The most unbounded license was tolerated in his camp, and only one thing was needful-implicit submission to his authority. He had a quick eye for talent, and never hesitated to draw from the crowd, and reward with promotion, those whom he thought fitted to serve him in a higher rank. He was a diligent student of the stars, and never undertook anything of moment without first trying to discover, with the help of an Italian astrologer whom he kept under his roof, whether the constellations promised success, or threatened disaster, to the project he was meditating. Like all who have been believers in the occult sciences, he was reserved, haughty, inscrutable, and whether in the saloons of his palace, or in his tent, there was a halo of mystery around him. No one shared his secrets, no one could read his thoughts: on his face there never came smile; nor did mirth ever brighten the countenances of those who stood around him. In his palace no heavy footfall, no loud voices, might be heard: all noises must be hushed; silence and awe must wait continually in that grand but gloomy chamber, where Wallenstein sat apart from his fellows, while the stars, as they traced their path in the firmament, were slowly working out the brilliant destinies which an eternal Fate had decreed for him. The master-passions of his soul were pride and ambition; and if he served Rome it was because he judged that this was his road to those immense dignities and powers which he had been born to possess. He followed his star.

We must add the picture of his personal appearance as Michiels has drawn it. “His tall, thin figure; his haughty attitude; the stern expression of his pale face; his wide forehead, that seemed formed to command; his black hair, close shorn and harsh; his little dark eyes, in which the flame of authority shone; his haughty and suspicious look; his thick moustaches and tufted beard, produced, at the first glance, a startling sensation. His usual dress consisted of a justaucorps of elk-skin, covered by a white doublet and cloak; round his neck he wore a Spanish ruff, in his hat fluttered a large and red plume, while scarlet pantaloons and boots of Cordovan leather, carefully padded on account of the gout, completed his ordinary attire.”[8]

Such was the man to whom Ferdinand of Austria applied for assistance in raising an army.

Wallenstein’s grandeur had not as yet developed to so colossal a pitch as to overshadow his sovereign, but his ambition was already fully grown, and in the necessities of Ferdinand he saw another stage opening in his own advancement. He undertook at once to raise an army for the emperor. “How many does your Majesty require?” he asked. “Twenty thousand,” replied Ferdinand. “Twenty thousand?” responded Wallenstein, with an air of surprise. “That is not enough; say forty thousand or fifty thousand.”[9] The monarch hinted that there

[7]Alfred Michiels, p. 60. Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., p. 116.

[8]Alfred Michiels, p. 63.

[9]Ibid., p. 59. Schiller, vol. 1., pp. 178, 179.

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might be a difficulty in provisioning so many. “Fifty thousand,” promptly responded Wallenstein, “will have abundance where twenty thousand would starve.” The calculation by which he arrived at this conclusion was sure, but atrocious. A force of only twenty thousand might find their entrance barred into a rich province, whereas an army of fifty thousand was strong enough to force admission anywhere, and to remain so long as there was anything to eat or to waste. The general meant that the army should subsist by plunder; and fifty thousand would cost the emperor no more than twenty thousand, for neither would cost him anything. The royal permission was given, and an army which speedily attained this number was soon in the field. It was a mighty assemblage of various nationalities, daring characters and diverse faiths; and, however formidable to the cities and provinces amid which it was encamped, it adored and obeyed the iron man around whom it was gathered.

In the autumn of 1625 six armies were in the field, prepared to resume the bloody strife, and devastate the land they professed to liberate. The winter of 1625 passed without any event of moment. With the spring of 1626 the campaign was opened in earnest. The King of Denmark, with 30,000 troops, had passed the winter in the neighborhood of Bremen, and now, putting his army in motion, he acted along the right bank of the Weser. Tilly, with the army of the League, descended along the left bank of the same river, in the hope of meeting the Danish force and joining battle with it. Wallenstein, who did not care to share his victories and divide his laurels with Tilly, had encamped on the Elbe, and strongly fortified himself at the bridge of Dessau. It would be easy for him to march across the country to the Weser, and fall upon the rear of the King of Denmark, should the latter come to an engagement with Tilly. Christian IV saw the danger, and arranged with Count Mansfeld, who had under him a finely equipped force to make a diversion in his favor, by marching through Germany to Hungary, joining Gabriel Bethlen, and attacking Vienna. This maneuver would draw off Wallenstein, and leave him to cope with only the troops under Tilly. Duke Christian of Brunswick had orders to enter Westphalia, and thence extend his operations into the Palatinate; and Duke John Ernest of Saxe-Weimar, who was also in the field, was to act in Saxony, and assist Mansfeld in executing the diversion by which Wallenstein was to be drawn off from the theater of war between the Weser and the Elbe, and allow the campaign to be decided by a trial of strength between Christian IV and the general of the League.

Count Mansfeld set about executing his part of the plan. He marched against Wallenstein, attacked him in his strong position on the Elbe, but he was routed with great loss. He retreated through Silesia, pursued by his terrible antagonist, and arrived in Hungary, but only to find a cold reception from Prince Bethlen. Worn out by toil and defeat, he set out to return to England by way of Venice; it was his last journey, for falling sick, he died by the way. He was soon followed to the grave by his two companions in arms, the Duke of Brunswick and Ernest of Saxe-Weimar. Of the four generals on the Protestant side, only one now survived, Christian IV of Denmark. The deaths of these leaders, and the dispersion of their corps, decided the fate of the campaign. Tilly, his army reinforced by detachments which Wallenstein had sent to his aid, now bore down on the Danish host, which was retreating northwards. He overtook it at Lutter, in Bernburg, and compelled it to accept battle. The Danish monarch three times rallied his soldiers, and led them against the enemy, but in vain did Christian IV contend against greatly superior numbers. The Danes were completely routed; 4,000 lay dead on the field; the killed included many officers. Artillery, ammunition, and standards became the booty of the imperialists, and the Danish king, escaping through a narrow defile with a remnant of his cavalry, presented himself, on the evening of the day of battle, at the gates of Wolfenbuttel.

Pursuing his victory, and driving the Danes before him, Tilly made himself master of the Weser and the territories of Brunswick. Still advancing, he entered Hanover, crossed the Elbe, and spread the troops of the League over the territories of Brandenburg. The year closed with the King of Denmark in Holstein, and the League master of great part of North Germany.

In the spring of next year (1627), Wallenstein returned from Hungary, tracing a second time the march of his troops through Silesia and Germany in a black line of desolation. On joining Tilly, the combined army amounted to 80,000. The two generals, having now no enemy in their path capable of opposing them, resumed their victorious advance. Rapidly overrunning the Dukedoms of Mecklenburg, and putting garrisons in all the fortresses, they soon made themselves masters of the whole of Germany to the North Sea. Wallenstein next poured his troops into Schleswig-Holstein, and attacked Christian IV in his own territories, and soon the Danish king saw his dominions and sovereignty all but wrested from him.

So disastrous for the Protestant interests was the [269] issue of the campaign, illustrating how questionable in such a controversy is the interference of the sword, and how uncertain the results which it works out. Not only had the Protestants not recovered the Palatinate of the Rhine, but the tide of Popish and imperialist victory had rolled on, along the course of the Weser and the Elbe, stopping only on the shores of the Baltic. The Elector of Brandenburg saw the imperial troops at the gate of Berlin, and had to send in his submission to Ferdinand. The Dukes of Mecklenburg had been placed under the ban of the empire, and expelled from their territories. The Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel had been compelled to abandon the Danish alliance. The King of Denmark had lost all his fortresses in Germany; his army had. been dispersed; and Schleswig-Holstein was trembling in the balance. Wallenstein was master of most of the German towns on the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea, but these successes only instigated to greater. The duke was at that moment revolving mighty projects, which would vastly extend both his own and the emperor’s power. He dropped hints from which it was plain that he meditated putting down all the German princes, with their “German liberty,” and installing one emperor and one law in the Fatherland. He would dethrone the King of Denmark, and proclaim Ferdinand in his room. The whole of Germany, Denmark included, was to be governed from Vienna. There was to be one exception: the Dukedoms of Mecklenburg had become his own special principality, and as this was but a narrow land territory, he proposed to add thereto the dominion of the seas. By way of carrying out this dream of a vast maritime empire, he Bad already assumed the title of “Admiral of the North and Baltic Seas.” He had cast his eyes on two points of the Baltic shore, the towns of Rugen and Stralsund, as specially adapted for being the site of his arsenals and dockyards, where he might fit out his fleets, to be sent forth on the errands of peaceful commerce, or more probably on the hostile expeditions of conquest.

Such was the wretched condition of Germany when the year 1627 closed upon it. Everywhere the League had been triumphant, and all was gloom

- nay, darkness. The land lay beaten down and trampled upon by its two masters, a fanatical emperor and a dark, inscrutable, and insatiably ambitious soldier. Its princes had been humiliated, its towns garrisoned with foreign troops, and an army of banditti, now swollen to 100,000, were marching hither and thither in it, and in the exercise of a boundless license were converting its fair fields into a wilderness. As if the calamities of the present were not enough, its masters were revolving new schemes of confiscation and oppression, which would complete the ruin they had commenced, and plunge the Fatherland into an abyss of misery.

Chapter 5: Edict of Restitution

Edict of Restitution—Its Injustice—Amount of Property to be Restored—Imperial Commissaries—Commencement at Augsburg—Bulk of Property Seized by Ferdinand and the Jesuits—Greater Projects meditated—Denmark and Sweden marked for Conquest—Retribution—Ferdinand asked to Disarm—Combination against Ferdinand—Father Joseph—Outwits the Emperor—Ferdinand and the Jesuits Plot their own Undoing

Picture: View of the Town-hall of Halberstadt

The party of the League were now masters of Germany. Front the foot of the Tyrol and the banks of the Danube all northwards to the shores of the Baltic, and the coast of Denmark, the Jesuit might survey the land and proudly say, “I am lord of it all.” Like the persecutor of early times, he might rear his pillar, and write upon it that once Lutheranism existed here, but now it was extinct, and henceforth Rome resumed her sway. Such were the hopes confidently entertained by the Fathers, and accordingly the year 1629 was signalised by an edict which surpassed in its sweeping injustice all that had gone before it. Protestantism had been slain by the sword of Wallenstein, and the decree that was now launched was meant to consign it to its grave.

On the 6th of March, 1629, was issued the famous “Edict of Restitution.” This commanded that all the archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbacies, and monasteries, in short all the property and goods which had belonged to the Romish Church, and which since the Religious Peace of Passau had been taken possession of by the Protestants, should be restored. This was a revolution the extent of [270] which it was not easy to calculate, seeing it overturned a state of things which had existed for now nearly a century, and implied the transference of an amount of property so vast as to affect almost every interest and person in Germany. “It was a coup-d’etat as furious,” says Michiels, “as if the French were now to be asked to restore the clerical property seized during the Revolution.”[1]

Part of that property went to the payment of the Protestant ministers: good part of it was held by the princes; in some cases it formed the entire source of their revenue; its restitution would beggar some of them, and irritate all of them. The princes might plead that the settlement which this edict proposed to overturn had lasted now seventy-five years; that it had been acquiesced in by the silence of four preceding emperors, and that these secularizations had received a legal ratification at the Pacification of Augsburg in 1555, when a proposed clause enjoining restitution had been rejected. They might farther plead that they were entitled to an equal share in those foundations which had been contributed by their common ancestors, and that the edict would disturb the balance of the constitution of Germany, by creating an overwhelming majority of Popish votes in the Diet.

The hardships of the edict were still farther intensified by the addition of a clause which touched the conscience. Popish landed proprietors were empowered to compel their vassals to adopt their religion, or leave the country. When it was objected that this was contrary to the spirit of the Religious Peace, it was coolly replied that “Catholic proprietors of estates were no farther bound than to allow their Protestant subjects full liberty to emigrate.”[2]

Commissaries were appointed for carrying out the edict; and all unlawful possessors of church benefices, and all the Protestant States without exception, were ordered, under pain of the ban of the empire, to make immediate restitution of their usurped possessions. Behind the imperial Commissaries stood two powerful armies, ready with their swords to enforce the orders of the Commissaries touching the execution of the edict. The decree fell upon Germany like a thunderbolt. The bishoprics alone were extensive enough to form a kingdom; the abbacies were numberless; lands and houses scattered throughout all Northern Germany would have to be reft from their proprietors, powerful princes would be left without a penny, and thousands would have to exile themselves; in short, endless confusion would ensue. The Elector of Saxony and the Duke of Brandenburg, whose equanimity had not been disturbed so long as religion only was in question, were now alarmed in earnest. They could no longer hide from themselves that the destruction of the Protestant religion, and the ruin of the German liberties, had been resolved on by the emperor and the Catholic League.

A commencement was made of the edict in Augsburg. This was eminently a city of Protestant memories, for there the Augustan Confession had been read, and the Religious Peace concluded, and that doubtless made this city a delicious conquest to the Jesuits. Augsburg was again placed under the government of its bishop, and all the Lutheran churches were shut up. In all the free cities the Romish worship was restored by the soldiers. As regards the richer bishoprics, the emperor, having regard to the maxim that all well-regulated charity begins at home, got the chapters to elect his sons to them. His second son, Leopold William, a lad of fifteen already nominated Bishop of Strasburg, Passau, Breslau, and Olmutz, obtained as his share of the spoil gathered under the edict, the Bishopric of Halberstadt, and the Archiepiscopates of Magdeburg and Bremen. When the ancient heritages of the Benedictines, Augustines, and other orders came to be distributed anew, by whom should they be claimed but by the Jesuits, an order which had no existence when these foundations were first created! To benefice a youth of fifteen, and endow the new order of Loyola, with this wealth, Ferdinand called “making restitution to the original owners.” “If its confiscation was called plunder, it could not be made good by fresh robbery.”[3]

Meanwhile the camarilla at Vienna, whose counsels had given birth to this Edict of Restitution, with all the mischiefs with which it was pregnant to its authors, but which it had not yet disclosed, were indulging in dreams of yet greater conquest. The tide of success which had flowed upon them so suddenly had turned their heads, and nothing was too impracticable or chimerical for them to attempt. East and west they beheld the trophies of their victories. The once powerful Protestant Churches of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary were in ruins; the Palatinate of the Rhine, including that second fountain of Calvinism, Heidelberg, had been added to their dominions; their victorious arms had been carried along the Weser, the Elbe, and the Oder, and had stopped only on the shores

[1]Secret History of the Austrian Government, p. 71.

[2]Schiller, vol. 1., p. 198.

[3]Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., p. 126.

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of the Baltic. But there was no reason why the Baltic should be the boundary of their triumphs. They would make a new departure. They would carry their victories into the North Sea, and recover for Rome the Kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden. When they had reached this furthest limit on the north, they would return and would essay with their adventurous arms France and England. in both of these countries Protestantism seemed on the ebb, and the thrones so lately occupied by all Elizabeth and a Henry IV, were now filled by pedantic or senile sovereigns, and a second period of juvenescence seemed there to be awaiting their Church. This was the moment when the “Catholic Restoration” had reached its height, when the House of Hapsburg was in its glory, and when the scheme of gigantic dominion at which Loyola aimed when he founded his order, had approached more nearly than ever before or since its full and perfect consummation.

The dreams of aggression which were now inflaming the imaginations of the Jesuits were shared in by Ferdinand; although, as was natural, he contemplated these anticipated achievements more from the point of his own and his house’s aggrandizement, and less from that of the exaltation of the Vatican, and the propagation over Europe of that teaching which it styles Christianity. The emperor viewed the contemplated conquests as sound in principle, and he could not see why they should not be found as easily practicable as they were undoubtedly right. He had a general of consummate ability, and an army of 100,000 strong, that cost him nothing: might he not with a force so overwhelming walk to and fro over Europe, as he had done over Germany, and prescribe to its peoples what law they were to obey, and what creed they were to believe? This he meant assuredly to do in that vast territory which stretches from the Balkan and the Carpathians to the German Sea, and the northern coast of Sweden. The next conquest of his arms he fully intended should be the two Kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden; and then changing the German Confederacy into an absolute monarchy, sweeping away the charters and rights of its several States, which he regarded but as so much rubbish, shutting up all its heretical churches, and permitting only the Roman religion to be professed, the whole to the extreme north of Sweden would be brought under what he accounted “the best political constitution-namely, one king, one law, one God.”[4]

But to the emperor, and the Jesuits, his counselors, giddy with the achievements of the past, and yet more so with the dreams of the future, defeat was treading upon the heels of success. Retribution came sooner than Ferdinand had foreseen, and in a way he could not calculate, inasmuch as it grew out of those very schemes, the success of which seemed to guard him against any such reverse as that which was now approaching. The man who had lifted him up to his dizzy height was to be, indirectly, the occasion of his downfall. The first turn in the tide was visible in the jealousy which at this stage sprang up between Ferdinand and the Catholic League. The emperor had become suddenly too powerful to be safe for Catholic interests, and the Jesuits of the League resolved to humble or to break him. So long as Ferdinand was content to owe his victories to Maximilian of Bavaria as head of the League, and conquer only by the sword of Tilly, the Jesuits were willing to permit him to go on. He was their servant while he leaned upon the League, and they could use him or throw him aside as they found it expedient. The moment they saw him disposed to use his power for personal or dynastic ends in opposition to the interests of the order, they could check him, or even strip him of that power altogether. But it was wholly different when Ferdinand separated his military operations from those of the League, called Wallenstein to his service, raised an army of overwhelming numbers, and was winning victories which, although they brought with them the spread of the Roman faith, brought with them still more power to the House of Hapsburg, and glory to its general, Wallenstein. Ferdinand was now dangerous, and they must take measures for curtailing a power that was becoming formidable to themselves. Maximilian of Bavaria summoned a meeting of the League at Heidelberg, and after discussing the matter, a demand was sent to the emperor that he should disarm-that is, dismiss Wallenstein, and dissolve his army.[5] Remove the pedestal, thought the meeting, and the figure will fall.

Other parties came forward to urge the same demand on Ferdinand. These were the princes of Germany, to whom the army of Wallenstein had become a terror, a scourge, and a destruction. We can imagine, or rather we cannot imagine, the state of that land with an assemblage of banditti, now swollen to somewhere about 100,000,[6] roaming over it, reaping the harvest of its fields, gathering the spoil of its cities, torturing the inhabitants to

[4]Chapman, p. 184.

[5]Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., p. 127.

[6]Schiller, vol. 1., p. 205.

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compel them to disclose their treasures, causing whole villages on the line of their march, or in the neighborhood of their encampment, to disappear, and leaving their occupants to find a home in the woods. The position of the princes was no longer endurable. It did not matter much whether they were with or against Ferdinand. The ruffians assembled under Wallenstein selected as the scene of their encampment not the most heterodox, but the most fertile province, and carried away the cattle, the gold, and the goods which it contained, without stopping to inquire whether the owner was a Romanist or a Protestant. “Brandenburg estimated its losses at 20,000,000, Pomerania at 10,000,000, Hesse-Cassel at 7,000,000 of dollars, and the rest in proportion. The cry for redress was loud, urgent, and universal; on this point Catholics and Protestants were agreed.”[7]

Ferdinand for some time obstinately shut his ear to the complaints and accusations which reached him on all sides against his general and his army. At last he deemed it prudent to make some concession to the general outcry. He dismissed 18,000 of his soldiers. Under the standard of Wallenstein there remained more marauders than had been sent away; but, over and above, the master-grievance still existed-Wallenstein was still in command, and neither the League nor the princes would be at rest till he too had quitted the emperor’s service.

A council of the princes was held at Ratisbon (June, 1630), and the demand was renewed, and again pressed upon Ferdinand. Most painful it was to dismiss the man to whom he owed his greatness; but with a singular unanimity the demand was joined in by the whole Electoral College, by the princes of the League, the Protestant princes, and by the ambassadors of France and of Spain. Along with the ambassadors of France had come a Capuchin friar, Father Joseph, whom Richelieu had sent as an admirable instrument for working on the emperor. This monk has received the credit, of giving the last touch that turned the scale in this delicate affair. “The voice of a monk,” says Schiller, “was to Ferdinand the voice of God.” Ferdinand was then negotiating for the election of his son as King of the Romans, with the view of his succeeding him in the empire. “It will be necessary,” softly whispered the Capuchin, “to gratify the electors on this occasion, and thereby facilitate your son’s election to the Roman crown. When this object has been gained, Wallenstein will always be ready to resume his former station.”[8] The argument of Father Joseph prevailed; Wallenstein’s dismissal was determined on; and when it was intimated to him the general submitted, only saying to the messenger who brought the unwelcome tidings, that he had learned his errand from the stars before his arrival. Ferdinand faded to carry his son’s election as King of the Romans; and when he found how he had been outwitted, he vented his rage, exclaiming, “A rascally Capuchin has disarmed me with his rosary, and crammed into his cowl six electoral bonnets.”[9]

All parties in this transaction appear as if smitten with blindness and infatuation. We behold each in turn laying the train for its own overthrow. The cause of Protestantism seemed eternally ruined in the land of Luther, and lo, the emperor and the Jesuits combine to lift it up! Ferdinand prepares the means for his own discomfiture and humiliation when in the first place he quarrels with the League, and in the second when he issues the Edict of Restitution. He drives both Jesuits and Protestants from him in turn. Next it is the Jesuits who plot their own undoing. They compel the emperor to reduce his army, and not only so, but they also make him dismiss a general who is more to him than an army. And what is yet more strange, the time they select for making these great changes is the moment when a hero, who had bound victory to his standards by his surpassing bravery and skill, was stepping upon the shore of Northern Germany to do battle for a faith which they had trodden into the dust, and the name of which would soon, they hoped, perish from the Fatherland.

[7]Schiller, vol. 1., p. 200.

[8]Schiller, vol. 1., p. 204.

[9]Ibid., p. 205.

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Chapter 6: Arrival of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany

The Reaction—Its Limits—Preparatory Campaigns of Gustavus—All Ready—No Alternative left to Gustavus—His Motives—His Character—His Farewell to the Diet—His Parting Address—Embarkation—Lands in Germany—Contempt of Gustavus by the Court of Vienna—Marches on Stettin—Is Admitted into it—Takes Possession of Pomerania—Imperialists Driven out of Mecklenburg—Alliance with France—Edict of Restitution—John George, Elector of Saxony—His Project—The Convention at Leipsic—Its Failure

Picture: Gustavus Adolphus taking Leave of the States.

Picture: Gustavus Adolphus

The Catholic reaction, borne onwards by the force of the imperial arms, had rolled up to the borders of Sweden, chasing before it Christian of Denmark, and every one who had striven to stem its advancing torrent. But a mightier Potentate than Ferdinand or any earthly emperor had fixed the limits of the reaction, and decreed that beyond the line it had now reached it should not pass. From the remote regions of the North Sea a deliverer came forth, summoned by a Divine voice, and guided by a Divine hand, empowered to roll back its swelling wave, and bid the nations it had overwhelmed stand up and again assume, the rights of free men. The champion who now arose to confront Rome was Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden.

A sincere Protestant, as well as valorous soldier, Gustavus Adolphus had seen with pain and alarm the troops of the League and of the emperor overrun the States of Germany, drive away the ministers of the Reformed faith, and set up the overturned altars of Rome. The cry of the oppressed peoples had reached him once and again, but circumstances did not permit of his interfering in the great quarrel. On ascending the throne, he had the disorders of half a century in his own dominions to rectify. This was a laborious task, but it was executed with an intelligence that replaced stagnation with life and prosperity. The external relations of his kingdom next claimed his attention. These called him to engage, first, in a war with Denmark; and, secondly, in a war with Russia. A third war he was compelled to wage with Poland. His title to the throne of Sweden had been brought into question by the Polish sovereign, who maintained that the rightful heirs were to be found in the other line of Gustavus Vasa. The Romanists sided with the King of Poland, in the hope of being able to wrest the sovereignty from the hands of a Protestant, and of bringing back the kingdom to the See of Rome; and thus Gustavus Adolphus found that he had to do battle at the same time for the possession of his crown and the Protestantism of his realm. This contest, which was completely successful, was terminated in 1629, and it left Sweden mistress of a large and important section of the Baltic coast. These campaigns formed the preparation for the fourth and greatest war in which the monarch and people of Sweden were destined to embark. The reforms set on foot within the country had vastly augmented its resources. The power which Gustavus had acquired over the Baltic, and the towns which he held on its coast, kept open to him the gate of entrance into Germany; and the generals and warriors whom he had trained in these wars were such as had not been seen in Europe since the decline of the Spanish school. All these requisites, unsuspected by himself, had been slowly preparing, and now they were completed: he could command the sinews of war; he had an open road to the great battle-field, and he had warriors worthy of being his companions in arms, and able to act their part in the conflict to which he was about to lead them.

If Gustavus Adolphus was now, what he had never been before, ready to engage in the worldwide strife, it is not less true that that strife had reached a stage which left him no alternative but to take part in it, if ever he would do so with the chance of success. Victory had carried the Popish arms to the waters of the Baltic: the possessions he held on the coast of that sea were in danger of being wrested from him; but his foes would not stop there; they would cross the ocean; they would assail him on his own soil, and extinguish his sovereignty and the Protestantism of his realm together. Wallenstein had suggested such a scheme of conquest to his master, and Ferdinand would not be at rest till he had extended his sway to the extreme north of Sweden.[1]

Such was the situation in which the Swedish monarch now found himself placed. He rightly interpreted that situation. He knew that he could not avoid war by sitting still; that if he did not go

[1]Chapman, p. 196.

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to meet his enemies on the plains of Germany, they would seek him out in his own sea-girt kingdom, where he should fight at greater disadvantage. Therefore he chose the bolder and safer course.

But these reasons, wise though they were, were not the only, nor indeed the strongest motives that influenced Gustavus Adolphus in adopting this course. He was a devout Christian and an enlightened Protestant, as well as a brave warrior, and he took into consideration the seat crisis which had arrived in the affairs of Europe and of Protestantism, and the part that fell to himself in this emergency. He saw the religion and the liberty of Christendom on the point of being trodden out by the armed hordes of an emperor whose councilors were Jesuits, and whose generals were content to sink the soldier in the ruthless banditti-leader; and to whom could the oppressed nations look if not to himself? England was indifferent, France was unwilling, Holland was unable, and, unless Protestantism was to be saved by miracle, he must gird on the sword and essay the Herculean task. He knew the slender means and the small army with which he must confront an enemy who had inexhaustible resources at his command, and innumerable soldiers, with the prestige of invincibility, under his banner; but if the difficulty of the enterprise was immense, and might well inspire caution or even fear, it was of a nature surpassingly grand, and might well kindle enthusiasm, and beget a sublime faith that He whose cause it was, and who, by the very perils with which He was surrounding him, seemed to be forcing him out into the field of battle, would bear him safely through all the dangers of the great venture, and by his hand deliver his people. It was in this faith that Gustavus Adolphus became the champion of Protestantism.

“In one respect,” says Hausser, “Gustavus Adolphus was a unique personage in this century: he was animated by the fresh, unbroken, youthful spirit of the early days of the Reformation, like that which characterized such men as Frederick of Saxony and Philip of Hesse. If it can be said of any ruler in the first half of the sixteenth century, that he was filled with Protestant zeal and sincere enthusiasm for the greatness of his cause, it may be said of him and of him alone. To a world full of mean artifices, miserable intrigues, and narrow-minded men, he exhibited once more the characteristics and qualities of a true hero. This explains why he called forth enthusiasm where it had been for many decades unknown-why he succeeded in kindling men’s minds for ideas which had been engulfed in the miseries of the times. Sacred things were no idle sport with him.”[2]

Having resolved to present himself on the great arena, in the faith of uplifting a cause which already appeared almost utterly ruined, Gustavus Adolphus, “like a dying man,” says Gfrorer, “set his house in order,” by making arrangements for the defense and government of his kingdom in his absence. On the 20th of May, 1630, he assembled the Diet at Stockholm, to bid the States a solemn farewell.”[3] Taking in his arms his infant daughter Christina, then only five years old,[4] he presented her to the assembled nobles and deputies, who swore fidelity to her as their sovereign, in the event of her royal father failing on the battle-field. The touching spectacle melted all present into tears, and the emotion of the king was so great that it was some time before he was able to proceed in his farewell address to the States.

When at length he found words, the brave and devoted prince assured his people that it was no light cause which had led him to embark in this new war. God was his witness that he had not sought this contest. That contest exposed himself to great dangers, and it laid heavy burdens on them; but, however full of risks and sacrifices, he dared not decline an enterprise to which he was summoned by the cry of his perishing brethren. Even should he and his subjects prefer their own ease to the deliverance of the oppressed, it would not be long till they should have abundant cause to repent their selfishness. The same armed bigotry which had wrought such desolation in Germany, was at that hour meditating the overthrow of their own throne, and the destruction of their own religion and independence. They must not think to escape by abiding within their own seas and shutting themselves out from others. Who could tell whether Sweden had not attained her present place among the nations for such a time as this? Turning to his councilors of state, he bade them seek to be filled with wisdom, that they might govern with equity. Addressing his nobles, he exhorted them to emulate the bravery of “those Gothic heroes who humbled in the dust the pride of ancient Rome.” The pastors he earnestly recommended to cultivate unity, and to exemplify in their own lives the virtues they preached to others. For all classes of his subjects he offered his earnest prayers, that order might bless their cities, fertility clothe their fields, and plenty cheer their homes; and then, with the tenderness of a father taking

[2]Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., pp. 150, 151.

[3]Schiller, vol. 1., p. 219.

[4]Chapman, p. 205.

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leave of his children-for the mind of the hero-prince was oppressed by the presentiment that he should see them no more-he said, “I bid you all an affectionate-it may be an eternal farewell.”[5]

A few days after this solemn parting, the king embarked his army of 15,000 at Elfsnabhen. It was a small host to essay so great an enterprise; but it was led by a great general, and the heroism and devotion of the chief burned in the breasts of the soldiers. Up to the water’s edge the shore was black with the crowds which had assembled to witness the embarkation, and to take, it might be, their last look of their beloved sovereign. Contrary winds detained the fleet a few days, but at last the breeze veered round, and bore away the magnanimous prince, with his chivalrous host, from a shore to which he but too truly presaged he should return no more. In a few days the opposite coast of the Baltic rose out of the waves, and the fleet cast anchor before the Isle of Rugen, on the coast of Pomerania. On the 24th of June, 1630-exactly 100 years after the presentation of the Augsburg Confession to Charles V-Gustavus Adolphus landed on the shore of Germany. The king was the first to step on land, and advancing a few paces before the soldiers, he kneeled down in presence of the army, and gave thanks to God for conveying the host in safety across the deep, and prayed that success might crown their endeavors.

The powerful Popish monarch who had put his foot upon the neck of Germany, heard with easy and haughty unconcern of the landing of Gustavus Adolphus. The significance of that landing was but little understood on either the Romish or the

[5]Schiller, vol. 1., p. 220.

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Protestant side. Ferdinand could not see that the mighty fabric of his power could be shaken, or the triumphant tide of his arms rolled back, by the little host that had just crossed the Baltic. When the courtiers of Vienna heard of the corning of Gustavus “they looked in the State Almanack to see where the country of the little Gothic king was situated.”[6] The princes of Germany, trodden into the dust, were nearly as unable to understand that deliverance had dawned for them in the advent of the northern hero. Front the powerful thrones of England and France they might have looked for help; but what succour could a petty kingdom like Sweden bring them? They could not recognize their deliverer coming in a guise so humble. Gustavus Adolphus was a foreigner. They almost wished that he had not interfered in their matters; and greatly as they longed to be lifted out of the mire, they were content well-nigh to be as they were, rather than owe their emancipation to a stranger. These degenerate princes were to be taught the power of that Protestantism from which they had so greatly declined. At what altar had Gustavus and his followers kindled that heroism which enabled them to command victory, if not at that of the Reformed faith? This it was that made them the deliverers of those who had lost their liberty by losing their Protestantism.

Eager to invest his arms with the prestige of a first success, the Swedish king set out for Stettin, and arrived under its walls before the imperial troops had time to occupy it. Stettin was the capital of Pomerania; but its importance lay in its commanding the mouths of the Oder, and leaving open in the rear of Gustavus a passage to Sweden, should fortune compel him to retreat. He demanded that; the town should receive a Swedish garrison. The citizens, but too familiar with the horrors of a foreign occupation, and not knowing as yet the difference between the orderly and disciplined soldiers of Gustavus and the marauders who served under Tilly and Wallenstein, were unwilling to open their gates. Still more unwilling was their Duke Bogislaus, who added the timidity of age to that of constitution. This prince longed to be freed from the terrors and the oppressions of Ferdinand, but he trembled at the coming of Gustavus, fearing that the emperor would visit with a double vengeance his compliance with the Swedish monarch’s wishes. Bogislaus begged to be permitted to remain neutral. But Gustavus told him that he must choose between himself and Ferdinand, and that he must decide at once. Influenced by the present rather than by the remote danger, Bogislaus opened the gates of Stettin, and the Swedish troops entered. Instead of plundering their houses the soldiers went with the citizens to church, and soon established a reputation which proved second only to their valor in its influence on their future success. The occupation of this town was a masterly stroke. It gave the king a basis of operations on the mainland, it covered his rear, and it secured his communication with Sweden.

Step by step Gustavus Adolphus advanced into North Germany. His host swelled and multiplied the farther his banners were borne. The soldiers who had formed the armies of Count Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick, and the corps disbanded by Wallenstein, flocked in crowds to his standard, and exchanged their plundering habits for the order and bravery of well-disciplined troops. The capture of town after town added every day new pledges of final success. The inequality of his force in point of numbers was more than balanced by his great superiority in tactics. Combining the most determined resolution with the most consummate prudence, he went on driving the imperialists before him, and by the end of autumn almost the whole of Pomerania was in his possession. It was on these first efforts that the final issue must depend, and not one false step had he made in them. “Napoleon considered him to be the first general of all times, chiefly because during a dangerous and tedious campaign, from June, 1630, to the autumn of 1631, he advanced slowly, but surely, towards the center of Germany without suffering any repulse worth mentioning.”[7]

When winter approached, the imperial generals, wearied with their defeats, sent plenipotentiaries to the camp of the Swedes to sue for a cessation of hostilities, but they found they had to do with an enemy who, clad in sheep’s-skin, felt no winter in the climate of Germany. The reply of Gustavus to the proposal that both sides should go into winter quarters was, “The Swedes are soldiers in winter as well as in summer.”[8] The imperialist soldiers were farther harassed by the peasantry, who now avenged upon them the pillagings and murders they had been guilty of in their advance. Desertion was thinning and disorganization weakening their ranks, and the imperial commander in Pomerania, Torquato Conte, took the opportunity of resigning a command which, while adding nothing to his wealth, was every day lessening his reputation.

Flying before the victorious arms of Gustavus

[6]Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., p. 148.

[7]Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., p. 157.

[8]Schiller, vol. 1., p. 226.

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Adolphus, and abandoning in their retreat wagons and standards,[9] to be gathered up by the Swedes, the imperial troops took refuge in Brandenburg, where they prepared for themselves future calamities by oppressing and plundering the inhabitants, although the subjects of a ruler who was the ally of their emperor. The king would have followed the enemy into the Duchy of Brandenburg, had not the gates of Kustrin, opened to admit the imperialists, been closed upon himself. He now turned his victorious arms towards Mecklenburg, whose dukes the Emperor Ferdinand had stripped of their territory and driven into exile. The capture of Demmin gave him entrance into this territory, where success continued to attend his arms. By the end of February, 1631, the king had taken fully eighty cities, strongholds, and redoubts in Pomerania and Mecklenburg.[10]

At this stage there came a little help to the Protestant hero from a somewhat suspicious quarter, France. Cardinal Richelieu, who was now supreme in that kingdom, had revived the foreign policy of Henry IV, which was directed to the end of humbling the House of Austria, and his quick eye saw in the Swedish warrior a fit instrument, as he thought, for achieving his purpose. It was a delicate matter for a “prince of the Church” to enter into an alliance with a heretical king, but Richelieu trusted that in return for the subsidy he offered to Gustavus he would be allowed the regulation and control of the war. He found, however, in Adolphus his master. The Treaty of Balwarde (January, 1631) secured to Gustavus a subsidy of 400,000 dollars, for the attainment of interests common to France and Sweden, but left to the latter Power the political and military direction. This was a diplomatic victory of no small importance to the Swedish monarch. The capture of two important places, Colberg and Frankfort-on-the-Oder, which followed soon after, shed fresh luster on the Swedish arms, and made the expedition of Gustavus Adolphus appear still more prominent in the eyes of Europe.

Even the Protestant princes of Germany began to show a little heart. They had basely truckled to the Emperor Ferdinand; not a finger had they lifted to stem the torrent of the Catholic reaction; but now, conscious that a mighty power had arrived in the midst of them, they began to talk of reasserting their rights. They were yet too proud to accept of help from the stranger, but his presence among them, and the success that was crowning his efforts in a war which ought to have been undertaken by themselves, helped to rouse them from that shameful and criminal apathy into which they had fallen, and which indisposed them for the least effort to recover the much of which they had been stripped, or to retain the little that had been left to them. At this moment Ferdinand of Austria did his best, though all unintentionally, to stimulate their feeble efforts, and to make them join their arms with those of the Swedish monarch in fighting the battle of a common Protestantism. The emperor issued orders to his officers to put in execution the Edict of Restitution. The enforcement of this edict would sweep into the Treasury of the emperor and of the Roman Church a vast amount of Protestant property in the two most powerful Protestant electorates in Germany, those of Saxony and Brandenburg, and would specially irritate the two most important allies whom the emperor had among the Protestant princes. The hour was certainly ill-chosen for such a proceeding, when Wallenstein had been dismissed, when defeat after defeat was scattering the imperial armies, and when the advancing tide of Swedish success was threatening to sweep away all the fruits of Ferdinand’s former victories even more rapidly than he had achieved them. But, the Court of Vienna believing that its hold on Germany was firm ever to be loosened, and despising this assault from the little Sweden, Ferdinand, acting doubtless by the advice of the Jesuits, gave orders to proceed with the plunder of his Protestant allies.

It was only now that the veil was fully lifted from the eyes of John George, Elector of Saxony. This prince exhibits little save contrast to the pious, magnanimous, and public-spirited Electors of Saxony of a former day. His private and personal manners were coarse; he dressed slovenly, and fed gluttonously. His public policy was utterly selfish. He had long been the dupe of the emperor, his sottish understanding and groveling aims preventing him from seeing the gulf into which he was sinking. But now, finding himself threatened with annihilation, he resolved to adopt a decisive policy. As Elector of Saxony he was the leader of the Protestant princes, and he now purposed to place himself at their head, and form a third party in Germany, which would oppose the emperor on the one side, and the King of Sweden on the other. The Elector of Saxony would not lower himself by joining with Gustavus Adolphus He did not need the hand of the northern stranger to pull him out of the mire; he would extricate himself.

Proceeding in the execution of his plans, destined, he believed, to restore the German liberties, the Elector of Saxony summoned a convention

[9]Chapman, p. 219.

[10]Ibid., p. 234.

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of the Protestant States, to meet at Leipsic in February, 1631. The assemblage was brilliant, but can hardly be said to have been powerful. The princes and deputies who composed it would never have had the courage to meet, had they not known that they assembled under the shadow of the Swedish arms, which they affected to despise. Their convention lasted three months, and their time was divided between feasting and attempts to frame a program of united action. The Jesuits jeered. “The poor little Lutheran princes,” said they, “are holding a little convention at Leipsic. Who is there?” they asked. “A princeling and a half. What are they going to do? Make a little war.” The princes did not make a war either little or great: they contented themselves with petitioning the emperor to remove the grievances of which they complained. They begged him especially to revoke the Edict of Restitution, and to withdraw his troops from their cities and fortresses. To this petition not the least heed was ever paid. The princes did not even form a league among themselves; they thought they had done enough when they fixed the number of soldiers that each was to furnish, in the event of their forming a league some other time.[11] This was a truly pitiable spectacle. The princes saw their country devastated, their cities occupied by foreign troops, their religion and their liberties proscribed-in short, all that gave glory and renown to Germany smitten down by the hand of tyranny, yet the power and the spirit alike were wanting for the vindication of their rights, and amid the ruin of every virtue their pride alone survived; for we see them turning away with disdain from the strong arm that is extended towards them for the purpose of pulling them out of the gulf. Plain it was that the hour of their deliverance was yet distant.

[11]Schiller, vol. 1., pp. 234, 235. Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., pp. 160-162.

Chapter 7: Fall of Magdeburg and Victory of Leipsic

Magdeburg—Its Wealth and Importance—Coveted by both Parties—It declares against the Imperialists—Its Administrator—Count von Tilly—His Career—Personal Appearance—Magdeburg Invested—Refuse a Swedish Garrison—Suburbs Burned—The Assault—The Defense—Council of War—The Cannonading Ceases—False Hopes—The City Stormed and Taken—Entry of Tilly—Horrors of the Sack—Total Destruction of the City—Gustavus Blamed for not Raising the Siege—His Defense—The Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony now Join him—Battle of Leipsic—Plan of Battle—Total Rout of the Imperialists—All is Changed

Picture: Fig. I: Facsimile of a Lutheran Envelope (Reverse):

Centenary of the Deliverance of Augsburg

Picture: Fig. II: (Obverse): Entry of Gustavus Adolphus into Augsburg

While the convention of Leipsic was making boastful speeches, and the Jesuits were firing off derisive pasquils, and Ferdinand of Austria was maintaining a haughty and apparently an unconcerned attitude in presence of the invading Swedes, Gustavus Adolphus was adding victory to victory, and every day marching farther into the heart of Germany. His advance at last caused alarm to the imperial generals, and it was resolved to trifle no longer with the matter, but to adopt the most energetic measures to oppose the progress of the northern arms. This brings us to one of the most thrilling incidents of the war-the siege and capture of Magdeburg.

This ancient and wealthy city stood on the left bank of the Elbe. It was strongly fortified, being enclosed on its land sides by lofty walls and broad ditches. The commerce on its river had greatly enriched the citizens, and the republican form of their government had nourished in their breasts a spirit of independence and bravery. In those days, when neither trade nor liberty was widely diffused, Magdeburg had fewer rivals to contend with than now, and it surpassed in riches and freedom most of the cities in Germany. This made it a prize earnestly coveted by both sides. If it should fall into the hands of the Swedes, its situation and strength would make it an admirable storehouse and arsenal for the army; and, on the other hand, should the imperialists gain possession of it, it would give them a basis of operations from which to threaten Gustavus Adolphus in his rear, and would put it into their power to close against him one of his main exits from Germany, should defeat compel him to retreat towards the Baltic. Its government was somewhat anomalous at this moment. It was the capital of a rich bishopric, which had for some time been in possession of the Protestant princes of the House of Brandenburg. [281]

Its present administrator, Christian William, had made himself obnoxious to Ferdinand, by taking part with the King of Denmark in his invasion of the empire; and the chapter, dreading the effects of the emperor’s anger, deposed Christian William, and elected the second son of the Elector of Saxony in his room. The emperor, however, disallowed this election, and appointed his own son Leopold to the dignity; but Christian William of Brandenburg, having made friends with the magistrates and the citizens, resumed his government of the city, and having roused the inhabitants by pointing to the devastations which the imperial troops had committed on their territory, and having held out to them hopes of succour from the Swedes, whose victorious leader was approaching nearer every day, he induced them to declare war against the emperor. They joined battle with small bodies of imperialists, and succeeded in defeating them, and they had even surprised the town of Halle, when the advance of the main army under Tilly compelled them to fall back and shut themselves up in Magdeburg.

Before entering on the sad story of Magdeburg’s heroic defense and tragic fall, let us look at the man who was destined to be the chief actor in the scenes of carnage about to ensue.Count von Tilly was born in Liege, of a noble family. He received his military education in the Netherlands, then the most famous school for generals. By nature cold, of gloomy disposition, and cherishing an austere but sincere bigotry, he had served with equal zeal and ability in almost all the wars of the period against Protestantism. His sword had been drawn on the bloody fields of the Low Countries; he had combated against the Protestant armies in Hungary and Bohemia, and when the wars came to an end in these countries, because there were no more Protestants to slay, he had been appointed to lead the armies of the League. When Wallenstein was dismissed he was made generalissimo of the Emperor Ferdinand, and it is in this capacity that we now find him before the walls of Magdeburg. Schiller has drawn his personal appearance with the power of a master. “His strange and terrific aspect,” says he, “was in unison with his character. Of low stature, thin, with hollow cheeks, a long nose, a broad and wrinkled forehead, large whiskers, and a pointed chin; he was generally attired in a Spanish doublet of green silk, with slashed sleeves, with a small and peaked hat upon his head, surmounted by a red feather, which hung down his back. His whole aspect recalled to recollection the Duke of Alva, the scourge of the Flemings, and his actions were by no means calculated to remove the impression.”[1]

Tilly knew too well the art of war to despise his great opponent. “This is a player,” said he of Gustavus Adolphus, “from whom we gain much if we merely lose nothing.”

Magdeburg was first invested by Count Pappenheim, an ardent supporter of the House of Austria, and accounted the first cavalry general of his age. He was soon joined by Tilly at the head of his army, and the city was more closely invested than ever. The line of walls to be defended was extensive, the garrison was small, and the citizens, when they saw the imperialist banners on all sides of them, began to repent having declined the offer of Gustavus Adolphus to aid in the defense with a regiment of his soldiers. Faction, unhappily, divided the citizens, and they refused to admit the Swedish garrison within their walls; nor, wealthy though they were, would they even advance money enough to levy troops sufficient for their defense. The Swedish monarch was pained at the course they chose to adopt, but the city was now shut in, and all he could do was to send Count Falkenberg, a brave and experienced officer, to direct the military operations, and aid with his counsel the Administrator Christian William.

All during the winter of 1630-31, Magdeburg continued to be invested; but the siege made slow progress owing to the circumstance that the two generals, Tilly and Pappenheim, were compelled to withdraw, to withstand the advance of Gustavus Adolphus, leaving inferior men to command in their absence. But in March, 1631, the two great leaders returned, and the operations of the siege were resumed with rigor. After the first few days the outposts and suburbs were abandoned, and, being set fire to by the imperialists, were reduced to ashes. The battle now advanced to the walls and gates. During all the month of April the storm of assault and resistance raged fiercely round the fortifications. The citizens armed themselves to supplement the smallness of the garrison, and day and night fought on the walls. Daily battle thinned their numbers, want began to impair their strength, but their frequent sallies told the besiegers that their spirit and bravery remained unabated. Their detestation of the tyranny of Ferdinand, their determination to retain their Protestant faith, and their hopes of relief from Gustavus Adolphus, who they knew was in their neighborhood, made them unanimous in their resolution to defend the place to the last.

[1]Schiller, vol. 1., p. 230.

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The approach of the Swedish hero was as greatly dreaded in the camp of Tilly, as it was longed for in the city of Magdeburg. A march of three days, it was known, would bring him before the walls, and then the imperialists would be between two fires; they would have the Swedes, flushed with victory, in their rear, and the besieged, armed with despair, in their front. Tilly often directed anxious eyes into the distance, fearing to discover the Swedish banners on the horizon. He assembled a council of war, to debate whether he should raise the siege, or attempt carrying Magdeburg by storm. It was resolved to storm the city before Gustavus should arrive. No breach had yet been made in the walls, and the besiegers must add stratagem to force, would they take the place. It was resolved to follow the precedent of the siege of Maestricht, where a sudden cessation of the cannonading had done more to open the gates than all the fire of the artillery. On the 9th of May, at noon, the cannon of Tilly ceased firing, and the besiegers removed a few of the guns. “Ah!” said the citizens of Magdeburg, joyfully, “we are saved; the Swedish hero is approaching, and the hosts of Tilly are about to flee.” All that night the cannon of the besiegers remained silent. This confirmed the impression of the citizens that the siege was about to be raised. The danger which had so long hung above them and inflicted so fearful a strain on their energies being gone, as they believed, the weariness and exhaustion that now overpowered them were in proportion to the former tension. The stillness seemed deep after the nights of fire and tempest through which they had passed. The silver of morning appeared in the east; still all was calm. The sun of a May day beamed forth, and showed the imperial encampment apparently reposing. One-half of the garrison, by order of Falkenberg, had been withdrawn from the walls, the wearied citizens were drowned in sleep, and the few who were awake were about to repair to the churches to offer thanks for their deliverance, when, at seven of the morning, sudden as the awakening of a quiescent volcano, a terrific storm broke over the city.

The roar of cannon, the ringing of the tocsin, the shouts of assailants, blending in one frightful thunder-burst, awoke the citizens. Stunned and terrified, they seized their arms and rushed into the street, only to find the enemy pouring into the town over the ramparts and through two of the gates, of which they had already gained possession. Falkenberg, as he was hurrying from post to post, was cut down at the commencement of the assault. His fall was fatal to the defense, for the attack not having been foreseen, no plan of resistance had been arranged; and though the citizens, knowing the horrors that were entering with the soldiers, fought with a desperate bravery, they were unable-without a leader, and without a plan-to stem the torrent of armed men who were every minute pouring into their city. It was easy scaling the walls, when defended by only a handful of men; it was equally easy forcing the gates, when the guards had been withdrawn to fight on the ramparts. Every moment the odds against the citizens were becoming more overwhelming, and by twelve o’clock all resistance was at an end, and Magdeburg was in the hands of the enemy.

Tilly now entered with the army. He took possession of the principal streets with his troops, and pointing his shotted cannon upon the masses of the citizens, compelled them to retire into their houses, there to await their fate. Regiment after regiment poured into Magdeburg. There entered, besides the German troops, the pitiless Walloons, followed by the yet more terrible Croats. What a horde of ruffianism! Although an army of wolves or tigers had been collected into Magdeburg, the danger would not have been half so terrible as that which now hung over the city from this assemblage of men, inflamed by every brutal passion, who stood wailing the signal to spring upon their prey.

Silence was signal enough: even Tilly dared not have withstood these men in their dreadful purpose. “And now began a scene of carnage,” says Schiller, “which history has no language, poetry no pencil, to portray. Neither the innocence of childhood nor the helplessness of old age, neither youth, sex, rank, nor beauty could disarm the fury of the conquerors. Wives were dishonored in the arms of their husbands, and daughters at the feet of their parents.” Infants were murdered at the breast, or tossed from pike to pike of the Croats, and then flung into the fire. Fifty-three women were found in a single church, their hands tied and their throats cut. Some ladies of wealth and beauty were tied to the stirrups of the soldiers’ horses, and led away captive. It were a wickedness even to write all the shameful and horrible things that were done: how much greater a wickedness was it to do them! Some of the officers of the League, shocked at the awful sights, ventured to approach Tilly, and beg him to put a stop to the carnage. “Come back in an hour,” was his answer, “and I shall see what can be done. The soldier must have some recompense for his danger and toils.” The tempest of shrieks, and wailings, and shoutings, of murder and rapine, the rattling of musketry and the clashing of swords, continued to [285] rage, while the general stood by, a calm spectator of the woes and crimes that were passing around him.

The city had been set fire to in several places, and a strong wind springing up, the conflagration raged with a fury which no one sought to control. The roar of the flames was now added to the other sounds of terror that rose from the doomed spot. The fire ran along the city with great rapidity, and swept houses, churches, and whole streets before it; but amid the smoke, the falling buildings, and the streets flowing with blood, the plunderer continued to prowl, and the murderer to pursue his victim, till the glowing and almost burning air drove the miscreants back to their camp. Magdeburg had ceased to exist; this fair, populous, and wealthy city, one of the finest in Germany, was now a field of blackened ruins. Every edifice had fallen a prey to the flames, with the exception of a church and a convent, which the soldiers assisted the monks to save, and 150 fishermen’s huts which stood on the banks of the Elbe. “The thing is so horrible,” says a contemporary writer, “that I am afraid to mention it further. According to the general belief here, above 40,000 of all conditions have ended their days in the streets and houses by fire and sword.”[2]

The same German party who had declined, with an air of offended dignity, the help of Gustavus Adolphus, now blamed him for not having extended his assistance to Magdeburg. This made it necessary for the Swedish monarch to explain publicly why he had not raised the siege. He showed conclusively that he could not have done so without risking the whole success of his expedition, and this he did not feel justified in doing for the sake of a single city. He had resolved, he said, the moment he heard of the danger of Magdeburg, to march to its relief: but first the Elector of Saxony refused a passage for his troops through his dominions; and, secondly, the Elector of Brandenburg was equally unwilling to guarantee an open retreat for his army through his territory in case of defeat. The fate of Magdeburg was thus mainly owing to the vacillating and cowardly policy of these two Electors, who had, up to that moment, not made it plain to Gustavus whether they were his friends or his enemies, and whether they were to abide with the League or join their arms with his in defense of Protestantism.

But the fall of Magdeburg was helpful to the Protestant cause. It sent a thrill of horror through Germany, and it alarmed the wavering Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, who began to see that the end of that neutrality which they thought so dexterous would be that they would be the last to be devoured by the imperial arms. Accordingly, first the Landgrave of Hesse made a firm compact with Gustavus Adolphus, and ever after continued his staunchest friend. A raid which Tilly made into his territories after leaving Magdeburg helped powerfully to this alliance with the Swedish king. The next to become the ally of Gustavus was the Elector of Brandenburg-not, however, till the Swedes had marched to Berlin, and Gustavus, pointing his cannon at the palace, demanded of the Elector that he should say whether he was for him or against him. Last of all, the Elector of Saxony, who had endured such distress and irresolution of mind, and who now received a visit from Tilly and his marauders-their track marked, as usual by frightful devastation-came at length to a decision, and joined his arms with those of Gustavus. This opened the way for the crowning victory of the campaign, which established the fortunes of Gustavus, and broke in pieces the army of the emperor.

Strengthened by these alliances, Gustavus crossed the Elbe. The next day his forces were joined by the Saxon army, 35,000 strong. At a council of war which was held here, it was debated whether the confederated host was strong enough to risk a battle, or whether the war should be protracted. “If we decide upon a battle,” said Gustavus, “a crown and two electorates are at stake.” The die was cast in favor of fighting. Gustavus put his army in motion to meet Tilly, who lay encamped in a strong and advantageous position near Leipsic. On the evening of the 6th September, 1631, Gustavus learned that he was within half a dozen miles of the imperialists. That night he dreamed that he had caught Tilly by the hair of his head, but that all his exertions could not secure his prisoner before he had succeeded in biting him on the left arm.[3] Next morning the two hostile armies were in sight of each other. Gustavus had seen the dawn of this day with deep anxiety. For the first time he was in presence of the whole imperial host, under its hitherto unconquered leader, and the issue of this day’s battle would decide whether the object for which he had crossed the Baltic was to be attained, and Germany set free from her chains, or whether defeat lowered over himself, and political and religious bondage over the Fatherland. Christendom waited with anxiety the issue of the event.

[2]Sir Robert Anstruther. German Correspondence, May, 1631. Lotichius, vol. 1., p. 876. Chemnitz, vol. 1., p. 132. Chapman, pp. 240-243. Schiller, vol. 1., pp. 240-250.

[3]Khevenhiller, vol. 11., p. 1875-apud Chapman, p. 257.

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The army of Tilly was drawn up in a single far-extending line on a rising ground on the plain of Breitenfeld, within a mile of Leipsic. The cannon were planted on the heights which rose behind the army, so as to sweep the plain, but making it impossible for the imperial troops to advance without coming within the range of their own fire. The infantry was placed in the center, where Tilly himself commanded; the cavalry formed the wings, with Furstenberg on the right, and Pappenheim on the left. The Swedish army was arranged into center and wings, each two columns in depth. Teuffel commanded in the center, Horn led the left wing, and the king himself the right, fronting Pappenheim. The Saxon troops, under the Elector, were stationed a little in the rear, on the left, at some distance from the Swedish main body, the king deeming it prudent to separate Saxon from Swedish valor; and the event justified his forethought.

The battle was joined at noon. It began with a cannonading, which lasted two hours. At two o’clock Pappenheim began the attack by throwing his cavalry upon the right wing of the Swedes, which was commanded by the king. The wind was blowing from the west, and the dust from the new-ploughed hind was driven in clouds in the face of the Swedes. To avoid the annoyance the king wheeled rapidly to the north, and the troops of Pappenheim, rushing in at the void which the king’s movement had left between the right wing and the center, were met in front by the second column of the wing, and assailed in the rear by the first column, led by the king, and after a desperate and prolonged conflict they were nearly all cut in pieces. Pappenheim was driven from the field, with the loss of his ordnance. While this struggle was proceeding between the two confronting wings, Tilly descended from the heights, and attacked the left wing of the Swedish army. To avoid the severe fire with which the Swedes received him, he turned off to attack the Saxons, who, mostly raw recruits, gave way and fled, carrying the Elector with them, who stopped only when he had reached Eilenburg.[4] Only one division under Arnim remained on the field, and saved the Saxon honour.

Deeming the victory won, the imperialists raised the cry of pursuit. Some 8,000 or 9,000 left the field on the track of the flying Saxons, numbers of whom were overtaken and slaughtered. Gustavus seized the moment to fall upon the flank of the imperial center, and soon effectually routed it, with the exception of two regiments concealed by the smoke and dust.

The center of the imperialists had been broken, and their left wing driven from the field, when the troops under Furstenberg, who had returned from chasing the Saxons, assailed with desperate fury the left wing of the Swedes. The conflict had almost ceased on the other parts of the field, and the last and most terrible burst of the tempest was here to discharge itself, and the fate of the day to be decided. Foot and horse, cuirassier, pikeman, and musketeer were drawn hither, and mingled in fearful and bloody conflict. The sun was now sinking in the west, and his slanting beam fell on the quiet dead, scattered over the field, but still that heaving mass in the center kept surging and boiling; cuirass and helmet, pike-head and uplifted sword, darting back the rays of the sun, which was descending lower and lower in the horizon. The mass was growing perceptibly smaller, as soldier and horse fell beneath saber or bullet, and were trampled into the bloody mire. Tilly and his imperialists were fighting for the renown of a hundred battles, which was fast vanishing. The most obstinate valor could not long hold out against the overwhelming odds of the Swedish warriors; and a remnant of the imperialists, favored by the dusk of evening, and the cloud and dust that veiled the battle-field, escaped from the conflict-the remnant of those terrible battalions which had inflicted such devastation on Germany.[5]

When Gustavus Adolphus rode out of the field, all was changed. He was no longer “the little Gothic king;” he was now the powerful conqueror, the terror of the Popish and the hope of the Protestant princes of Germany. The butchers of Magdeburg had been trampled into the bloody dust of Breitenfeld. The imperialist army had been annihilated; their leader, whom some called the first captain of the age, had left his glory on the field from which he was fleeing; the road into the center of Germany was open to the conqueror; the mighty projects of the Jesuits were menaced with overthrow; and the throne of the emperor was beginning to totter.

[4]The king’s letter to Oxenstierna, apud Geijer, vol 3., p. 217. Chapman, p. 261.

[5]Chemnitz, vol. 1., p. 175. Khevenhiller, vol. 11., p. 1874. Chapman, pp. 257-265. Schiller, vol. 1., pp. 266-269.

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Chapter 8: Conquest of the Rhine and Bavaria-Battle of Lutzen

Thanksgiving—Two Roads—Gustavus Marches to the Rhine—Submission of Erfurt, Wurzburg, Frankfort—Capture of Mainz—Gustavus’ Court -Future Arrangements for Germany—The King’s Plans—Stipulations for Peace—Terms Rejected—Gustavus Enters Bavaria—Defeat and Death of Tilly—Wallenstein Recalled—His Terms—The Saxons in Bohemia -Gustavus at Augsburg—At Ingolstadt—His Encampment at Nuremberg—Camp of Wallenstein—Famine and Death—Wallenstein Invades Saxony—Gustavus Follows him—The Two Armies Meet at Lutzen—Morning of the Battle—The King’s Address to his Troops—The Battle—Capture and Recapture of Trenches and Cannon—Murderous Conflicts—The King Wounded—He Falls

Picture: View of the Town-hall, Breslau (Silesia)

When he saw how the day had gone, the first act of Gustavus Adolphus was to fall on his knees on the blood-besprinkled plain, and to give thanks for the victory which had crowned his arms.[1] On this field the God of battles had “cast down the mighty,“

[1]Schiller, vol. 1., p. 269.

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and “exalted them of low degree.” There was now an end to the jeers of the Jesuits, and the supercilious insolences of Ferdinand. Having offered his prayer, Gustavus rose up to prosecute, in the mightier strength with which victory had clothed him, the great enterprise which had brought him across the sea. He encamped for the night between the city of Leipsic and the field of battle. On that field 7,000 imperialists lay dead, and in addition 5,000 had been wounded or taken prisoners. The loss of the Swedes did not exceed 700; that of the Saxons amounted to 2,000, who had fallen on the field, or been cut down in the pursuit. In a few days the Elector of Saxony, who had accompanied his soldiers in their flight, believing all to be lost, returned to the camp of the king, finding him still victorious, and a council of war was held to decide on the measures to be adopted for the further prosecution of the war. Two roads were open to Gustavus-one to Vienna, and the other to the Rhine; which of the two shall he choose? If the king had marched on Vienna, taking Prague on his way, it is probable that he would have been able to dictate a peace on his own terms at the gates of the Austrian capital. His renowned chancellor, Oxenstierna, was of opinion that this was the course which Gustavus ought to have followed.[2] But the king did not then fully know the importance of the victory of Breitenfeld, and the blow it had inflicted on the imperial cause; nor could he expect any material succors in Bohemia, where Protestantism was almost entirely trampled out; so, sending the Elector of Saxony southwards, where every operation against the Popish States would help to confirm his own Protestant loyalty, still doubtful, the Swedish monarch directed his own march to the West, where the free cities, and the Protestant princes, waited his coming to shake off the yoke of Ferdinand, and rally round the standard of the Protestant Liberator.

His progress was a triumphal march. The fugitive Tilly had collected a few new regiments to oppose his advance, but he had marshaled them only to be routed by the victorious Swedes. The strongly fortified city of Erfurt fell to the arms of Gustavus; Gotha and Weimar also opened their gates to him. He exacted an oath of allegiance from their inhabitants, as he did of every town of any importance, of which he took possession, leaving a garrison on his departure, to secure its loyalty. The army now entered the Thuringian Forest, cresset lights hung upon the trees enabling it to thread its densest thickets in perfect safety. On the 30th September, 1631, the king crossed the frontier of Franconia. The cities opened their gates to him, most of them willingly, and a few after a faint show of resistance. To all of them the conqueror extended protection of their civil rights, and liberty of worship.

The Bishops of Wurzburg and Bamberg trembled when they saw the Swedes pouring like a torrent into their territories. These two ecclesiastics were among the most zealous members of the League, and the most virulent enemies of the Protestants, and they and the towns of their principalities anticipated the same treatment at the hands of the conquerors which they in similar circumstances had inflicted on others. Their fortresses, cities, and territories were speedily in possession of Gustavus, but to their glad surprise, instead of the desecration of their churches, or the persecution of their persons, they beheld only a brilliant example of toleration. The Protestant worship was set up in their cities, but the Roman service was permitted to be practiced as before. The Bishop of Wurzburg, however, had not remained to be witness of this act of moderation. He had fled to Paris at the approach of Gustavus. In the fortress of Marienburg, which the Swedish king carried by storm, he found the valuable library of the Jesuits, which he caused to be transported to Upsala. This formed some compensation for the more valuable library of Heidelberg which had been transferred to Rome. On the 17th of November he entered Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and marched his army in a magnificent procession through it. “He appeared in the midst of his troops, clad in cloth of scarlet and gold, riding a handsome Spanish jennet, bare-headed, with a bright and handsome countenance, and returning with graceful courtesy the cheers and salutations of the spectators.”[3] From the furthest shore of Pomerania, to the point where he had now arrived, the banks of the Maine, the king had held his victorious way without being once compelled to recede, and without encountering a single defeat. “Here, in the heart of Germany, he received the Protestant States like a German emperor of the olden time.”[4]

Traversing the Ecclesiastical States that stretch from the Maine to the Rhine, “the Priest’s Row,” the milk and honey of which regaled his soldiers after the sterile districts through which they had passed, Gustavus crossed the Rhine, and laid siege (11th December) to the wealthy city of Mainz.

[2]Puffendorf p. 53. Chapman, p. 267.

[3]Chemnitz, vol. 1., p. 199-apud Chapman, p. 285.

[4]Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., p. 168.

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In two days it capitulated, and the king entered it in state, attended by the Landgrave of Hesse. After this he returned to Frankfort, where he fixed his abode for a short while.[5]

If the summer had been passed in deeds of arms, the winter was not less busily occupied in securing the fruits of these dangers and toils. Gustavus’ queen, to whom he was tenderly attached, joined him at Mainz, to which he again repaired; so too did his chancellor, the famous Oxenstierna, on

[5]Schiller, vol. 2., p. 30.

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whose wisdom he so confidingly and justly relied. The city of Mainz and the banks of the Rhine resounded with the din and shone with the splendor of the old imperial times. Couriers were hourly arriving and departing; ambassadors from foreign States were daily receiving audience; the Protestant princes, and the deputies from the imperial towns, were crowding to pay their homage to, or solicit the protection of, the victorious chief; uniforms and royal equipages crowded the street; and while the bugle’s note and the drum’s roll were heard without, inside the palace negotiations were going on, treaties were being framed, the future condition and relations of Germany were being discussed and decided upon, and efforts were being made to frame a basis of peace, such as might adjust the balance between Popish and Protestant Germany, and restore rest to the weary land, and security to its trembling inhabitants.

When the king set out from Sweden to begin this gigantic enterprise, his one paramount object was the restoration of Protestantism, whose overthrow was owing quite as much to the pusillanimity of the princes, as to the power of the imperial arms. He felt “a divine impulse” impelling him onwards, and he obeyed, without settling, even with himself, what recompense he should have for all his risks and toils, or what material guarantees it might be necessary to exact, not only for the security of a re-established Protestantism, but also for the defense of his own kingdom of Sweden, which the success of his expedition would make an object of hostility to the Popish princes. The Elector of Brandenburg had sounded him on this point before he entered his dominions, and Gustavus had frankly replied that if the exiles were restored, religious liberty granted in the States, and himself secured against attack from the Hapsburgs in his own country, he would be satisfied. But now, in the midst of Germany, and taking a near view of matters as success on the battle-field had shaped them, and especially considering the too obvious lukewarmness and imbecility of the Protestant princes, it is probable that the guarantees that would have satisfied him at an earlier stage, he no longer deemed sufficient. It is even possible that he would not have declined a controlling power over the princes, somewhat like that which the emperor wielded. We do not necessarily impute ambitious views to Gustavus Adolphus, when we admit the Possibility of some such arrangement as this having shaped itself before his mind; for it might seem to him that otherwise the existence of a Protestant Germany was not possible. He would have been guilty of something like folly, if he had not taken the best means in his power to perpetuate what he accounted of so great value, and to save which from destruction he had undertaken so long a march, and fought so many battles; and when he looked round on the princes he might well ask himself, “Is there one of them to whom I can with perfect confidence commit this great trust?” We do not say that he had formed this plan; but if the fruits of his victories were not to be dissipated, some such plan he would ultimately have been compelled to have recourse to; and amidst a crowd of insincere, pusillanimous, and incompetent princes, where could a head to such a confederacy have been found if not in the one only man of zeal, and spirit, and capacity that the cause had at its service?

The restorations that the Swedish king at this hour contemplated, and the aspect which the future Germany would have worn, had he lived to put the crown upon his enterprise, may be gathered from the stipulations which he demanded when the Roman Catholic party made overtures of peace to him. These were the following:

1st. The Edict of Restitution shall be null and void.

2nd. Both the Roman and the Protestant religion shall be tolerated in town and country.

3rd. Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia shall be restored to their former condition; all the exiles shall return to their estates.

4th. The Elector-Palatine, Frederick V., shall be restored to his country.

5th. The Bavarian Electorate shall cease; the electoral vote shall be restored to the Palatinate.

6th. The practice of the Protestant religion, and all civil privileges, shall be restored to Augsburg.

7th. All Jesuits, as disturbers of the public peace, and authors of the present difficulties, shall be banished from the empire.

8th. Protestants as well as Romanists shall be admitted into every institution.

9th. The monasteries in the Duchy of Wurtemberg which have been illegally taken possession of by the Romanists shall be restored.

10th. Out of gratitude for the salvation of the German Empire, your Majesty the King of Sweden shall be elected King of Rome.

11th. All expenses incurred in the imperial cities and in the Duchy of Wurtemberg by the Edict of Restitution shall be repaid.

12th. There shall be as many Lutheran as Catholic canons appointed to the cathedral.[6]

We have two lists of these conditions-one by

[6]Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., pp. 170, 171.

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Khevenhiller,[7] and another by Richelieu.[8] In the latter list the 10th article, which stipulates that Gustavus should be made King of the Romans, is wanting. To be King of Rome was to hold in reversion the empire; but this article is far from being authenticated.

Such were the terms on which the conqueror was willing to sheathe his sword and make peace with the emperor. Substantially, they implied the return of Germany to its condition before the war (status quo ante bellum); and they were not only just and equitable, but, though Richelieu thought otherwise, extremely moderate, when we think that they were presented by a king, in the heart of Germany, at the head of a victorious host, to another sovereign whose army was all but annihilated, and the road to whose capital stood open to the conqueror. The stipulations, in brief, were the free profession of religion to both Romanists and Lutherans throughout the empire.[9] The terms were rejected, and the war was resumed.

In the middle of February, 1532, the king put his army in motion, advancing southward into Bavaria, that he might attack the League in the chief seat of its power. The fallen Tilly made a last effort to retrieve his fame by the overthrow of his great antagonist. Having collected the wreck of his routed host, with the addition of some new levies, he waited on the banks of the river Lech for the approach of Gustavus. The defeat of the general of the League was complete: both the army and its leader were utterly lost; the former being dispersed, and Tilly dying of his wounds a few days after the battle. It delights us to be able to pay a tribute to the memory of the warrior whom we now see expiring at the age of seventy-three. He was inflamed with bigotry, but he was sincere and open, and had not stained himself with the low vices and shameless hypocrisy of the Jesuits, nor with the dark arts which Wallenstein studied. He was chaste and temperate-virtues beyond price in every age, but especially in an age like that in which Tilly lived. The cloud on his glory is the sack of Magdeburg, but retribution soon followed in the eclipse of Leipsic. After that the sun-light of his face never returned. He complained that the world spoke in of him, and that those whom he had faithfully served had left him desolate in his age. He died grasping the crucifix, and expended his parting breath in repeating a verse from the Psalms-“In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust.”[10]

The overthrow of Tilly, and the utter rout of his army, had left the frontiers of Austria without defense; and the emperor saw with alarm that the road to his capital was open to the victorious Swede if he chose to pursue it. The whole of Germany between the Rhine and the Danube was in possession of Gustavus, and a new army must be found if Ferdinand would prevent the conqueror seating himself in Vienna. Even granting that an army were raised, who was to command it? All his generals had fallen by the sword; one only survived, but how could Ferdinand approach him, seeing he had requited his great services by dismissal? But the desperate straits to which he was reduced left the emperor no alternative, and he made overtures to Wallenstein. That consummately able, but vaultingly ambitious man, listened to the royal proposals, but deigned them no reply. Living in a style of magnificence that threw Ferdinand and all the sovereigns of the day into the shade, Wallenstein professed to have no desire to return to the toils of a military life. The emperor in distress sent again and again to the duke. At last Wallenstein was moved. He would succour the empire at its need; he would organize an army, but he would not command it. He set to work; the spell of his name was still omnipotent. In three months he had raised 50,000 men, and he sent to the emperor to tell him that the army was ready, and that he waited only till he should name the man who was to command it, when he would hand it over to his Majesty. Every one knew that the troops would soon disperse if the man who had raised them was not at their head.

Again the imperial ambassadors kneeled before Wallenstein. They begged him to undertake the command of the army which he had equipped. The duke was inexorable. Other ambassadors were sent, but they entreated in vain. At last came the prince of Eggenberg, and now Wallenstein was won, but on terms that would be incredible were they not amply authenticated.

The treaty concluded in April, 1632, provided that the Duke of Friedland should be generalissimo not only of the army, but of the emperor, of the arch-dukes, and of the Austrian crown. The emperor must never be present in the army, much less command it. As ordinary reward an Austrian hereditary territory was to be bestowed on Wallenstein; as extraordinary he was to have sovereign jurisdiction over all the conquered territories, and nearly all Germany was to be conquered. He was to possess, moreover, the sole power of confiscating estates; he only could pardon; and the emperor’s forgiveness was to be valid only when ratified by

[7]Khevenhiller, vol 7., p. 87.

[8]Richelieu, Memoirs, vol. 7., p. 45.

[9]Chapman, pp. 296, 297.

[10]Aldzreitter, vol. 3., p. 265-apud Chapman, p. 313.

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the duke.[11] These conditions constituted Wallenstein the real master of the empire. To Ferdinand there remained only the title of king and the shadow of power. Thus, the man who had hid the rankling wound inflicted by dismissal beneath, apparently, the most placid of submissions, exacted a terrible revenge; but in so using the advantage which the calamities of his friends put in his power, he over-reached himself, as the sequel proved.

Again we behold the duke at the head of the imperial armies. His first efforts were followed by success. He entered Bohemia, which had been occupied by the Saxon troops after the battle of Leipsic. The Saxons had taken down the martyrs’ heads on the Bridge-tower of Prague, as we have already narrated, and they had re-established for a brief period, the Protestant worship in the city of Huss; but they retreated before the soldiers of Wallenstein, together with their spiritless Elector, who was but too glad of an excuse for returning to his palace and his table. Bohemia was again subjugated to the scepter of Ferdinand, and Wallenstein turned westward to measure swords with a very different antagonist-Gustavus Adolphus.

We parted from the King of Sweden at the passage of the Lech, where Tilly received his mortal wound. From this point Gustavus marched on towards Augsburg, where he arrived on the 8th of April, 1632. The Augsburg of that day was renowned for the multitude of its merchants and the opulence of its bankers. It was the city of the Fuggers and the Baumgartens, at whose door monarchs knocked when they would place an army in the field. These men lived in stately mansions, surrounded by gardens which outvied the royal park at Blots. It was in one of their parterres that the tulip first unfolded its gorgeous petals beneath the sun of Europe.

But Augsburg wore in Protestant eyes a yet greater attraction, from the circumstance that its name was linked with the immortal Confession in which the young Protestant Church expressed her belief at t]he foot of the throne of Charles V. Here, too, had been framed the Pacification, which Ferdinand had flagrantly violated, and which the hero now at her gates had taken up arms to restore. Will Augsburg welcome the Protestant champion? Incredible as it may seem, she closes her gates against him. Gustavus began to prepare for a siege by digging trenches; the guns of the city ramparts fired upon his soldiers while so engaged; but he did not reply, for he was loth to deface a single stone of a place so sacred. Before opening his cannonade he made trial if haply he might re-kindle the old fire that once burned so brightly in this venerable town. His appeal was successful, and on the 10th of April, Augsburg capitulated. On the 14th the king made his public entry, going straight to St. Ann’s Church, where the Lutheran Litany was sung, after the silence of many years, and Fabricius, the king’s chaplain, preached, taking Psalm 12:5 as his text. After sermon the king repaired to the market-place, where the citizens took an oath of fealty to himself and to the crown of Sweden.[12]

The king left Augsburg next day, and proceeded to Ingolstadt. He thought to take this city and dislodge the nest of Jesuits within it, but being strongly fortified, its siege would have occupied more time than its importance justified; and so, leaving Ingolstadt, Gustavus directed his course to Munich. The capital of Bavaria was thus added to the towns that had submitted to his arms, and now the whole country of the League, Ingolstadt excepted, was his. He had carried his arms from the shores of the Baltic to the foot of the Tyrol, from the banks of the Oder to those of the Rhine. The monarchs of Denmark and France, jealous of his advances, and not knowing where they would end, here met him with offers of mediating between him and the emperor and establishing peace. Gustavus frankly told them that he had drawn the sword for the vindication of the rights of the Protestants of the empire, and that he would not sheathe it so long as the object for which he had begun the war remained unaccomplished.

The king now moved toward Nuremberg, where he established his camp, which he fortified with a ditch eight feet deep and twelve wide,[13] within which rose redoubts and bastions mounted with 300 cannon. Wallenstein, advancing from Bohemia, and joined by the army under the Elector of Bavaria, pitched his camp of 60,000 men on the other side of the town.

Europe watched with breathless anxiety, expecting every day the decisive trial of strength between these two armies. Gustavus strove by every expedient to draw his great antagonist into battle, but Wallenstein had adopted a strategy of famine. The plan succeeded. The land was not able to bear two such mighty hosts, and the scene of the encampment became a field of horrors. The horses died in thousands for want

[11]Khevenhiller, vol. 12., p. 13-apud Chapman, p. 323. Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., pp. 175, 176.

[12]Swed. Intell., vol. 2., pp. 152-158-apud Chapman, p. 326.

[13]Schiller, vol. 2., p. 98.

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of forage; the steaming putridity of the unburied carcasses poisoned the air, and the effluvia, joined to the famine, proved more fatal to the soldiers of both camps than would the bloodiest battle. In the city of Nuremberg 10,000 inhabitants died. Gustavus Adolphus had lost 20,000 of his soldiers; the imperialists had lost, it is to be presumed, an equal number; the villages around Nuremberg were in ashes; the plundered peasantry were expiring on the highway: the most ghastly spectacles met the eye on every side, for the country for leagues had become a graveyard. In the middle of September, Gustavus Adolphus raised his camp and returned to Bavaria, to complete its conquest by the reduction of Ingolstadt. Wallenstein also broke up his encampment, and marched northwards to Saxony. A second time the road had been left open to Vienna, for there was now no army between Gustavus and that capital. While he was revolving a march southward, and the ending of the campaign by the dethronement of the emperor, he received a letter from his chancellor, Oxenstierna, informing him that a treachery was preparing in his rear. The Elector of Saxony was negotiating with Wallenstein, with a view to withdrawing from the Swedish alliance, and joining in affinity with the imperialists. If the powerful principality of Saxony should become hostile, lying as it did between Gustavus and the Baltic, a march on Vienna was impossible. Thus again were the house and throne of the Hapsburgs saved.

Intent on preventing the defection of the Elector of Saxony, all example likely to be followed by other princes, Gustavus Adolphus returned northward by forced marches. Traversing the Bavarian plains, he entered Thuringia, where he was welcomed with the acclamations of the inhabitants of the towns and villages through which he passed. At Erfurt he took a tender leave of his queen, and hastened forward in the direction of Leipsic to meet Wallenstein. On his march he was informed that the enemy was stationed in the villages around Lutzen, a small town not far from the spot where he had gained his great victory of a year ago.

Gustavus darted forward on his prey, but before he could reach Lutzen the night had fallen, and the battle could not be joined. Wallenstein, who had been unaware of the approach of the Swedes, profited by the night’s delay to dig trenches on the battle-field, which he filled with musketeers. He also recalled Pappenheim, who had been sent off with a detachment to Cologne. The king passed the night in his carriage, arranging with his generals the order of battle, and waiting the breaking of the day. The morning rose in fog; the king had prayers read by his chaplain, Fabricius; then the army, accompanied by martial music, sang Luther’s hymn; after which Gustavus himself led in a second hymn, in which the battalions around him joined in full chorus. The mist still hung over the landscape, concealing the one army from the other; but at ten o’clock it cleared off, revealing to the eyes of the Swedes the long confronting line of the imperialists, and the town of Lutzen in flames, Wallenstein having ordered it to be fired lest, under cover of it, the Swedes should outflank him.[14]

The king, without having broken his fast, mounted his horse. He did not put on his armor before entering the battle: he had forborne its use for some time owing to his corpulence. He wore only a plain buff coat or leather jerkin; replying, it is said, to one who tried to dissuade him from thus exposing his life, that “God was his harness.”[15] He addressed in brief but energetic terms first the Swedes, then the Germans, reminding them of the vast issues depending on the battle about to be joined; that on this day their bravery would vindicate, or their cowardice would crush, the religion and liberty of Germany. He exhorted them not to be sparing of their blood in so great a cause, and assured them that posterity would not forget what it owed to the men who had died on the field of Lutzen that they might be free. Having so spoken, Gustavus rode forward, the first of all his army, to meet the enemy.

At the moment when the battle began, it is probable that the number of the opposing hosts was about equal; but on the arrival of Pappenheim the preponderance was thrown on the side of the imperialists. The calculations of the best authorities make Wallenstein’s army amount to about 27,000, and the force under Gustavus Adolphus to from 18,000 to 20,000. The Swedish infantry advanced against the trenches, but were received with a tremendous fire of musketry and artillery. Bearing down with immense impetuosity, they crossed the trenches, captured the battery, and turned the guns against the enemy. The first of the five imperial brigades was routed; the second was in disorder; the third was wavering, Wallenstein, with three regiments of horse, galloped to the spot, shouting with a voice of thunder, and cleaving in his rage some of the fugitives with his own hand. The flight of his soldiers was arrested. The brigades formed anew, and faced the Swedes. A murderous conflict ensued. The combatants, locked in a hand-to-hand struggle, could make no use of

[14]Schiller, vol 2., p. 122.

[15]Swed. Intell., vol. 3., p. 128-apud Chapman, p. 369.

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their firearms. They fought with their swords, pikes, and the butt-end of their muskets; the clash of steel, blending with the groans of those who were being trampled down, resounded over the field. The Swedes, at last overpowered by numbers, were compelled to abandon the cannon they had captured; and when they retreated, a thousand dead and dying covered the spot where the conflict had raged.

Gustavus Adolphus, at the head of his Finland cuirassiers, attacked the left wing of the enemy. The light-mounted Poles and Croats were broken by the shock, and fleeing in disorder, they spread terror and confusion among the rest of the imperial cavalry. At this moment the king was told that his infantry was recrossing the trenches, and that his left wing was wavering. Committing the pursuit of the vanquished Croats to General Horn, he flew on his white steed across the field, followed by the regiment of Steinbock; he leaped the trenches, and spurred to the spot where his soldiers were most closely pressed. Only the Duke of Lauenburg and a few horsemen were able to keep pace with the king; the squadrons he led had not yet come up, not being able to clear the trenches so easily as the king had done. Gustavus, shortsighted, and eager to discover an opening in the enemy’s ranks at which to pour in a charge, approached too close to their line; a musketeer took aim at him, and his shot shattered the king’s left arm. By this time his squadrons had come up, and the king attempted to lead them, but overcome by pain, and on the point of fainting, he requested the Duke of Lauenburg to lead him secretly out of the tumult. As he was retiring he received a second shot through the back. Feeling the wound to be mortal, he said to Lauenburg, “I am gone; look to your own life.” A page assisted him to dismount, and while in the act of doing so other cuirassiers gathered around the wounded monarch, and demanded who he was. The page refused to tell, but Gustavus himself made known his name and rank, whereupon the cuirassiers completed the work of death by the discharge of more shots, and the king sunk in the midst of the imperial horsemen. Such were the accounts of the page, who himself was wounded, and died soon after. The king’s steed, now set free, galloped with flowing rein and empty saddle over the field, communicating to the Swedish ranks the impression that some disaster had befallen, of which they knew not as yet the full and terrible extent. [295]

Chapter 9: Death of Gustavus Adolphus

Battle Renewed—The Cry, “The King is Dead!”—The Duke of Saxe-Weimar takes the Command—Fury of the Swedes—Rout of the Imperialists—Arrival of Pappenheim on the Field—Renewal of Battle a Third Time—Death of Pappenheim—Final Rout of Wallenstein—Wallenstein on the Field of Battle—Retires to Leipsic—Escapes from Germany—Swedes remain Masters of the Field—Cost of the Victory—The King’s Body Discovered—Embalmed and Conveyed to Sweden—Grief of the Swedes—Sorrow of Christendom—Character of Gustavus Adolphus—Accomplishes his Mission—Germany not Able to Receive the Emancipation he Achieved for her

Picture: Death of Gustavus Adolphus

The fall of Gustavus Adolphus, so far from ending the battle, was in a sort only its beginning. The riderless horse, galloping wildly over the battle-field, only half told its tale. It was possible that the king was only wounded. The bravery of the Swedes was now changed into fury. Horse and foot rushed madly onward to the spot where the king had been seen to enter the thick of the fight, with the intention of rescuing him if alive, of avenging him if dead. The mournful fact was passed in a whisper from one Swedish officer to another, that Gustavus Adolphus was no more. They rode up to the Croats, who were stripping the body in their desire to possess some memorial of the fallen hero, and a terrible conflict ensued over his corpse. No flash of firearm was seen, only the glitter of pike, the clash of sword, and the heavy stroke of musket as it fell on the steel helmet, came from that struggling mass in the center of the field, for again the fight was a hand-to-hand one. The dead fell thick, and a mound of corpses, rising ever higher, with the battle raging widely around it, termed meanwhile the mausoleum of the great warrior.

From the officers the dreadful intelligence soon descended to the ranks. The cry ran from brigade to brigade of the Swedes, “The king is dead!” As the terrible words fell on the soldier’s ear his [296] knitted brow grew darker, and he seized his weapon with a yet fiercer grasp. The most sacred life of all had been spilled, and of what value was now his own? He feared not to die on the same field with the king, and a new energy animated the soldier. The brave Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, took the place of Gustavus, and his squadrons advanced to the charge with a fire that showed that the spirit of the fallen hero lived in the troops. They closed in dreadful conflict with the enemy. His left wing was chased completely out of the field; this was followed by the rout of the right wing. Like a whirlwind, the Swedes again passed the trenches, and the artillery, which had clone such murderous execution upon them, was seized, and its thunders directed against the foe. The heavy battalions of the imperial center were now attacked, and were giving way before the overwhelming impetuosity of their antagonists. At that moment a terrible roar was heard behind the imperial army. The ground shook, and the air was black with volumes of smoke, and lurid with flashes of fire. Their powder wagons had exploded, and bombs and grenades in thousands were shooting wildly into the sky. Wallenstein’s army imagined that they had been attacked in the rear; panic and flight were setting in among his troops; another moment and the day would be won by the Swedes.

It was now that Pappenheim, whom Wallenstein’s recall found at no great distance, presented himself on the field at the head of fresh troops. All the advantages which the Swedes had gained were suddenly lost, and the battle was begun anew. The newly-arrived cuirassiers and dragoons fell upon the Swedes, who, their numbers thinned, and wearied with their many hours’ fighting, fell back; the trenches were again recrossed, and the cannon once more abandoned. Pappenheim himself followed the retreating Swedes, and plunging into the thickest of the fight, wandered over the field in quest of Gustavus, whom he believed to be still living, and whom he burned to meet in single combat. He fell, his breast pierced by two musket-balls, and was carried out of the field by his soldiers. While he was being borne to the rear, some one whispered into his ear that the man he sought lay slain upon the field. “His dying eye,” says Schiller, “sparkled with a gleam of joy.” “Tell the Duke of Friedland,” said he, “that I am mortally wounded, but that I die happy, knowing that the implacable enemy of my faith has fallen on the same day.”[1]

The fall of their leader dispirited his troops, and the tide of battle again turned against the imperialists. The Swedes, seeing the enemy’s confusion, with great promptitude filled up the gaps that death had made in their ranks, and forming into one line made a last decisive charge. A third time the trenches were crossed, and the enemy’s artillery seized. The sun was setting as the two armies closed in that last desperate struggle. The ardour of the combatants seemed to grow, and the battle to wax in fury, the nearer the moment when it must end. Each seemed bent on seizing the victory before darkness should descend on the scene and part the combatants. The night came; the rival armies could no longer see the one the other; the trumpet sounded; the torn relics of those magnificent squadrons which had formed in proud and terrible array in the morning now marched out of the field. The victory was claimed by both sides.

Both armies left their artillery on the battle-field, and the victory would rightfully belong to whichever of the two hosts should have the courage or the good fortune to appropriate it.

Far and wide on that field lay the dead, in all places thickly strewn, in some piled in heaps, with whole regiments lying in the exact order in which they had formed, attesting in death the tenacity of that courage which had animated them in life. Wallenstein retired for the night to Leipsic. He had striven to the utmost, during that dreadful day, to add to his other laurels the field of Lutzen. He was to be seen on all parts of the field careering through the smoke and fire, rallying his troops, encouraging the brave, and threatening or punishing the coward. He feared not to go where the shower of bullets was the thickest and deadliest. His cloak was pierced by balls in numerous places. The dead were falling thick around him; but a shield which he saw not covered his head, and he passed scatheless through all the horrors of the day, fate having decreed-though the stars had hidden it from him-that he should die on a less glorious field than that on which his immortal antagonist had breathed his last.

When the sun rose next morning, the dead and dying alone occupied the field of Lutzen. There were the cannon, their thunders hushed, as if in reverence of those who were breathing out their life in low and heavy moanings. The two armies stood off from the spot where the day before they had wrestled in all the passionate energy of battle. Wallenstein sent his Croats to take possession of the artillery, that he might have a pretext for saying that he had vanquished on the field from the vicinity of which he was at that moment preparing to flee; but when his messengers saw the

[1]Schiller, vol. 2., p. 128.

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Swedes drawn up in order of battle at no great distance, they forbore the attempt to execute the orders of their master. The same day Wallenstein was followed to Leipsic by the remnant of his army, but in most miserable plight, without artillery, without standards, almost without arms, covered with wounds; in short, looking the reverse of victors. The duke made a short stay in Leipsic, and soon removed even beyond the bounds of Saxony; in such haste was he to escape from the scene of his alleged triumph, for which the bells of the churches of Austria were at that moment ringing peals of joy! The Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who had succeeded the fallen king in the command of the Swedes, took possession of the battle-field, with all on it; and soon thereafter established himself in Leipsic, thus incontestably proving that the victory was his.[2]

When the terrible cry, “The king is dead!” rang along the Swedish ranks on the day of battle, it struck as a knell of woe on every ear on which it fell. But the soldier had only a moment to think on the extent of the calamity; the uppermost idea in his mind was “to conquer.” The field beneath him, with its burden of ghastly horrors, and the enemy vanishing in the distance, was the proof that he had conquered; but now he had time to reflect at what a cost victory had been won! Somewhere on that field on which he was now gazing with an eye in which sadness had taken the place of fury, lay the hero who had yesterday led them forth to battle. This changed victory’s paean into a funeral dirge. How much lay buried with that hero! The safety of Sweden, the hopes of the Protestant princes, the restoration of the Protestant worship in Germany; for what so likely, now that the strong arm which had rolled back the Catholic Restoration was broken, as that the flood would return and again overflow those countries from which its desolating waters had been dried up?

The first care of the Swedes was to search for the body of their king. The quest was for some time ineffectual; but at last the royal corpse was discovered beneath a heap of slain, stripped of all its ornaments, and most of its clothing, and covered with blood and wounds. The king had fallen near to a great stone, which for a century had stood between Lutzen and the canal, and which from that day has borne, in memory of the event, the name of the “Stone of the Swede.” The body of the king was carried to the neighbouring town of Weissenfels, and there embalmed and laid out in state. The queen embraced his remains in an agony of grief; his generals stood round his bier in speechless sorrow, gazing on the majestic countenance of him who would no more lead them forth to battle, and striving to turn their thoughts away from the contemplation of a future which his death had so suddenly darkened. His remains were conveyed to Stockholm, and interred in the sepulchres of the Kings of Sweden in the Church of Ritterholm.[3]

“When the great king, lord of the half of Germany, sank in the dust of the battle-field,” says Freytag, “a cry of woe went through the whole Protestant territories. In city and country there was a funeral service held; endless were the elegies written upon him; even enemies concealed their joy behind a manly sympathy which was seldom shown in that time to any opponent.

“His end was considered as a national misfortune; to the people the ‘Liberator,’ the ‘Savior,’ was lost. Also we, whether Protestants or Catholics, may look, not only with cordial interest upon a pure heroic life, which in the years of its highest power was so suddenly extinguished; we should also consider with thanks the influence which the king had upon the German war. For he has in desperate times defended what Luther obtained for the whole nation-the freedom of thought, and capacity for national development against the frightful enemy of German existence, a soulless despotism in Church and State.”[4]

So ended, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, the great career of Gustavus Adolphus. His sudden appearance on the scene, and his sudden departure from it, are equally striking. “History,” says

[2]We have followed the standard authorities for our description of this celebrated battle; still, it is impossible to give very minute or, it may be, perfectly accurate details of it. It was variously reported at the time. The king’s death, for instance, has been set down as the act of an assassin, and the Swedes generally believed that the perpetrator of the base act was Francis, Duke of Lauenburg. The antecedents of this man, and his subsequent history, gave some grounds for the suspicion. But it needs not assassination to account for the death of one who, with incomparable but unjustifiable bravery, was fighting, almost alone and without armor, in the midst of hundreds of enemies.

[3]The traveller Cox says: “A few years ago, Prince Henry of Prussia, being at Stockholm, descended into the vault, and opened the coffin which contains the remains of Gustavus. A Swedish nobleman who accompanied the prince into the vault assured me that the body was in a state of complete preservation”(about 150 years after burial), “that the countenance still retained the most perfect resemblance to the pictures and coins, and particularly that the whiskers and short pointed beard, which he wore according to the fashion of the times in which he lived, were distinctly visible.” (Cox, Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, vol. 3., p. 102; Dublin, 1784.)

[4]Gustav Freytag, p. 180.

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Schiller, “so often engaged in the ungrateful task of analyzing; the uniform course of human passions, is sometimes gratified by the appearance of events which strike like a hand from heaven, into the calculated machinery of human affairs, and recall to the contemplative mind the idea of a higher order of things. Such appears to us the sudden vanishing of Gustavus Adolphus from the scene.”[5] It does not pertain to our subject to dwell on his great military genius, and the original tactics which he introduced into the art of war. He was the greatest general in an age of great generals. Among the eight best commanders whom, in his opinion, the world had ever seen, Napoleon gave a place to Gustavus Adolphus.[6]

Gustavus Adolphus falls below the great William of Orange, but he rises high above all his contemporaries, and stands forth, beyond question, as the greatest man of his age. In each of the three departments that constitute greatness he excelled-in the largeness of his moral and intellectual nature; in the grandeur of his aims; and in the all but perfect success that crowned what he undertook. The foundation of his character was his piety. “He was a king,” said Oxenstierna, “God-fearing in all his works and actions even unto death.” From his youth his soul had been visited with impulses which he believed came from beyond the sphere of humanity. His grandfather’s dying words had consecrated him to a sublime but most arduous mission; that mission he could scarcely misunderstand. The thoughts that began to stir within him as he grew to manhood, and the aspects of Providence around him, gave depth and strength to his early impressions, which so grew upon him from day to day that he had no rest. He saw the labors of the Reformers on the point of being swept away, the world about to be rolled back into darkness, add the religion and liberty of Christendom overwhelmed by a flood of arms and Jesuitry. Among the princes of Germany he could discern no one who was able or at all willing to cope with the crisis. If the terrible ruin was to be averted, he himself must stand in the breach: he was the last hope of a perishing world. Thus it was that he came across the sea with a feeling that he was the chosen instrument of Providence to set limits to the ruinous reaction that was overwhelming Christendom. In the great generals who had grown up around him; in the army, disciplined and hardened in many a campaign, now gathered under his banners; in the union of great qualities in himself, fitting him for his task; in his power of command; in his love of order and system; in his intuitive faculty of quick and rapid combinations; in his genius for forming plans, and the caution, united with daring courage, which never permitted him to take a single step forward without having secured a line of safe retreat in the rear-in this assemblage of great attributes, so fully possessed and so easily exercised by him, he read the authentication of his great mission.

That mission was publicly and conclusively certified to both friend and foe on the field of Leipsic. That marvelous victory proclaimed Gustavus Adolphus to be one of those saviors whom the Great Ruler, at times, raises up in pity for a fallen race, and whom he employs suddenly and beneficently to change the current of history. A greater consciousness of this breathes henceforward in every word and act of Gustavus. He displays greater elevation of soul, a nobler bearing and a higher faith in his mission; and from this hour his conquests become more rapid and brilliant. He sees One moving before him, and giving him victory; mighty armies and renowned captains are driven before him as chaff is driven before the wind; the gates of proud cities are unlocked at his approach, and the keys of strong fortresses are put into his hand; rivers are divided that he may pass over; and his banners are borne triumphantly onwards till they are seen waving on the frontier of Austria. Germany was liberated.

But Germany was not able to accept her liberation. The princes who were now delivered from a yoke under which they had groaned, and who might now freely profess the Protestant faith, and re-establish the exercise of the Protestant worship among their subjects, were unable to prize the boon which had been put within their reach. They began to mistrust and intrigue against their deliverer, and to quarrel with the arrangements necessary for securing the fruits of what had been achieved with so much toil and danger. These unworthy princes put away from them the proffered liberty; and then the deliverer was withdrawn. The man who had passed unharmed over a hundred battle-fields fell by the bullet of an imperial cuirassier. But Gustavus Adolphus had not borne toil and braved danger in vain; nor did he leave his work unfinished, although it seemed so to his contemporaries. Germany, after being chastened by yet other sixteen years of terrible suffering, accepted the boon for which she was not prepared in the lifetime of her great deliverer; for it was the

[5]Schiller, vol. 2., p. 135.

[6]Alexander, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Prince Eugene, Frederick II of Prussia, Napoleon. (Gfrorer, p. 1015.)

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victories of Gustavus Adolphus that made possible, and it was his proposals that formed the basis ultimately of that great charter of toleration under which Christendom finally sat down, and which is known in history as the Pacification of Westphalia.

Chapter 10: The Pacification of Westphalia

Gustavus’ Mission no Failure—Oxenstierna comes to the Helm—Diet of Heilbronn—Wallenstein’s Advice to Ferdinand—Success of the Swedes—Inactivity of Wallenstein—His Offer to Join the Swedes—His Supposed Conspiracy against Ferdinand—He is Assassinated—Defeat of the Swedes—Battle of Nordlingen—Defection of the Elector of Saxony—Peace of Prague—Rejected by the Swedes—Treaty with France—Great Victory of the Swedes—Progress of the War—Isolation of Ferdinand—Cry for Peace—Negotiations at Munster—The Peace of Westphalia

Picture: John: Count de Tilly

Picture: Court of a House in Nuremberg

Most historians, reviewing the career of Gustavus Adolphus, have given it as their opinion that when he died he had reached the maturity of his glory, but not of his designs. We are disposed to regard this judgment as a narrow and mistaken one. That he had reached the summit of his fame we readily admit; but we also hold that at the moment of his death he had reached the consummation of his plans, so far as their accomplishment rested with himself. Had Gustavus Adolphus crossed the Baltic to found a new kingdom, and reign as head of the German Empire, then indisputably he failed in the object for which he had girded on the sword; and, in the words of Schiller, “the proud edifice of his past greatness sunk into ruins when he died.” But this was far indeed from being what the hero of Sweden aimed at. He sought to roll back the Catholic reaction, and to set free the princes and States of Germany from the treble despotism of Ferdinand, of the League, of Rome: this he did. The battle of Leipsic scattered the army of the emperor; the campaigns that followed carried the banners of Gustavus in triumph to the Rhine on the west, and to the very frontier of Austria on the south, including Bavaria, the seat of the League. The crowning victory of Lutzen set the seal upon all his past achievements, by completing the discomfiture of Ferdinand and of the League, and consummating the emancipation of Germany. When he expired on the last and bloodiest of all his fields, the Fatherland was freed. It does not at all diminish from the perfection of his work, that neither the princes nor the people of Germany were prepared to profit by the boon which he put within their reach. These craven sons of heroic sires were not worthy of freedom. They were incapable of appreciating the character or sympathizing with the grand aims of their liberator; and had Gustavus Adolphus lived, it is probable that these easy-going men, who were so unbending in points of dignity but so pliant in matters of conscience, so zealous for the enlargement of their estates but so lukewarm in the defense of their faith, would have quarreled over the spoils of his victories, while they undervalued and neglected that which was the greatest of them all-Protestant liberty. He was spared this mortifying sight by his early removal. It does not follow that the fruits of his labours perished. They were postponed, but not lost. They were gathered-in sixteen years after. wards at the Peace of Westphalia.

The Protestant interest of the Thirty Years’ War ends with the life of Gustavus. The two parties continued the struggle, and the Fatherland was still deluged with blood; but the moral end of the conflict was lost sight of, and the bearing as well as the aims of the combatants rapidly and sadly degenerated. They fought, not for the vindication of Protestant liberties, but for plunder, or for pay, or at best for victory. To record battles and campaigns waged for these objects is not our purpose, and we shall sufficiently discharge our duty to our subject if we trace rapidly the course of events to their issue in the great European Settlement of 1648, which owed its existence mainly to the man who had laid down his sword on the field of Lutzen.

When Gustavus Adolphus died, the great chancellor and statesman, Oxenstierna, sprang to the helm. His were the ablest hands, after those of Gustavus, to guide the State. Oxenstierna was the friend, as well as the minister, of the deceased monarch; he perfectly knew and thoroughly sympathized with the policy of the king, [300] and of all the survivors he was the best fitted by his genius, his lofty patriotism, and his undoubted Protestantism, to carry out the views of his late master. The Senate of Sweden was equally valorous and prompt. It met at Stockholm on the 16th of March, 1633, and passed a resolution “to prosecute the war against the Roman emperor and Popish League in Germany, until it should please Almighty God to establish a happy peace for the good of his Church.”[1] Nor were able generals wanting to the Diet to carry out its resolution. If the deceased king had a not unworthy successor in the State in Oxenstierna, he had also not unmeet representatives in the field in the generals who had been trained under him. The tactics, the power of rapid combination of masses, the intrepidity, and above all the lofty spirit of Gustavus, to a great degree lived in Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, Bauer, Torstenson, and Wrangel. It was not on the leaders only that Gustavus had stamped his image, he had infused his spirit into the common soldiers, and thus all three-the Diet, the minister, and the army-continued to pursue the career in which the late king had started them, just as a machine, to which a mighty impulse has been communicated, continues to revolve after the strong hand from which the impulse came is withdrawn.

The work which hitherto had been done by one was now divided among many. Gustavus Adolphus had centered in himself the office of minister, of Diet, of diplomatist, of statesman, and of general. The conception of his plans was his, and so too was the execution of them. The comprehensiveness of his mind and the versatility of his genius made these various parts easy and natural to him, and gave him a prodigious advantage over his opponents, by

[1]Swed. Intell., vol. 3., p. 200-apud Chapman, p. 390.

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giving a more perfect unity and a quicker dispatch to all his plans. This perfect accord and harmony were henceforward wanting; but it was some time till its loss became apparent. Oxenstierna did his best to maintain the tottering fabric of the German Confederacy, which had shown signs of dissolution even before the fall of Gustavus. Everything depended upon the Protestant princes remaining united, and continuing in alliance with Sweden; and the chancellor succeeded in strengthening the bond of union among his allies, in spite of the jealousies, the interests, and the many difficulties he had to overcome. At the Diet of Heilbronn the Directorship Franconia, Suabia, and the Upper and Lower Rhine was conferred upon him, “the princes of these circles entering into a league with the Crown of Sweden, and with one another, against the emperor, until the civil and religious liberties of Germany should be restored, and Sweden indemnified for the cost of the war.”[2]

If Sweden and her German allies had resolved not to sheathe the sword till the civil and religious liberties of Germany had been restored, not less were the emperor and his allies-the Pope, the King of Spain, and Maximilian of Bavaria-resolved that the war should go on. Wallenstein advised Ferdinand to meet the Protestant States with an unqualified amnesty;[3] and had the emperor done so he would very probably have broken their union, and brought back the more pliant and wavering. But blinded by bigotry and the brilliant prospects of triumph, which he imagined the fall of Gustavus Adolphus had opened to him, he rejected the Duke of Friedland’s counsel, and instead of holding out the olive-branch to the Protestants, offered them battle by increasing the number of his army. Hostilities soon again commenced.

Victory still followed the standards of the Swedes. During the campaign of 1633, they overran the territory of Bamberg, swept along the Danube, and took the town of Ratisbon, which gave them the command of Bavaria, the cradle of the League. Their arms were attended with equal success in Suabia, and on the Upper and Lower Rhine. Lower Saxony and Westphalia also became the scene of their triumphs. They crossed and re-crossed Germany, scattering the imperial armies, capturing the enemy’s fortresses, and wresting from him the keys of all his important cities, besides other trophies of war. such as cannon, baggage, and standards. One who did not know what had taken place on the field of Lutzen, would have thought that Gustavus Adolphus was still at the head of the Swedish warriors. Their banners, floating triumphant in every part of Germany, again proclaimed

[2]Diet of Heilbronn-Swed. Intell., vol. 3., p. 312.

[3]Schiller, vol. 2., p. 148.

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the fact that nothing was wanting to the Protestant princes, save hearty zeal and firm concord, to recover all the rights which the Catholic reaction had swept away, and to establish Protestant liberty in Germany as it had existed a century before.

While the Swedish arms had come up to the Austrian frontier, and it seemed as if a few marches and one or two battles would carry them to the gates of Vienna, the generalissimo of Ferdinand was maintaining a most unaccountable inactivity. Wallenstein lay encamped in Bohemia, with 40,000 soldiers under him, apparently an uninterested spectator of the disasters befalling the empire. Ferdinand sent message after message, each more pressing than that which had preceded it, commanding him to put his army in motion against the invaders. Wallenstein answered, “I go;” but went not. At last he marched to Munsterberg, where he formed an entrenched camp. The Swedes offered him battle, but he declined it. The two armies remained nine days within musket-shot of each other, but neither stirred from their entrenchments. At last the mystery of Wallenstein’s inactivity was made plain. Count Terzky, attended by a trumpeter, appeared in the Swedish camp, with proposals of peace from the imperial generalissimo. Wallenstein offered to join the allies, and turn his arms against the emperor, on condition of being made King of Bohemia. He further promised that, should the Bohemian crown be placed on his head, he would recall the exiles, restore the confiscated estates, and establish toleration in that country.[4] So do contemporary historians relate. Besides his own ambition, the stars had promised this dignity to Wallenstein. The Swedes did not know what to make of this strange proposal; but at last, deeming it an artful trap to seize their army and deliver it up to the emperor, they rejected it. The real intentions of Wallenstein still remain a mystery; but we incline to the belief that he was then meditating some deep revenge on the emperor, whom he had never forgiven for dismissing him, and that he was not less desirous of striking a blow at the Jesuits, who he knew cordially hated him, and were intriguing against him at the court of Vienna. It is said that he was revolving even mightier projects. He harbored the daring purpose of putting down all the lords, lay and ecclesiastical, of Germany, of combining its various countries into one kingdom, and setting over it a single chief. Ferdinand II was to be installed meanwhile as the nominal sovereign, but Wallenstein would govern through him, as Richelieu did through Louis XIII. The Turks were to be driven out of Europe, and Wallenstein, at the head of a gigantic army, was to make himself Dictator of Christendom. Such was the colossal scheme with which he was credited, and which is said to have alarmed the Pope, excited the jealousy of Richelieu, intensified the hatred of the Jesuits, and made them combine to effect his destruction.[5]

His ruin soon followed. To have sent him his dismissal in the ordinary way would have been to bring on the explosion of the terrible plot. He held the army in his hand, and Ferdinand was not powerful enough to wrest that weapon from him. He could be approached only with the dagger.

Wallenstein was residing at Eger, where he was busily engaged corresponding with his accomplices, and studying the stars. They rolled night by night over his head, without notifying that the hour had come for the execution of his great design. While he waited for the celestial summons, dark preparations were forming round him on earth. On the evening of the 25th of February, 1634, the officers of the garrison who remained loyal to Ferdinand invited the four leading conspirators of Wallenstein to sup with them. The wine was circulating freely after supper, when one of the company rose and gave as a toast, “The House of Austria, Long live Ferdinand!” It was the preconcerted signal. Thirty-six men-at-arms, who had been stationed in the ante-chamber, rushed in, overturned the table, and threw themselves upon their victims. In a few minutes Wallenstein’s partisans lay sabered and dying on the floor of the apartment.

This was only a beginning. The great conspirator still lived; but, whatever the prognostication of the stars, his last sands were running. The elements seemed in accord with the violent deeds on foot, for a frightful tempest had burst over Eger, and the black clouds, the howling winds, and the pelting rains favored the assassins. Devereux, followed by twelve halberdiers, proceeded to Wallenstein’s residence, and was at once admitted by the guard, who were accustomed to see him visit the duke at all hours. Wallenstein had retired to rest; but hearing a noise he had got out of bed, and going to the window he opened it and challenged the sentinel. He had just seated himself in a chair at a table in his night-dress, when Devereux burst open the door and entered

[4]Schiller, vol. 2., p. 170. Khevenhiller, vol. 12., p. 591. Forster, Wallenstein’s Briefe, vol. 3., p. 30-apud Chapman, p. 391.

[5]Michiels, Secret History of the Austrian Government, pp. 78, 79.

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with the halberdiers. The man whom armies obeyed, and who was the terror of kings, was before him. Rushing towards him, he shouted, “Thy hour is come, villain!” The duke rose, and attempted to reach the window and summon the guard, but the men-at-arms barred his way. Opening his arms, he received the stroke of their halberds in his breast, and fell bathed in his blood, but without uttering a word. His designs, whatever they were, he took with him to his grave. The wise man had said long before, “As passeth the whirlwind, so the wicked.”[6]

After the death of Wallenstein, Ferdinand’s son, the King of Hungary, bore the title of generalissimo, but Count Gallas discharged the duty by leading the army. The tide of success now began to turn against the Swedes. They had already lost several important towns, among others Ratisbon, and their misfortunes were crowned by a severe defeat which they encountered under the walls of Nordlingen. Some 12,000 men lay dead on the field, 80 cannon, 4,000 wagons, and 300 standards fell into the hands of the imperialists. The Swedes had lost their superiority in the field; consternation reigned among the members of the Protestant Confederacy, and the free cities; and Oxenstierna, to save the cause from ruin,was obliged, as he believed, to cast himself upon the protection of Richelieu, giving to France, as the price of her help, the province of Alsace. This put the key of Germany into her hands, and her armies poured along the Rhine, and, under pretext of assisting the Swedes, plundered the cities and devastated the provinces.

And now a severer blow befell the Swedes than even the defeat at Nordlingen. John George, the Elector of Saxony, deserting his confederates, entered into a treaty of peace with the emperor. The weakness of the Protestant cause, all along, had lain, not in the strength of the imperialists, but in the divisions of the German princes, and now this heavy and, for the time, fatal blow was dealt it by the defection of the man who had so largely contributed to begin the war, by helping the League to take Prague, and suppress the Protestantism of Bohemia. All the Protestant States were invited to enter this peace along with the emperor and elector. It effected no real settlement of differences; it offered no effectual redress of grievances; and, while it swept away nearly all that the Protestants had gained in the war, it left undetermined innumerable points which were sure to become the seeds of conflicts in the future. Nevertheless, the peace was acceded to by the Elector of Brandenburg, Duke William of Weimar, the Princes of Anhalt, the Dukes of Mecklenburg, the Dukes of Brunswick, Luneburg, the Hanseatic towns, and most of the imperial cities.[7]

This peace, termed the Peace of Prague, from the town where the treaty was framed, was scornfully rejected by the Swedes, and on just grounds. It offered them no indemnification for the expenses they had incurred, and no compensation for the conquests they were to leave behind them. They loudly protested against the princes who had made their reconciliation with the emperor, as guilty of a shameful abandonment of themselves. They had come into Germany at their invitation; they had vindicated the Protestant rights and the German liberties with their blood, and “the sacred life of their king,” and now they were to be expelled from the empire without reward, without even thanks, by the very men for whom they had toiled and bled. Rather than be thus dishonored, and lose into the bargain all for which they had fought, they resolved to continue the war.

Oxenstierna, in this extremity of Swedish affairs, turned to France, and Richelieu met him with offers of assistance. The Swedes and French formed a compact body, and penetrated into the heart of the empire. The Swedes fought with a more desperate bravery than ever. The battles were bloodier. They fell on Saxony, and avenged, in the devastation and slaughter they inflicted, the defection of the Elector. They defeated him in a great battle at Wittsbach, in 1636, the Elector leaving 5,000 men on the field, with baggage, cannon, standards, and silver plate, the booty being enhanced by the capture of some thousands of prisoners. After this, victory oscillates from side to side; now it is the imperialists who triumph on the red field; now it is the Swedes, grown as savage as the imperialists, who remain masters; but though battle succeeds battle, the war makes no progress, and the end for which it was commenced has been entirely lost sight of.

At length there appeared a new Swedish generalissimo, Bernard Torstenson, a pupil of Gustavus Adolphus, and the leader who, of all who had been reared in the same school, approached the most nearly to his great master. He transferred the seat of war from the exhausted provinces to those which had not yet tasted the miseries of the campaigns. He led the Swedish hosts into the

[6]Forster, Wallenstein’s Briefe, vol. 3., p. 199. Chemnitz, vol. 2., p. 332. Khevenhiller, vol. 12., p. 1163. Schiller, vol. 2., pp. 197-201. Michiels, Secret History, pp. 87-91. Chapman, pp. 396-398.

[7]Schiller, vol. 2., p. 221.

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Austrian territories which had hitherto been exempted by their remoteness from the calamities tinder which the rest of Germany groaned. “He hurled the torch of war,” says Schiller, “even to the very footsteps of the imperial throne.” By his great victory at Jancowitz, where the emperor lost his best general, Hatzfeld, and his last army, the whole territory of Austria was thrown open to him. The victorious Swedes, pouring over the frontiers, spread themselves like an inundation over Moravia and Austria. Ferdinand fled to Vienna to save his family and his treasures. The Swedes followed hard on his fleeing steps, carried the entrenchments at the Wolf’s Bridge, and showed themselves before the walls of Vienna. Thus, after a long and destructive circuit through every province of Germany, the terrible procession of battles and sieges had returned to the spot whence it set out. The artillery of the Swedes that now thundered around the Austrian capital must have recalled to the memory of the inhabitants the balls shot into Vienna twenty-seven years ago by the Bohemians. Since that day, whole armies had sunk into the German plains. All the great leaders had fallen in the war. Wallenstein, Tilly, Count Mansfeld, and dozens of inferior generals had gone to the grave. Monarchs, as well as men of lower degree-the great Gustavus and the bigoted Ferdinand-had bowed to the stroke of fate. Richelieu too slept in the marble in which France lays her great statesmen, and the “odor” in which Rome buries her faithful servants. Still, above the graves of those who began it, this war was holding its fearful course, as if it longed to gather beneath its scythe not the German people only, but the nations of Christendom. Now awoke a loud and universal cry for peace. Even Maximilian of Bavaria had grown weary of the war. The House of Austria was left alone in this great field of blood and corpses, and negotiations for peace were opened at Munster and Osnaburg. These negotiations proceeded slowly. The conflicting interests that had to be reconciled, and the deep-seated jealousies, antipathies, and bigotrys that had to be conquered, before the sword could be sheathed, were innumerable. The demands of the negotiating parties rose and fell according to the position of their arms. But at last the great victory-more glorious than any that had preceded it-was achieved. They were exchanging the last shots on the very spot where the first had been fired, namely at Prague, when a messenger brought the news that a peace had been concluded on the 24th of October, 1648. First of all, the new treaty confirmed the old ones of Passau and Augsburg (1552-5), and declared that the interpretation now put upon them was to remain valid in spite of all protests, from any quarter whatsoever. But the new advanced a step beyond the old treaties, and gave still more important results. Besides a number of territorial and political concessions, such as giving Pomerania to Sweden, it extended Toleration to Calvinists as well as Lutherans. This was the crowning blessing which rose out of these red fields. And to this day the balance of power between Romanist and Protestant has remained substantially as it was fixed by the Pacification of Westphalia.

Chapter 11: The Fatherland after the War

Peace Proclaimed—Banquet at Nuremberg—Varied Feelings awakened by the Peace—Celebration of the Peace in Dolstadt—Symbolical Figures and Procession—The Fatherland after the War—Its Recovery Slow—Invaded by Wandering and Lawless Troops—Poverty of the Inhabitants—Instances of Desolation of the Land—Unexampled Extent of the Calamity—Luther’s Warnings Verified

Picture: Axel: Count Oxenstierna.

Picture: The Banquet at Nuremberg

The peace had been signed. The ambassadors had solemnly shaken hands with one another in token of its. ratification, and on all the roads rode trumpeters to carry to city and rural village the news of the happy event. The rude tempests of war had spent themselves, and now mild-eyed Peace looked forth and smiled.

The peace was celebrated at Nuremberg by a great banquet, at which imperialists and Swedes sat down together at the same table, and mingled their rejoicings under the same roof. Brilliant lights illuminated the vaulted roof of the magnificent town-hall. Between the blazing chandeliers were hung thirty kinds of fruits and a profusion [305] of flowers, bound together with gold wire. Four bands were appointed to discourse sweet music, and in six different rooms were assembled the six classes of invited guests. Two enormous allegorical figures had been erected on the tables-the one an arch of victory, the other a six-sided mountain, covered with mythological and allegorical figures from the Latin and German mythologies. Dinner was served in four courses, each consisting of 150 dishes. Then came the fruits, some of which were served in silver, and others on the boughs of the very trees on which they had grown, and which had been transferred root and all into the banqueting-room. Along the table at intervals burned fine incense, which filled the spacious hall with a delightful perfume. There was also confectionery in great abundance, made up in a variety of fanciful and fantastic forms. A herald now rose and announced the toast of the day-“The health of his Imperial Majesty of Vienna, and his Royal Majesty of Sweden.” The toast of the newly-concluded peace followed, and was drunk with rapturous cheers by the assembled ambassadors and generals, while a response was thundered from the artillery of the castle. A somewhat perilous play at soldiers now diversified the entertainment. Muskets and swords were brought into the room, and the company, arming themselves and forming in file, marched round the table, and fired off a salvo. After this they marched out, and ascended the streets to the old Margrave’s Castle at the northern gate, and discharged several pieces of ordnance. On their return to the town-hall they were jestingly thanked, and discharged from the service on the ground that now War had sheathed his sword, and Peace began her reign. To regale the poor, two oxen had been killed, and quantities of bread were distributed, and out of a lion’s jaws there ran for six hours white and red wine. Out of a still greater lion’s jaws had run for thirty years tears and blood. As did the ambassadors at Nuremberg, so in every town and half-destroyed village this thrice-welcome peace was celebrated by the rejoicings of the inhabitants.

From the banquet-hall of Nuremberg, let us turn to the homesteads of the people, and mark the varied feelings awakened in their breasts by the cessation of this terrible war. “To the old,” says Gustavus Freytag, “peace appeared like a return of their youth; they saw the rich harvests of their childhood brought back again; the thickly-peopled villages; the merry Sundays under the now cut-down village lindens; the pleasant hours which they had spent with their now dead or impoverished relations and companions-in short, all the pictures that made up the memory of early days they saw reviving again to gladden their age. They found themselves happier, manlier, and better than they had become in almost thirty years filled with misery and degradation. The young men, that hard, war-begotten, wild generation, felt the approach of a wonderful time; it seemed to them like a fable out of a far-off land; they saw in vista a time when on every field there would wave in the wind thick yellow ears of corn, when in every stall the cows would low, when in every sty would bask a round little pig, when they themselves should drive two horses to the merry crack of the whip, and no hostile soldier would dare to lay rough hands upon their sisters and sweethearts; when they would no longer lie in wait in the bushes with hay-forks and rusty muskets for stragglers; when they would no longer sit as fugitives, in the eerie nights of the forest, on the graves of their stricken comrades; when the roofs of the village houses would be without holes, the yards without crumbling barns; when one would no longer hear the cry of the wolf at the yard-gate; when the village church would again have glass windows and beautiful bells; when in the befouled choir of the church there would stand a new altar, with a silk cover, a silver crucifix, and a gilt cup; and when once again the young men would lead the brides to the altar with the maiden-wreath in their hair. A passionate, pained joy throbbed in every breast; and even war’s wildest brood, the common soldiers, felt its convulsive thrill. The callous governing powers even, the princes and their ambassadors, felt that the great fact of peace was the saving of Germany from the last extremity of ruin. Solemnly, and with all the fervor of which the people were capable, was the peace celebrated throughout the land.”[1]

As an example of the way in which the peace was welcomed in the smaller towns we take Dolstadt, in the Dukedom of Gotha. The glimpse it gives us of the morals of the Fatherland at this era is far from pleasant, and shows us how far the sons of the Reformers had degenerated; and it paints in affecting colors the character of the men on whom the great calamity of the Thirty Years’ War fell. The Pastor of Dolstadt, vexed from day to day with the impiety of his flock, denounced against them the judgment of Heaven unless they turned from their wickedness. They only laughed at his warnings, and showed him all manner of disrespect. They tore down his hops from the pole, they

[1]Gustav. Freytag, pp. 221-223.

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carried off the corn from his field, and many other injuries, as he complained with tearful eyes in 1634, did they inflict upon him. When he came to die he burst into tears, uttering the following sorrowful exclamation-“Alas! poor Dolstadt, how ill it will go with thee after my departure!” Directing a look towards the church, and surveying it with a heart heavy with sorrow and eyes dim with death, he made his attendants raise him in bed, and again exclaimed, “Ah! dear, dear church, how wilt thou fare after my death! thou shalt be swept into a heap with the broom of judgment!” His prophecy came true. In 1636 the armed corps of Hatzfeld fell upon the place, ravaging and spoiling; the church was plundered, and its wood-work torn down and burned, as Pastor Dekner had not obscurely foretold. In the same year the village had to pay 5,500 guldens of war indemnity. From 1627 to 1637, 29,595 guldens had been exacted of it. The inhabitants dwindled away, and in a short while the place became almost as deserted as the wilderness. In 1636 there were only two married couples in the village. In 1641, first Bannier, and after him the French were quartered there in winter; one half-acre was the whole extent of soil cultivated, and the population amounted to just four persons.

After the Peace of Westphalia, under the fostering care of Duke Ernest, the pious sovereign of Gotha, this as well as the other abandoned villages were quickly re-populated, so that in 1650 there was held also in Dolstadt a festival in honour of the peace. The morning of the 19th of August was ushered in by the singing of hymns. At six o’clock the bells were set a ringing, and the whole population of the place assembled before the [307] [308] entrance of the village-the women grouped on one side of the path, and the men on the other. Before the females stood an allegorical figure of Peace, dressed in a robe of green silk, crowned with a green wreath, varied with yellow flowers, and holding in its hand a branch of olive. In front of the men was a symbolical representation of Justice, clothed in white, wearing a green wreath, and holding in one hand a naked sword, and in the other a yellow rod. The young men stood at some distance, with a representation of Mars before them, dressed as a soldier and carrying a cross-bow. In the middle of these groups stood the scholars and villagers, with the pastor at their head, the director of the day’s proceedings, and afterwards their narrator. The pastor directed their glance back on the awful tempests which had beat upon them, now happily ended. He told them how often they had had to flee from their homes, fear in their hearts and tears in their eyes; and how glad they were, the storm over, to return, though to enter naked and devastated dwellings, and sit at hearths blackened and cold. “And now let us,” he said, “pass in with praise at these same gates, out of which we have often passed in flight; and let us enter the sanctuary of the Eternal with a psalm of thanksgiving, and lifting up our voices with one accord, sing to God on high.” Thereupon the whole assembly, wearing green wreaths, and carrying in their hands green branches, marched to the church singing hymns. The villagers had been joined by the gentry and nobility of the neighborhood, and the procession was a long and imposing one. In the church hymns were again sung by voices which trembled with varied emotions; prayers breathed out with touching pathos and solemnity ascended upward; and the pastor, mounting the pulpit, preached a sermon suited to the joyful occasion. Thereafter the whole assemblage gathered in the market-place, and the stripling and the patriarch, the village maiden and the high-bona dame, mingling their voices in one mighty chorus, sang a closing hymn and then dispersed.[2]

The condition of the Fatherland after the war was of the most serious and painful character. Peace had been proclaimed, but many years were needed to staunch the wounds and efface the deep scars which the war had made. When one has been brought to the grave’s brink and again recovers, slowly the pallor departs from the face, and slowly does the dimmed eye brighten and the sickly frame wax strong. So with Germany: the work was both laborious and tedious of re-building its cities, restoring the verdure of its fields and the shade of its forests, and especially reviving its all but extinct population. Unconscionable war taxes, ravaging camps waiting for disbandment, prolonged into the era of peace the miseries that had darkened the period of war. To these were added annoyances of another kind. The whole country swarmed with “masterless bands,” made up of runaway serfs and discharged soldiers, with women and camp followers. After these came troops of beggars and hosts of robbers, who wandered from province to province in quest of prey. “A stream of beggars,” says Gustavus Freytag, “of every kind wandered over the country-dismissed soldiers, cripples, homeless people, old and sick people; among the rest, lepers, with certificates from the hospitals; exiles from Bohemia and Hungaria, who had left their home for their religion; expelled nobles from England, Ireland, and Poland; collectors who wished to set free their relations from the Turkish prisons; travelers who had been plundered at wayside inns; a blind pastor, with five children, from Denmark; and not one of this long troop was there who had not a tale of suffering or adventure to recount, in order to procure money or excite admiration.”[3] They forcibly quartered themselves in the villages where there still remained a few inhabitants; and where the population had totally disappeared they took unchallenged possession of the empty dwellings. But the infection of evil habits spreads fast; and the inhabitants, discovering that it was easier to rob than to cultivate the fields, began to make secret incursions into their neighbors’ territories, and appropriated whatever they coveted. The Romanists plundered the Protestant communities, and the Protestants repaid the visit by plundering the Romanists. The gypsy tribes began to swarm and multiply; their wandering hordes would gather in every village. Fantastically dressed, they would encamp round the stone troughs in the market-places, with laden carts, stolen horses, and naked children. Only where there existed a strong municipality could these wild wanderers be kept away. In the Dukedom of Gotha sentinels were placed on the bridges and at the fords of rivers, to sound the alarm when they saw any of these lawless troops approaching. Gradually something like a police force was organized; a register of householders was made, and an account taken of the hind each occupied, and the manner in which he cultivated it, and the taxes fixed which he was to

[2]From the Church-Book of Pastor Trumper of Dolstadt, apud Gustav Freytag, pp. 223-227.

[3]Freytag, p. 229.

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pay. By these means the inhabitants were again broken into habits of industry. Those who had fled to the mountains, or had sought refuge in the cities, or in foreign countries, returned, the villages arose, marriages and baptisms were numerous, and something like its old face began again to be seen on the Fatherland.

The poverty of the inhabitants was so great that they were not able to procure implements to cultivate their fields, and large tracts of Germany long lay fallow, or covered with brushwood. “There were parts of the country where a horseman could ride for many hours without coming to a single inhabited dwelling. A messenger, who hastened from Saxony to Berlin, traveled from morning till evening over uncultivated land, through thorns and thistles, without finding one village in which to rest.”[4] In Thuringia and Franconia, fair samples of the rest of Germany, it is calculated that seventy-five per cent of the male population had perished. They had lost eighty-five per cent. of horses, eighty-three of goats, and eighty-two of cows; the remaining horses were lame and blind, and the sheep in all places were completely annihilated. The population of Hesse had shrunk to a fourth of its former number. Augsburg was reduced from 80,000 to 18,000; Frankenthal, from 18,000 to 324; Wurtemberg, from 400,000 to 48,000. In the Palatinate but a fiftieth part of the population remained. In Ummerstadt, near Coburg, which before the war had a population of 800, so great was the reduction that in two years not one child was born. It is a bloody history which these facts record.[5]

In olden time, when nations were migrating from one country to another, it would happen that particular territories were even more completely bereft of inhabitants, or when plague smote a city there might be even a more terrible destruction of its people. These depopulations were local, and were easily repaired from the abundant population around the stricken spot; but here was an ancient nation, possessing hundreds of walled towns, numerous villages, with meadow-lands and fields, cultivated for thirty generations, overtaken by a stroke beneath which their cities fell into ruins, their villages sank into heaps, their morals and religion were lost, and the soil, refusing longer to be the servant of man, sent forth only weeds, and offered only a lair to the wild beast.

The prophetic eye of Luther saw the approach of terrible evils to Germany, should the Gospel he had preached not be held fast by her sons. His warnings had been despised, and a night, blacker even than any he had foreseen, descended on the Fatherland.

[4]Freytag, pp. 230, 231.

[5]Chapman, p. 400. Freytag, p. 235. Ludwig Hausser, vol. 2., p. 277.

Book 22: Protestantism in France from Death of Henry IV. (1610) to the Revolution (1789)

Chapter 1: Louis XIII. and the Wars of Religion

Henry IV—Dies in the Midst of his Great Schemes—Louis XIII—Maria de Medici Regent—Alarm of the Protestants—Character of Maria de Medici—Astrology—Governs her Son—Protestants hold a Political Convocation—Henri de Rohan—Degeneracy of the Huguenots—Synods of the French Protestant Church—New Policy of Louis XIII—The Jesuits—Toleration—Invasion of Bearn—Its Protestantism Suppressed—Jesuit Logic—Shall the Sword be Drawn?—War—Saumur—Death of Duplessis-Mornay—Siege ofMontauban—of St. Jean d’Angely—A Scotch Pastor on the Ramparts—Peace—Question of the Distinct Autonomy of the Huguenots

Picture: View of the Tomb of St. Sebald: Nuremberg

Picture: View in La Rochelle: the Street of the Bishopric and St. Bartholomew Belfry

We resume our history of Protestantism in France at the death-bed of Henry IV. The dagger of Ravaillac arrested that monarch in the midst of his great schemes.[1] Henry had abjured his mother’s faith, in the hope of thereby purchasing from Rome the sure tenure of his crown and the peaceful possession of his kingdom. He fancied that he had got what he bargained for; and being, as he supposed, firmly seated on the throne, he was

[1]See ante, vol. 2., p. 624.

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making prodigious efforts to lift France out of the abyss in which he found her. He was laboring to re-establish order, to plant confidence, and to get rid of the immense debts which prodigality and dishonesty had accumulated, and which weighed so heavily upon the kingdom. He was taking the legitimate means to quicken commerce and agriculture-in short, to efface all those frightful traces which had been left on the country by what are known in history as the “civil wars,” but which were, in fact, crusades organized by the Government on a great scale, in violation of sworn treaties and of natural rights, for the extirpation of its Protestant subjects. Henry, moreover, was meditating great schemes of foreign policy, and had already dispatched an army to Germany in order to humble the House of Austria, and reduce the Spanish influence in Europe, so menacing to the liberties and peace of Christendom. It did seem as if the king would succeed; but his Austrian project too nearly touched the Papal interests. There were eyes watching Henry which he knew not of. His heretical foreign policy excited a suspicion that, although he was outwardly a Roman Catholic, he was at heart a Huguenot. In a moment, a Hand was stretched forth from the darkness, and all was changed. The policy of Henry IV perished with him.

He was succeeded on the throne by his son, Louis XIII, a youth of eight and a half years. That same evening, an edict of the Parliament of Paris made his mother, Maria de Medici, regent. The consternation of the Huguenots was great. Their hands instinctively grasped their sword-hilts. The court hastened to calm their fears by publishing a decree ratifying all the former edicts of toleration, and assuring the Protestants that the death of Henry IV would bring with it no change of the national policy; but with so many torn treaties and violated oaths, which they could not banish from their memory, what reliance could the Huguenots place on these assurances? Was it not but a spreading of the old snare around their feet? In the regent and her son they saw, under a change of names, a second Catherine de Medici and Charles IX, to be followed, it might be, by a second St. Bartholomew.

The boy of eight years who wore the crown could do only what his mother, the regent, counseled, or rather commanded. Maria de Medici was the real sovereign. That ill-fated marriage with the Pope’s niece, alas! of how many wars was it destined to be the prolific source to France! Maria de Medici lacked the talent of her famous predecessor, Catherine de Medici, but she possessed all her treachery, bigotry, and baseness. She was a profound believer in witchcraft, and guided the vessel of the State by her astrological calculations. When divination failed her she had recourse to the advice of the Pope’s nuncio, of the Spanish ambassador, and of Concini, a man of obscure birth from her native city of Florence, on whom she heaped high titles, though she could not impart to him noble qualities. Under such guidance the vessel of the State was drawn farther and farther every day into the old whirlpool. When Louis XIII grew to be a few years older, he strove to break the trammels in which he was held, by banishing his mother to Blois, and instigating men to murder Concini, but he only fell under the influence of a favorite as worthless and profligate as the man he had employed assassins to rid him of. Intrigue, blood, and peculation disgraced the court. The great nobles, contemning the power of the sovereign, retired to their estates, where, at the head of their encampments, they lived like independent kings, and gave sad presage of the distractions and civil broils yet awaiting the unhappy land. But it is the Protestant thread, now becoming somewhat obscure, that we wish to follow.

The year after the king’s accession (1611) the Protestant nobles met at Saumur, and held one of those political assemblies which they had planned for the regulation of religious interests after the abjuration of Henry IV. The illustrious Duplessis-Mornay was elected president, and the famous Pastor Chaumier was made vice-president. The convocation consisted of seventy persons in all-noblemen, ministers, delegates from the Tiers Etat, and deputies from the town of La Rochelle: in short, a Huguenot Parliament. The Government, though reluctantly, had granted permission for their meeting; and their chief business was to elect two deputiesgeneral, to be accepted by the court as the recognized heads of the Protestant body. The assembly met. They refused simply to inscribe two names in a bulletin and break up as the court wished; they sat four months, discussed the matters affecting their interests as Protestants, and asked of the Government redress of their grievances. They renewed their oath of union, which consisted in swearing fidelity to the king, always reserving their duty to “the sovereign empire of God.” It was at this assembly that the talents of Henri de Rohan as a statesman and orator began to display themselves, and to give promise of the prominent place he was afterwards to fill in the ranks of the Reformed. He strongly urged union among themselves, he exhorted them to show concern for the [311] welfare of the humblest as well as of the highest in their body, and to display a firm spirit in dealing with Government in the way of exacting all the rights which had been guaranteed by treaty. “We are not come,” he said, “to four cross-roads, but to a point where safety can be found in only one path. Let our object be the glory of God, and the security of the churches he has so miraculously established in this kingdom, providing eagerly for each other’s benefit by every legitimate means. Let us religiously demand only what is necessary. Let us be firm in order to get it.”

The want of union was painfully manifested at this assembly at Saumur, thanks to their enemies, who had done all in their power beforehand to sow jealousies among them. The fervent piety which characterized their fathers no longer distinguished their sons; the St. Bartholomew had inflicted worse evils than the blood it spilt, great as that was; many now cleaved to the Huguenots, whose religion was only a pretext for the advancement of their ambition; others were timid and afraid to urge even the most moderate demands lest they should be crushed outright. There was, too, a marked difference between the spirit of the Protestants in the north and in the south of France. The former were not able to shake off the terror of the turbulent and Popish capital, in the neighborhood of which they lived; the latter bore about them the free air of the mountains, and the bold spirit of the Protestant cities of the south, and when they spoke in the assembly it was with their swords half drawn from the scabbards. Similar political assemblies were held in subsequent years at Grenoble, at Nimes, at La Rochelle, and at other towns. Meetings of their National Synod were, too, of frequent occurrence during this period, the Moderator’s chair being occupied not infrequently by men whose names were then, and are still, famous in the annals of Protestant literature-Chamier and Dumoulin. These Synods sought to rebuild the French Protestant Church, almost fallen into ruins during the wars of the foregoing era, by restoring the exercise of piety in congregations, cutting off unworthy members, and composing differences and strifes among the Protestant nobles. Gathered from the battle-fields and the deserts of France, bitter memories behind and darkening prospects before them, these men were weary in heart and broken in spirit, and were without the love and zeal which had animated their fathers who sat in the Synod of La Rochelle forty years before, when the French Protestant Church was in the prime and flower of her days.

The Huguenots were warned by many signs of the sure approach of evil times. One ominous prognostic was the reversal of the foreign policy of Henry IV. His last years were devoted to the maturing of a great scheme for humbling the Austrian and Spanish Powers; and for this end the monarch had allied himself, as we have already related, with the northern Protestant nations. Louis XIII disconnected himself from his father’s allies, and joined himself to his father’s enemies, by the project of a double marriage; for while he solicited for himself the hand of the Spanish Infanta, he offered his sister in marriage to the Prince of the Asturias. This boded the ascendency of Spain and of Rome once more in France-in other words, of persecution and war. Sinister reports were circulated through the kingdom that the price to be paid for this double alliance was the suppression of heresy. Soft words continued to come from the court, but the acts of its agents in the provinces were not in correspondence therewith. These were hard enough. The sword was not brought forth, it is true, but every other weapon of assault was vigorously plied. The priests incessantly importuned the king to forbid the Protestants from calling in question, by voice or by pen, the authority of the Church or of the Pope. He was solicited not to let them open a school in any city, not to let any of their ministers enter a hospital, or administer religious consolation to any of their sick; not to let any one from abroad teach any faith save the Roman; not to let them perform their religious rites; in short, the monarch was to abrogate one by one all the rights secured by treaty to the Protestants, and disannul and make void by a process of evacuation the Edict of Nantes. The poor king did not need any importuning; it was not the will but the power that was wanting to him to fulfil the oath sworn at his coronation, to expel from the lands under his sway every man and woman denounced by the Church. At this time (1614) the States-General, or Supreme Parliament, of France met, the last ever convoked until that memorable meeting of 1789, the precursor of the Revolution. A deputy of the Tiers, or Commons, rose in that assembly to plead for toleration. His words sounded like blasphemy in the ears of the clergy and nobles; he was reminded of the king’s oath to exterminate heretics, and told that the treaties sworn to the Huguenots were only provisional; in other words, that it was the duty of the Government always to persecute and slay the Protestants, except in one case-namely, when it was not able to do it.

Of these destructive maxims-destructive to the Huguenots in the first instance, but still more destructive to France in the long run-two terrible [312] [313] exemplifications were about to be given. The territory of Lower Navarre and Bearn, in the mountains of the Pyrenees, was the hereditary kingdom of Jeanne d’Albret, and we have already spoken of her efforts to plant in it the Protestant faith. She established churches, schools, and hospitals; she endowed these from the national property, and soon her little kingdom, in point of intelligence and wealth, became one of the most flourishing spots in all Christendom. Under her son (Henry IV) this kingdom became virtually a part of the French monarchy; but now (1617) it was wished more thoroughly to incorporate it with France. Of its inhabitants, two thirds-some say nine tenths-were Protestants. This appeared no obstacle whatever to the projected incorporation. The Bearnese had no right to be of any but the king’s religion. A decree was issued, restoring the Roman Catholic faith in Bearn, and giving back to the Romish clergy the entire ecclesiastical property, which had for a half-century been in possession of the Protestants. “These estates,” so reasoned the Jesuit Arnoux, a disciple of the school of Escobar, “belong to God, who is the Proprietor of them, and may not be lawfully held by any save his priests.”[2] Consternation reigned in Bearn; all classes united in remonstrating against this tyrannical

[2]Felice, History of the Protestants of France, vol. 1., p. 309.

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decree, which swept away at once their consciences and their property. Their remonstrance was unheeded, and the king put himself at the head of an army to compel the Bearnese to submission. The soldiers led against this heretical territory, which they burned with zeal to purge and convert, were not very scrupulous as to the means. They broke open the doors of the churches, they burned the Protestant books, compelled the citizens to kneel when the Host passed, and drove them to mass with the cudgel. They dealt the more obstinate a thrust with the saber; the women dared not show themselves in the street, dreading worse violences.[3] In this manner was the Popish religion re-established in Bearn. This was the first of the dragonnades. Louis XIV was afterwards to repeat on the greater theater of France the bloody tragedy now enacted on the little stage of Bearn.

This was what even now the Protestants feared. Accordingly, at a political assembly held in La Rochelle, 1621, they made preparations for the worst. They divided Protestant France into eight departments or circles; they appointed a governor over each, with power to impose taxes, raise soldiers, and engage in battle. The supreme military power was lodged in the Duke de Bouillon, the assembly reserving to itself the power of making war or concluding peace. The question was put to the several circles, whether they should declare war, or wait the measures of the court? The majority were averse to hostilities. They felt the feeble tenure on which hung their rights, and even their lives; but they shuddered when they remembered the miseries which previous wars had brought in their train. They counseled, therefore, that the sword should not be drawn till they were compelled to unsheathe it in self-defense. This necessity had, in fact, already arisen. The king was advancing against them at the head of his army, his Jesuit confessor, Arnoux, having removed all moral impediments from his path. “The king’s promises,” said his confessor, “are either matters of conscience or matters of State. Those made to the Huguenots are not promises of conscience, for they are contrary to the precepts of the Church; and if they are promises of State they ought to be referred to the Privy Council, which is of opinion they ought not to be kept.”[4] The Pope and cardinals united to smooth the king’s way financially, by contributing between them 400,000 crowns, while the other clergy offered not less than a million of crowns to defray the war expenses.

The royal army crossed the Loire and opened the campaign, which they prosecuted with various but, on the whole, successful fortune. Some places surrendered, others were taken by siege, and the inhabitants, men and women, were often put to the sword. The Castle of Saumur, of which Duplessis-Mornay was governor, and which he held as one of the cautionary fortresses granted by the edicts, was taken by perfidy. The king pledged his word that, if Mornay would admit the royal troops, the immunities of the place should be maintained. No sooner had the king entered than he declared that he took definite possession of the castle. To give this act of ill-faith the semblance of an amicable arrangement, the king offered Mornay, in addition to the arrears of his salary, 100,000 crowns and a marshal’s baton. “I cannot,” replied the patriot, “in conscience or in honour sell the liberty and security of others;” adding that, “as to dignities, he had ever been more desirous to render himself worthy of them, than to obtain them. This great man died two years afterwards. His end was like his life. “We saw him,” says Jean Daille, his private chaplain, “in the midst of death firmly laying hold on life, and enjoying full satisfaction where men are generally terrified.” He was the last representative of that noble generation which had been molded by the instructions of Calvin and the example of Beza.

The next exploit of the king’s arms was the taking of St. Jean d’Angely. The besiegers were in great force around the walls, their shot was falling in an incessant shower upon the city, and the inhabitants, when not on duty on the ramparts, were forced to seek refuge in the cellars of their houses. Provisions were beginning to fail, and the citizens were now worn out by the fatigue of fighting night and day on the walls. In these circumstances, they sent a deputation to Mr. John Welsh, a Scottish minister, who had been exiled from his native land, and was now acting as pastor of the Protestant congregation in St. Jean d’Angely. They told him that one in particular of the enemy’s guns, which was of great size, and moreover was very advantageously placed, being mounted on a rising ground, was sweeping that entire portion of the walls which was most essential to the defense, and had silenced their guns. What were they to do? they asked. Welsh exhorted them to defend the city to the last, and to encourage them he accompanied them through the streets, “in which the

[3]Elie Benoit, Histoire de l’Edit de Nantes, tom. 2., p. 295. This is a work in five volumes, filled with the acts of violence and persecution which befell the Protestants from the reign of Henry IV to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

[4]Felice, vol. 1., p. 315.

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bullets were falling as plentifully as hail,”[5] and mounted the ramparts. Going up to one of the silent guns, he bade the cannonier resume firing; but the man had no powder. Welsh, seizing a ladle, hastened to the magazine and filled it with powder. As he was returning, a shot tore it out of his hand. Using his hat instead of a ladle, he filled it with powder, and going up to the gunner, made him load his piece. “Level well,” said Welsh, “and God will direct the shot.” The man fired, and the first shot dismounted the gun which had inflicted so much damage upon the defenders. The incident revived the courage of the citizens, and they resumed the defense, and continued it till they had extorted from their besiegers favorable terms of capitulation.[6]

Montauban withstood the royal arms, despite the prophecy of a Carmelite monk, who had come from Bohemia, with the reputation of working miracles, and who assured the king that the city would, without doubt, fall on the firing of the four-hundredth gun. The mystic number had long since been completed, but Montauban still stood, and at the end of two months and a half, the king, with tears in his eyes, retired from before its walls. It is related that the besieged were apprised of the approaching departure of the army by a soldier of the Reformed religion, who, on the evening before the siege was raised, was playing on his flute the beginning of the sixty-eighth Psalm, “Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered, and let them also that hate him flee before him,” etc.[7] The king had better success at Montpellier, on the taking of which he judged it prudent to close the campaign by signing terms of peace on the 19th October, 1622. The peace indicated a loss of position on the part of the Protestants. The Edict of Nantes was confirmed, but of the cautionary towns which that edict had put into the hands of the Protestants, only two were now left them-Montauban and La Rochelle.

The French Protestants at this stage of their history are seen withdrawing to a certain extent from the rest of the nation, constituting themselves into a distinct civil community, and taking independent political and military action. This was a strong step, but the attitude of the Government, and its whole procedure towards them for a century previous, may perhaps be held as justifying it. It appeared to them the only means left them of defending their natural rights. We are disposed to think, however, that it would have been well had the French Protestants drawn more strongly the line which separated their action as citizens from their action as church members-in other words, given more prominence to their church organization. The theory which they had received from Calvin, and on which they professed to act, was that while society is one, it is divided into the two great spheres of Church and State; that as members of the first-that is, of the Church-they formed an organization distinct from that of he State; that this organization was constituted upon a distinct basis, that of Revelation; that it was placed under a distinct Head, namely, Christ; that it had distinct rights and laws given it by God; and that in the exercise of these rights and laws, for its own proper ends, it was not dependence upon, or accountable to, the State. This view of the Church’s origin and constitution makes her claims and jurisdiction perfectly intelligible; and gives, as the French style it, her raison d’etre. It may not be assented to by all, but even where it is not admitted it can be understood, and the independent jurisdiction of the Church, whether right or wrong in fact, on which we are here pronouncing no opinion, will be seen to be in logical consistency with at least this theory of her constitution. This theory was embraced in Scotland as well as in France, but in the former country it was more consistently carried out than in the latter. While the French Protestants were “the Religion,” the Scots were “the Church;” while the former demanded “freedom of worship,” the latter claimed “liberty to administer their ecclesiastical constitution.” The weakness of the French Protestants was that they failed to put prominently before the nation their rights as a divinely chartered society, and in their action largely blended things civil and things ecclesiastical. The idea of “Headship,” which is but a summary phrase for their whole conception of a Church, enabled the Scots to keep the two more completely separate than perhaps anywhere else in Christendom. In Germany the magistrate has continued to be the chief bishop; in Geneva the Church tended towards being the supreme magistrate; the Scots have aimed at keeping in the middle path between Erastianism and a theocracy. Yet, as a proof that the higher law will always rule, while nowhere has the action of the Church been so little directly political as in Scotland, nowhere has the Church so deeply molded the genius of the people, or so strongly influenced the action of the State.

[5]Serres, Gen. Hist. of France, continued by Grimston, pp. 256, 257.

[6]Ibid. Young, Life of John Welsh, pp. 396, 397; Edin., 1866.

[7]Elie Benoit, tom. 2., p. 377.

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Chapter 2: Fall of La Rochelle, and End of the Wars of Religion

Cardinal Richelieu—His Genius—His Schemes—Resolves to Crush the Huguenots—Siege of La Rochelle—Importance of the Town—English Fleet Sent to Succour it—Treachery of Charles I—The Fleet Returns—A Second and Third Fleet—Famine in La Rochelle—Fall of the City—End of the Religious Wars—Despotism Established in France—Fruitless Efforts of Rohan to Rouse the Huguenots—Policy of Richelieu—His Death—Louis XIII Dies

Picture: Cardinal Richelieu

Picture: View of La Rochelle: the Lantern Tower and Harbour Entrance, from the Mail Gardens

There was now about to appear on the scene a man who was destined to act a great part in the affairs of Europe. The Bishop of Lucon was a member of the States-General which, as we have already said, assembled in 1614; and there he first showed that aptitude for business which gave him such unrivalled influence and unbounded fame as Cardinal Richelieu. He was a man of profound penetration, of versatile genius, and of unconquerable activity. The queen-mother introduced him to the counciltable of her son Louis XIII, and there the force of his character soon raised him to the first place. He put down every rival, became the master of his sovereign, and governed France as he pleased. It was about this time (1624) that his power blossomed. He was continually revolving great schemes, but, great as they were, his genius and activity were equal to the execution of them. Although a churchman, the aim of his ambition was rather to aggrandize France than to serve Rome. The Roman purple was to him a garment, and nothing more; or, if he valued it in any degree, it was because of the aid it brought him in the accomplishment of his political projects. Once and again in the pursuit of these projects he crossed the Pope’s path, without paying much regard to the anger or alarm his policy might awaken in the Vatican. His projects were mainly three. He found the throne weak

- in fact contemned-and he wished to raise it up, and make it a power in France. He found the nobles turbulent, and all but ungovernable, and he wished to break their power and curb their pride. In the third place, he revived the policy of Henry IV, which sought to reduce the power of Austria, in both the Imperial and Spanish branches, and with this view the cardinal courted alliances with England and the German States. So far well, as regarded the great cause of Protestantism; but, unfortunately, Richelieu accounted it a necessary step toward the accomplishment of these three leading objects of his ambition, that he should first subdue the Huguenots. They had come to be a powerful political body in the State, with a government of their own, thus dividing the kingdom, and weakening the throne, which it was one of his main objects to strengthen. The Protestants, on the other hand, regarded their political organization as their only safeguard-the bulwark behind which they fought for their religious liberties. How feeble a defense were royal promises and oaths, was a matter on which they had but too ample an experience; and, provided their political combinations were broken up, and their cautionary towns wrested from them, they would be entirely, they felt, at the mercy of their enemies. But this was what the powerful cardinal had resolved upon. The political rights of the Huguenots were an obstacle in his path, which, postponing every other project, he now turned the whole resources of the crown, and the whole might of his genius, to sweep away.

About this time all incident happened at court which is worth recording. One day Father Arnoux, the king’s confessor, was preaching before his Majesty and courtiers. The Jesuit pronounced a strong condemnation on regicide, and affirmed solemnly that the Order of Jesus allowed no such practice, but, on the contrary, repudiated it. Louis XIII, in whose memory the murder of his father was still fresh, felt this doctrine to be reassuring, and expressed his satisfaction with it. A Scottish minister of the name of Primrose chanced on that day to be among the auditors of Father Arnoux, and easily saw through the sophism with which he was befooling the king. Primrose made the Jesuit be asked if Jacques Clement had killed his king, or even a king, when he stabbed a prince excommunicated by the Pope? And further, in the event of the Pope excommunicating Louis XIII, would the Jesuits then acknowledge him as tacit king, or even as a king? And, finally, were they disposed to condemn their disciple Ravaillac as guilty of high treason? These were embarrassing questions, and the only response which they drew forth from Arnoux was an order of banishment against the man who had put them.[1]

[1]Felice, pp. 326, 327.

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The Huguenot body at this period had, to use the old classic figure, but one neck-that neck was their stronghold of La Rochelle, and the cardinal resolved to strike it through at a blow. La Rochelle was perhaps, after Paris, the most famous of the cities of France. It enjoyed a charter of civic independence, which dated from the twelfth century. It was governed by a mayor and council of 100. Its citizens amounted at this time to 30,000. They were industrious, rich, intelligent, and strongly attached to the Protestant faith, which they had early embraced. Not once throughout the long struggle had La Rochelle succumbed to the royal arms, though often besieged.[2] This virgin fortress was the strongest rampart of the Huguenots. The great chiefs-Conde, Coligny, Henry of Navarre-had often made it their head-quarters. Within its gates had assembled the famous Synod of 1571, which comprised so much that was illustrious in rank, profound in erudition, and venerable in piety, and which marks the culminating epoch of the French Reformed Church. La Rochelle was the basis of the Huguenots; it was the symbol of their power, and while it stood their political and religious existence could not be crushed. On that very account Richelieu, who had resolved to erect a monarchical despotism in France, was all the more determined to overthrow it.

The first attempt of the cardinal against this redoubtable city was made in 1625. Arising under the Dukes of Rohan and Soubise, the two military leaders of the Protestants, disconcerted the plans which Richelieu was carrying out against Austria. He instantly dropped his schemes abroad to strike a blow at home. Sending the French fleet to La Rochelle, a great naval battle, in which Richelieu was completely victorious, was fought off the coast. La Rochelle seemed at the mercy of the victor; but the discovery of a plot against his life called the cardinal suddenly to court, and the doomed city escaped. Richelieu crushed his enemies at Paris, grasped power more firmly than ever, and again turned his thoughts to the reduction of the stronghold of the Protestants. The taking of La Rochelle was the key of his whole policy, home and foreign, and he made prodigious efforts to bring the enterprise to a successful issue. He raised vast land and naval armaments, and opened the siege in October, 1627. The eyes of all Europe were fixed on the city, now enclosed both by sea and land, by the French armies. All felt how momentous was the issue of the conflict about to open. The spirit of the Rochellois was worthy of the brave men from whom they were sprung, and of the place their city held in the great cause in which it had embarked. The mayor, Guiton, to an earnest Protestantism added all iron will and a dauntless courage. With nothing around them but armed enemies, the ships of the foe covering the sea, and the lines of his infantry occupying the land, the citizens were of one mind, to resist to the last. The attitude of the brave city, and the greatness of the issue that hung upon its standing or falling, as regarded the Protestant cause, awakened the sympathies of the Puritans of England. They raised a powerful army for the relief of their brethren of La Rochelle; but their efforts were frustrated by the treachery of the court. Charles I, influenced by his wife, Henrietta of France, wrote to Pennington, the commander of the fleet, “to dispose of those ships as he should be directed by the French king, and to sink or fire such as should refuse to obey these orders.” When the sailors discovered that they were to act not for, but against the Rochellois, they returned to England, declaring that they “would rather be hanged at home for disobedience, than either desert their ships, or give themselves up to the French like slaves, to fight against their own religion.”

Next year, after the Duke of Soubise, who commanded in La Rochelle, had visited England, the king was prevailed upon again to declare himself the protector of the Rochellois, and an army of about 7,000 marines was raised for that service. The English squadron set sail under the command of Buckingham, an incompetent and unprincipled man. Its appearance off La Rochelle, 100 sail strong, gladdened the eyes of the Rochellois; but it was only for a moment. There now commenced on the part of Buckingham a series of blunders and disasters, which, whether owing to incompetency or perfidy, tarnished the naval glory of England, and bitterly mocked the hopes of those to whom it had held out the delusive prospect of deliverance. Better, in truth, it had never come, for its appearance suggested to Richelieu the expedient which led inevitably to the fall of the city. La Rochelle might be victualled by sea, and so long as it was so, its reduction, the cardinal felt, was impracticable. To prevent this, Richelieu bethought him of the same expedient by which a conqueror of early times had laid a yet prouder city, Tyre, level with the waters. The cardinal raised a dyke or mole across the channel of about a mile’s breadth, by which La Rochelle is approached, and so closed the gates of the sea against its succour. The English fleet assailed this dyke in vain. Baffled in all their attempts, they returned to their own

[2]Felice, p. 329.

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shores, and left the beleaguered city to its fate. Famine now set in, and soon became sore in the city; but it would be too harrowing to dwell on its horrors. The deaths were 300 daily. The most revolting garbage was cooked and eaten. Specters, rather than men, clad in armor, moved through the streets. The houses were full of dead, which the living had not strength to bury. Crowds of old women and children went out at the gate, at times, in the hope that the sight of their great misery might move their enemies to pity, or that they might find something by the way to assuage their hunger; but they were dealt with as the caprice or cruelty of the besiegers prompted. Sometimes they were strangled on gibbets, and sometimes they were stripped naked and scourged back into the city. Still no thought of a surrender was entertained. For more than a year had the Rochellois waited, if haply from any quarter-the Protestants of other countries, or their brethren in the provinces-deliverance might arise. In no quarter could they descry sign or token of help; not a voice was raised to cheer, not a hand was stretched out to aid. Fifteen terrible months had passed over them. Two-thirds of the population were dead. Of the fighting men not more than 150 remained. Around their walls was assembled the whole power of France. There seemed no alternative, and on October 28th, 1628, La Rochelle surrendered at discretion. So fell the Huguenots as a political power in France. The chief obstacle in the path of Richelieu was now out of his way. The despotism which he strove to rear went on growing apace. The throne became stronger every year, gradually drawing to itself all rights, and stretching its absolute sway over all classes, the [319] nobles as well as the peasants, till at last Louis XIV could say, “The State, it is I.” And so continued matters till the Revolution of 1789 came to cast down this overgrown autocracy.

But one is curious to know how it came to pass that the great body of the Protestants in the south of France looked quietly on, while their brethren and their own political rights were so perilously endangered in the fall of La Rochelle. While the siege was in progress, the Duke of Rohan, the last great military chief of the Protestants, traversed the whole of the Cevennes, where the Huguenots were numerous, appealing to their patriotism, to the memory of their fathers, to their own political and religious privileges-all suspended upon the issue at La Rochelle-in the hope of rousing them to succour their brethren. But his words fell on cold hearts. The ancient spirit was dead.

All the ancient privileges of La Rochelle were annulled, and the Roman Catholic religion was re-established in that city. The first mass was sung by Cardinal Richelieu himself. One cannot but admire the versatility of his genius. During the siege he had shown himself the ablest and most resolute soldier in the whole camp. All the operations of the siege were of his planning; the construction of the mole, the lines of circumvallation, all were prepared by his instructions, and executed under his superintendence; and now, the bloody work at an end, he put off his coat of mail, washed his hands, and appearing before the altar in his priestly robes, he inaugurated the Roman worship in La Rochelle by celebrating the most solemn service of his Church. A Te Deum, by Pope Urban VIII, for the fall of the stronghold of the Huguenots, showed how the matter was viewed at Rome.

After this the Protestants could offer no organized resistance, and the king, by way of setting up a monument to commemorate his triumph, placed the Huguenots under an edict of grace. This was a virtual revocation of the Edict of Nantes; the father, however, left it to the son, Louis XIV., to complete formally what he had begun; but henceforward the French Protestants held their lives, [320] and what of their political and religious rights was left them, of grace and not of fight. Had the nation of France rest now that the wars of religion were ended? No; the wars of prerogative immediately opened. The Roman Catholic nobles had assisted Richelieu to put down the Huguenots, and now they found that they had cleared the way for the tempest to reach themselves. They were humbled in their turn, and the throne rose above all classes and interests of the State. The cardinal next gave his genius and energy to affairs abroad. He took part, as we have seen, in the Thirty Years’ War, uniting his arms with those of the heroic ustavus Adolphus, not because he wished to lift up the Protestants, but because he sought to humble the House of Austria and the Catholic League. Personal enemies the cardinal readily forgave, for, said he, it is a duty to pardon and forget offenses; but the enemies of his policy, whom he styled the enemies of Church and State, he did not pardon, “for,” said he, “to forget these offenses is not to forgive them, it is to repeat them.”

It was the design of God to humble one class of his enemies by the instrumentality of another, and so Richelieu prospered in all he undertook. He weakened the emperor; he mightily raised the prestige of the French arms, and he made the throne the one power in the kingdom. But these brilliant successes added little to the personal happiness of either the king or his minister. Louis XIII was of gloomy temper, of feeble intellect, of no capacity for business; and his energetic minister, who did all himself, permitted his sovereign little or no share in the management of affairs. Louis lived apart, submitting painfully to the control of the man who governed both the king and the kingdom. As regards the cardinal, while passing from one victory to another he was constantly followed by a menacing shadow. Ever and anon conspiracies were formed to take away his life. He triumphed over them all, and held power to the last, but neither he nor the king lived to enjoy what it took such a vast amount of toil and talent and blood to achieve. The cardinal first, and six months after, the king, were both stricken, in the mid-time of their days and in the height of their career. They returned to their dust, and that day their thoughts perished.

Chapter 3: Industrial and Literary Eminence of the French Protestants

Liberty Falls with the Huguenots—Louis XIV—Mazarin at the Helm—His Character—The Nobles and the Mob—The Protestants—They Excel in Agriculture—Their Eminence in Trade and Manufactures—Their Superior Probity—Foreign Commerce in their Hands—Their Professional and Literary Eminence—Pulpit Eloquence—French Synods—Mere Shadows of Former Assemblies—French Protestant Seminaries—Montauban—Saumur—Sedan—Nimes—Eminent Protestant Pastors—Chamier—Dumoulin—Petit—Rivet—Basnage—Blondel—Bochart—Drelincourt

Picture: Huguenot Medals or Communion “Tokens”

Picture: Cardinal Mazarin.

The mob and the nobles took part with the French court in its efforts to extinguish Protestantism. With their help the court triumphed. The seeds of Protestantism were still in the soil of France, covered up by a million of corpses, and these the very men who, had their lives been spared, would have enriched the nation with their industry, glorified it with their genius, and defended it with their arms. We are now arrived at the end of the religious wars. What has France gained by her vast expenditure of blood and treasure? Peace? No; despotism. The close of the reign of Louis XIII shows us the nobles and the mob crushed in their turn, and the throne rising in autocratic supremacy above all rights and classes. One class, however, is exempt from the general serfdom. The Church shares the triumph of the throne. The hand of a priest has been laid upon the helm of the State, and the king and the clergy together sway the destinies of a prostrate people. This ill-omened alliance is destined to continue for, though one cardinal minister is dead, another is about to take his place-and the tyranny which has grown out of it is destined to go on, adding year by year to its own prerogatives and the people’s burdens, until its existence and exactions shall terminate together by the arrival of the Revolution, which will mingle all four the throne, the priesthood, the aristocracy, and the commonalty-in one great ruin.

Louis XIV, now king, was a child of four and a half years. His father on his death-bed had named a council of regency to assist the queen-mother in [321] governing the kingdom during the minority of his son. The first act of Anne of Austria was to cancel the will of her husband, and to assume the reins of government as sole regent, calling to her aid as prime minister Cardinal Mazarin, the disciple of Richelieu. There fell to him an easier task than that which had taxed the energies and genius of his great predecessor. Richelieu had fought the battle of the crown, and subjected to it both the nobles and the people: the work expected of Mazarin was that he should keep what Richelieu had won. This he found, however, no easy matter. Richelieu had carefully husbanded the revenues of the State; Mazarin wasted them. Extravagance created debts; debts necessitated new taxes; the taxes were felt to be grievous burdens by the people. First murmurs were heard; then, finally, insurrection broke out. The nobles, now that Richelieu was in his grave, were attempting to throw off the yoke. An oppressed, turbulent, and insurrectionary people were parading the streets of the capital, and carrying their threats to the very gates of the palace. Both nobles and mob thought the time favorable for reducing the power of the throne, and recovering those privileges and that influence of which the great minister of Louis XIII had stripped them. They did not succeed. The yoke which themselves had so large a share in fitting upon their own necks they were compelled to wear; but the troubles in which they plunged the country were a shield for the time over the small remnant of Protestantism which had been spared in France.

That remnant began again to flourish. Shut out from the honors of the court, and the offices of the State, the great body of the Protestants transferred their talents and activity to the pursuits of agriculture, of trade, and of manufactures. In these they eminently excelled. The districts where they lived were precisely those where the richest harvests were seen to wave. The farms they owned in Bearn became proverbial for their fertility and beauty. The Protestant portions of Languedoc were known by their richer vines, and more luxuriant wheat. The mountains of the Cevennes were covered with noble forests of chestnuts, which, in harvest-time, let fall their nuts in a rain as plenteous as that of the manna of the desert, to which the inhabitants compared it. In those forests wandered numerous herds, which fed on the rich grasses that flourished underneath the great trees. Em-bosomed in one of the mountains, the Eperon, was a plain which the traveller found green and enameled with flowers at all seasons. It abounded in springs, and when the summer had wasted the neighboring herbage, the sun touched the pastures of this plain with a brighter green, and tinted its blossoms with a livelier hue. It was not unworthy of the name given it, the Hort-Dieu, or garden of the Lord. The Vivrais produced more corn than the inhabitants could consume. The diocese of Uzes overflowed with oil and wine. The valley of the Vaunage, in the district of Nimes, became famous for the luxuriance of its fields and the riches of its gardens. The Protestants, to whose skill and industry it largely owed the exuberance that gave it renown, had more than sixty churches within its limits, and marked their appreciation of its happy conditions by calling it the “Little Canaan.” Everywhere France boasts a fertile soil and a sunny air, but wherever the Huguenot had settled, there the earth opened her bosom in a seven-fold increase, and nature seemed to smile on a faith which the Government had anathematized, and which it pursued with persecuting edicts.

The Protestants of France were marked by the same superiority in trade which distinguished them in agriculture. Here their superior intelligence and application were, perhaps, even more apparent, and were rewarded with a yet greater measure of success. The wine trade of many districts, especially that of Guienne, was almost entirely in their hands. The goods of the linen and cloth weavers of Vire, Falaise, and Argentine, in Normandy, they sold to the English and Dutch merchants, thus nourishing the home industry while they enriched the foreign market. They were the main carriers between Metz and Germany. The Mimes merchants were famous all over the south of France, and by their skill and capital they provided employment and food for innumerable families who otherwise would have been sunk in idleness and poverty. “If the Nimes merchants,” wrote Baville, the Intendant of the province, in 1699, “are still bad Catholics, at any rate they have not ceased to be very good traders.”[1] In the center of France, at Tours on the banks of the Rhone, at Lyons, they worked in silks and velvets, and bore off the palm from every other country for the quality of their fabrics and the originality and beauty of their designs. They excelled in the manufacture of woolen cloths. In the mountainous parts of the Cevennes, families often passed their summers a-field, and their winters at the loom. They displayed not less skill in the manufacture of paper. The paper-mills of Ambert were unrivalled in Europe. They produced the paper on which the best printing of Paris, Amsterdam,

[1]Weiss, History of the French Protestant Refugees, p. 26; Edin., 1854.

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and London was executed. They were workers in iron, and fabricated with skill and elegance weapons of war and implements of husbandry. In all these industries large and flourishing factories might be seen in all parts of France. If the mercantile marine flourished along the western and northern sea-board, and the towns of Bordeaux, La Rochelle, and the Norman ports rapidly grew in population and wealth, it was mainly owing to the energy and enterprise of the Huguenots. After the horrid din of battle which had so long shaken France, it was sweet to hear only the clang of the hammer; and after the fearful conflagration of burning cities which had so often lit up the midnight skies of that country, it was pleasant to see no more startling spectacle than the blaze of the forge reflected from the overhanging cloud.

The probity of the French Protestants was not less conspicuous than their intelligence. This quality could not be hidden from the quick eyes of foreign merchants, and they selected as their medium of communication with France those in whose honesty they could thoroughly confide, in preference to those whom they deemed of doubtful integrity. This tended to their further importance and wealth, by placing the foreign trade of the country in their hands. The commercial correspondents of the Dutch and English merchants were almost exclusively Huguenots. Their word was taken where the bond of a Romanist would be hesitatingly accepted or, it might be, declined. The cause of this superior integrity is to be found not only in their higher religious code, but also in the fact that, being continually and malignantly watched by their countrymen, they found their safety to lie in unremitting circumspection and unimpeachable integrity. There was, moreover, a flexibility about their minds which was wanting in their Romanist countrymen. Their religion taught them to inquire and reason, it awoke them from the torpor and emancipated them from the stiffness that weighed upon others, and this greater versatility and Power they easily transferred to the avocations of their daily life. The young Huguenot not infrequently visited foreign countries, sometimes in the character of a traveller impelled by thirst for knowledge, and sometimes in the character of an exile whom the storms of persecution had cast on an alien shore; but in whatever capacity he mingled with foreigners, he always carried with him a mind keen to observe, and open to receive new ideas. On his return he improved or perfected the manufactures of his own land, by grafting upon them the better methods he had seen abroad. Thus, partly by studying in foreign schools, partly by their own undoubted inventive powers, the French Protestants carried the arts and manufactures of France to a pitch of perfection which few countries have reached, perhaps none excelled, and their numbers, their wealth, and their importance increased despite all the efforts of the Government to degrade and even to exterminate them. As an additional element of their prosperity, we must add that the year of the Huguenot contained a good many more working days than that of the Romanist. The fete-days of the Church abridged the working year of the latter to 260 days; whereas that of the Protestant contained 50 days more, or 310 in all.

Agriculture, manufactures, and art did not exclusively engross the French Protestants. Not a few aspired to a higher sphere, and there their genius shed even a greater glory on their country, and diffused a brighter luster around their own names. Protestants took a foremost place among the learned physicians, the great lawyers, and the illustrious orators of France. Their intellectual achievements largely contributed to the splendor which irradiated the era of Louis XIV. A Protestant advocate, Henry Basnage, led for fifty years the Rouen bar.[2] His friend, Lemery, father of the illustrious chemist, of whose birth within her walls Rouen is to this day proud, discharged with rare distinction, in the Parliament so hostile to the Huguenots, the duties of Procureur.[3] The glory of founding the French Academy is clue to a Protestant, Valentine Conrart, a man of fine literary genius. A little company of illustrious men, who met at Conrart’s house, first suggested the idea of the Academy to Richelieu. The statesman gave it a charter, but Conrart gave it rules, and continued to be its life and soul until the day of his death. In this list of Protestants who adorned the country that knew so in to appreciate their faith, was Guy Pantin. He was distinguished as a man of letters, and not less distinguished as a philosopher and a physician. Another great name is that of Pierre Dumoulin, who is entitled to rank with the best of the classical prose writers of France. “With more respect for the proprieties,” says Weiss, “and less harshness of character, his style reminded the reader of the great qualities of that of Calvin, whose Institutes of Christianity had supplied France with its first model of a lucid, ingenious, and vehement prose, such as the author of the Provincial Letters would not have disowned.”[4]

With the Huguenots came the era of pulpit

[2]Weiss, Hist. French Prot. Refugees, p. 34.

[3]Ibid.

[4]Ibid., p. 35.

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eloquence in France. In the worship of the Church of Rome, the sermon was but the mere accessory. In the Protestant Church the sermon became not indeed the essential, but the central part of the service. The Reformation removed the sacrifice of the mass and restored the Word of God, it banished the priest and brought back the preacher. Thus the pulpit, which had played a prominent part in the early Church, but had long been forgotten, was again set up, and men gathered round it, as being almost solely the font of Divine knowledge so long as the Bible in the vernacular was scarcely accessible. The preacher had to study that he might teach. His office was to instruct, to convince, to exhort; and the more than human grandeur of his topics, and the more than temporary issues of his preaching, tended to beget a sublimity both of thought and utterance that reached the loftiest oratory. The audiences daily grew: the preacher excelled more and more in his noble art, and the Protestant pulpit became the grand pioneer of modern eloquence.

Rome soon saw that she could not with safety to herself despise an instrumentality so powerful. Hence arose a rivalship between the two Churches, which elevated the pulpits of both, but in the end the Popish seemed to distance the Protestant pulpit. The Protestant preacher gave more attention to the truth he delivered than to the words in which he expressed it, or the gestures with which he set it forth. The preachers who filled the Roman pulpits brought to their aid the arts of a brilliant rhetoric, and the graces of an impassioned delivery, and thus it came to pass that, towards the end of the century, the Church of Rome bore off the palm of pulpit oratory in France. The Protestant preachers of that day had much to dishearten and depress them; the great orators of the Romish Church-Bossuet, Massillon, Flechier, Bourdaloue, and Fenelon-had, on the contrary, everything to awaken and reward their efforts; but it was the preachers formed in the school of Calvin that paved the way for those who so successfully and so brilliantly succeeded them. “If France had never had her Saurins,” said one of the great orators of the English pulpit, “her Claudes, her Du Plessis-Mornays, her national Church had never boasted the genius of Bossuet, and the virtues of Fenelon.”[5]

From the pulpit we turn to the Protestant Synods of France. During the wars which the ambition of Richelieu carried on in the latter end of the reign of Louis XIII, and the troubles which distracted the nation in the opening years of the reign of Louis XIV, several National Synods of the Protestant Church were held. These were but mere shadows of the numerous and majestic assemblies of the better days of the French Church, and the hearts of the members could not but be sad when they thought how glory and power had departed from them since the days of the Queen of Navarre and of Admiral Coligny, illustrious as a warrior and statesman, but not less illustrious as a Christian. The right of meeting had to be solicited from the court; it was always obtained with difficulty; and the interval between each successive Synod was longer and longer, preparatory to their final suppression. The royal commissioner brought with him from court most commonly an ungrateful message; it was delivered in an imperious tone, and was heard in obsequious silence. The members of Synod were reminded that if the throne was powerful its authority was their shield, and that it was their wisdom to uphold, as it was their duty to be thankful for, a prerogative which in its exercise was so benignant towards them. Men who, like these French pastors, met under the shadow of a tyrannical king, with the sword of persecution hanging by a single thread above their heads, could not be expected to show much life or courage, or devise large and effective measures for the building up of their ancient Church. They were entirely in the power of their enemy, and any bold step would have been eagerly laid hold of by the Government as a pretext for crushing them outright. They were spared because they were weak, but their final extinction was ever kept in view.

Still all glory had not departed from the Protestant Church of France. Among its pastors, as we have just seen, were men of great genius, of profound erudition, and of decided piety; and these, finding all corporate action jealously denied them by the Government, turned their energies into other channels. If Protestantism was decaying and passing from view, there were individual Protestants who stood nobly out, and whose names and labours were renowned in foreign countries. French Protestant literature blossomed in the seventeenth century, which was the age of great theological writers in France, as the sixteenth had been the age of famous Synods. Of these writers not a few keep their place after the lapse of two centuries, and their works are accounted, both in our own country and in Germany, standards on the subjects of which they treat. Their writings are characterized by the same fine qualities which distinguished the great authors of their nation in other departments of literature-a penetrating judgment, an acute logic, a rich illustrative power which makes the

[5]Hall’s Works, vol. 6., p. 878.

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lights and shadows of fancy to play across the page, and a brilliant diction which enriches and purifies the thought that shines through it. These men occupied the pulpits of some of the most important towns, or they filled the chairs of the seminaries or colleges which the Protestant Church was permitted to maintain, and which she richly endowed. The French Church at that time had four such academies-Montauban, Saumur, Sedan, and Nimes.

The first of these four seminaries, Montauban, was famous for the high tone of its orthodoxy. It was a well of Calvinism undefiled. It was not less distinguished for the eminent talents of its teachers. Among others, it boasted Daniel Chamier, a remarkable man, whose name was famous in his own day, and is not unknown in ours. Combining the sagacity of the statesman with the erudition of the theologian, he had a chief hand in the drawing up of the Edict of Nantes. He was a distinguished controversialist, and bore away the prize in a public discussion at Nimes with the confessor of Henry IV. At the request of his brethren, he undertook a refutation of Bellarmin, the ablest of the Papal champions. This work, in four volumes, has received the praise of a modern German theologian, Staudlin, for the stores of knowledge its author displays, and the searching criticism which he brings to bear upon the Popish system. The manner of his death was unusual. During the siege of Montauban (1621) he was sent to preach to the soldiers on the walls, who had not been able to attend church. As he mounted the ramparts, he was struck by a cannon-ball, and expired.

Saumur was the symbol of a declining theology. Its professors conducted their labours chiefly with an eye to smoothing the descent from Calvinism to Arminianism. They were learned men in the main, and produced works which excited a various interest. A moderate theology has ever had a tendency to stereotype men in moderate attainments: the professors of Saumur are no exception. Their names would awaken no recollections now, and it is unnecessary therefore to mention them.

Sedan had a purer fame, and a more interesting history. It is associated with the name of Andrew Melville, and of numerous other Scotsmen who here taught with distinction. Pierre Dumoulin (1658), one of the greatest Protestants of his day, filled one of its chairs. As minister of Charenton, he had been the head of the Protestants of Paris, where his talents and influence were of great service to the cause in every part of France; but becoming obnoxious to the Jesuits, he fled to Sedan, then an independent principality, though under the King of France. Here the remainder of his most laborious life was passed. No fewer than seventy three works proceeded from his pen; of these the most popular were the Buckler of the Faith, and the Anatomy of the Mass. The latter still finds numerous readers. Dumoulin was a child of four years when the St. Bartholomew Massacre took place, and would, even at that tender age, have been included among its victims but for the kindness of a servant. He lived to the age of ninety. When one told him that his dissolution was near, he thanked him for bringing him such happy tidings, and broke out into a welcome to death-“that lovely messenger that would bring him to see his God, after whom he had so long aspired.” And so he ceased to be seen of men. It was in this university that Daniel Tilenius taught. He was the first to introduce into France those theological controversies touching Grace and Free Will, which the celebrated Arminius had, as we have seen, begun in Holland a few years before. The progress of Arminian views gradually weakened the hold of Calvinism on the French Reformed Church. [325]

Of these four seats of Protestant learning, Nimes was the least famous. It numbered among its professors Samuel Petit (1643). This man, who was a distinguished Oriental scholar, filled the chair of Greek and Hebrew in this academy. An anecdote is told of him which attests the familiarity he had acquired with the latter language. One day he entered the synagogue of Avignon, and found the rabbi delivering a bitter vituperation in Hebrew’ upon Christianity and Christians. Petit waited till the speaker had made an end; and then, to the no small astonishment of the rabbi, he began a reply in the same tongue, in which he calmly vindicated the faith the Jew had aspersed, and exhorted its assailant to study Christianity before again attacking it. The rabbi is said to have offered an apology. A cardinal, who had so high an esteem of his learning as to court his friendship, offered to obtain for him admission into the Vatican Library at Rome, with liberty to inspect the manuscripts. The offer must have been a tempting one to an Orientalist like Petit, but for reasons which he did not think himself obliged to state to the cardinal, he courteously declined it.

Besides the men we have mentioned, the Protestant Church of France, in the seventeenth century, possessed not a few pastors eminent for their piety and labours, whose works have long preserved their names. Among these we mention Andre Rivet (1651), a distinguished commentator. He began his career as a pastor in France, and closed it as a professor of theology in Holland. The principles of criticism which he lays down in his Introduction to the Study of the Bible he exemplifies in his [326] Commentary on the Psalms, which is one of the best expositions of that part of Holy Writ that we possess. Aubertin (1652) was the author of a work on the Eucharist, which those of the contrary opinion found it much easier to denounce to the Privy Council than to answer. Benjamin Basnage (1652) was a man of ability; his grandson, Jacques Basnage, was still more so. Blondel (1655) was the ecclesiastical historian of his day, and one of the first to expose the forged decretals of Rome. Bochart (1667), a mail of prodigious learning, and of equal modesty, has left behind him an imperishable name. Mestrezat (1657) wielded a logic which was the terror of the Jesuits. Drelincourt (1669) spent his days in visiting his flock, and his nights in meditation and writing. His Consolations against Death still preserves his fame, having been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe. One other name only will we here mention, that of Jean Daille (1670), who was one of Drelincourt’s colleagues in Paris. The work by which the collaborator and friend of the author of the Consolations against Death is best known is his Apology for the Reformed Churches, in which he vindicates them from the charge of schism, and establishes, on irrefragable historic proofs, their claim to apostolicity.

So many were the lights that still shone in the sky of French Protestantism. The whole power of the Government had for a century been put forth to extinguish it. War had done its worst. All the great military leaders, and the flower of the common soldiers, lay rotting on the battle-field. To war was added massacre. Again and again had the soil of France been drenched in blood. Violence had so far prevailed that the Synods of the French Church were now but a name. But the piety and learning of individual Protestants survived all these disasters; and, like stars appearing after the clouds of tempest have passed away, they lent a glory to the remnant that was spared, and proclaimed to France how inherently noble was the cause which it was striving to extinguish, and what a splendor Protestantism would shed upon the nation, had it been permitted in peace to put forth its mighty energies, and to diffuse throughout the length and breadth of France its many virtues, and ripen its precious fruits.

Chapter 4: The Dragonnades

The War of the Fronde—Mazarin adopts the Foreign Policy of Richelieu—Dies at the Height of his Power—Louis XIV now Absolute—“The State, it is I”—His Error as a King—His Error as a Man—Alternate Sinning and Repenting—Extermination of the Huguenots—Confiscation of their Churches—Arrets against Protestants—Fund for the Purchase of Consciences—Father la Chaise—Madame de Maintenon—The Dragonnades—Conversions and Persecutions [327]

Picture: View in Nantes: showing the Tower.

Picture: A Protestant Pastor Addressing a Secret Assembly of Huguenots

We now resume our narrative. Louis, a mere youth, was king; his mother, Anne of Austria, was regent; but Cardinal Mazarin was the master of both, and the ruler of the kingdom. Mazarin, as we have already said, squandered with prodigal hand the treasures which Richelieu had husbanded for wars of ambition. The coffers of the State began to be empty, and had to be replenished by new taxes. This brought on insurrection, and new commenced the War of the Fronde. This war was an attempt, on the part of the nation, to raise itself out of the gulf of dependence on the crown into which Richelieu had sunk it. On the part of the crown, it was a struggle to retain its newly-acquired prerogatives, and to wield over both nobles and people that despotic away from the path of which all impediment had been removed, now that the Huguenots had been suppressed. The War of the Fronde divided the aristocracy, some of the nobles taking part with the court, others with the people. The two great military leaders, Conde and Turenne, brilliant in arms but uncertain in politics, passed from side to side, now supporting the court, now betraying it; now fighting for the people, now deserting them, as the caprice of the moment or the interest of the hour led them. The war extended over the provinces, and even entered the gates of Paris. Barricades rose in the streets; the Louvre was besieged, and Mazarin and the court had to flee. But notwithstanding these successes, the arms of the insurgents did not prosper. The tide again turned; victory declared in favor of the royalists; and the court returned to Paris in triumph. The War of the Fronde was at an end. The nobles, with the people and the municipal corporations, had signally failed to curb the despotism of the crown, and now these classes were in a worse plight than ever. Nor for 150 years thereafter was there the least attempt to resuscitate the popular liberties.

From this time forward Mazarin’s power continued to grow, and remained unshaken to the close of his life. Having quieted France within, he set himself to carry out the great projects of Richelieu, so far as that great statesman had left them incomplete. He made war with Spain, and his arms were successful; for he brought to a close the protracted conflict which France had waged with the House of Austria, humbling it in both its branches, and transferring to France that political and military preponderance in Europe which its rival, the proud and powerful House of Austria, had held for a century and a hair. These events it does not concern us to relate, further than to note the very significant fact that two princes of the Roman Catholic Church were employed in weakening a Power which was the main support of that Church, and in paving the way for that great Revolution which was to reverse the position of all the kingdoms of Europe, stripping the Papal nations of their power, and lifting up the Protestant kingdoms to supremacy.

Mazarin had prospered in all his plans. Abroad he had triumphed over Austria and Spain. At home he had abased the nobles. The Parliament and the municipal corporations he had reduced to insignificance. The people he had sunk into vassalage. The throne he had made supreme. But he did not live to enjoy the fruits of his anxieties and toils. Like Richelieu, he died just as his fortunes culminated. He climbed to the summit of his glory to find that he had arrived at the brink of his grave. Smitten with an incurable malady (1661), he was warned by his physicians that his end drew nigh. He sketched in outline the policy which he recommended Louis XIV to follow, he named the ministers whom he advised him to employ in his service; and then, turning his face to the wall, he took farewell of all his glory.

Louis XIV had already reigned eighteen years; he now began to govern. He called to him the men Mazarin had named on his death-bed-Le Tellier and the great Colbert-and told them that they were to be simply the ministers through whom he was to act. And seldom has monarch had it more in his power than Louis XIV. to do as he pleased throughout the wide extent of his realms.[1]

Abroad he was powerful, at home he was absolute. In his person centered all rights and functions; he was the sole fountain of law. Seldom indeed has there been despotism more complete or more centralized than that now embodied in Louis XIV. His own well-known words exactly express it-“The State, it is I.” It was a fearfully responsible position. Sole master of the rights, the liberties, the lives, and we may add the consciences of the millions who were his subjects, his reign must be a fountain of untold blessings, or a source of numberless, enduring, and far extending miseries. Nor did he lack qualities which might have enabled him to make it the former. He had a sound judgment, a firm will, a princely disposition, and great capacity for affairs. He liked hard work, and all through his long reign was never less than eight hours a day in the cabinet. He was not cruel by nature, though he became so by policy. The rock on which he split as a monarch was ambition. He had tasted of the sweets of conquest under Mazarin, and ever after he thirsted with an unappeasable desire for the spoils of the battle-field. In the course of his wars, there was scarcely a country in Europe which he did not water with French blood. By these long-continued and sanguinary conflicts he still further humbled the House of Austria, and annexed cities and provinces to his dominions, to be stripped of them before his reign closed; he crowned himself with laurels, to be torn from his brow before he died. He got the title of “the Great;” he had two triumphal arches erected in his honour in Paris; and he contracted an enormous debt, which paved the way for the Revolution, that came like a whirlwind in his grandson’s time to sweep away that throne which he had surrounded, as he believed, with a power that was impregnable and a glory that was boundless.

The error of Louis XIV, as a man, was his love of pleasure. He lived in open and unrestrained licentiousness. This laid him at the feet of his confessor, and sank him into a viler vassalage than that of the meanest vassal in all his dominions. The “Great” Louis, the master of a mighty kingdom, whose will was law to the millions who called him their sovereign, trembled before a man with a shaven crown. From the feet of his confessor he went straight to the commission of new sins; from these he came back to the priest, who was ready with fresh penances, which, alas! were but sins in a more hideous form. A more miserable and dreadful life there never was. Guilt was piled upon guilt, remorse upon remorse, till at length life was passed, and the great reckoning was in view.

But how fared it with the Protestants under

[1]Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV., vol. 1., p. 73; Glas., 1753.

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Louis XIV? Their condition became worse from the moment that Mazarin breathed his last and Louis began to govern in person. One of his first ideas was that Protestantism weakened France, and must be rooted out; that the Edict of Nantes was an error, and must be revoked. This was the policy on which he acted as regards the Huguenots-the goal towards which he worked-all throughout his reign: the extirpation of Huguenotism, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The wars of his early years interfered with the pursuit of this object, but he never lost sight of it. No sooner had he taken the government into his own hands (1661) than commissioners were appointed, and sent, two and two-a Roman Catholic and a Protestant

- into all the provinces of France, with authority to hear all complaints and settle all quarrels which had sprung up between the two communions. In almost every case the commissioners found that the Roman Catholics were in the right, and the Protestants in the wrong. The commissioners were further instructed to examine the title-deeds of churches. In many instances none could be produced; they had gone amissing in the lapse of time, or had perished during the wars, and the circumstance was in every case made available for the suppression of the church. It is impossible to tell the number of churches pulled down, of schools suppressed, and charitable establishments confiscated for the benefit of Popish institutions. Next came the decree against “Relapsed Heretics.” This ordinance denounced against such the penalty of banishment for life. If one asked for the priest’s blessing at a mixed marriage, or had been heard to say to one that he should like to enter the Church of Rome, or had done an act of abjuration twenty years before, or given any occasion in any way for a suspicion or report of being inclined to Romanism, he was held as having joined the Church of Rome, and the law against “Relapsed Heretics” was applied to him; and if ever afterwards he entered a Protestant church, he was seized and carried before the tribunals. By another ordinance, a priest and a magistrate were authorized to visit every sick person, and ask if he wished to die in the Roman faith. The scandalous scenes to which this gave rise can be imagined. The dying were distracted and tortured with exhortations to abandon their faith and pray to the Virgin. Children were capable of abjuring Protestantism at the age of fourteen; and by a subsequent decree, at the age of seven; and their parents were compelled to pay for their maintenance under a Roman Catholic roof. Spies haunted the sermons of Protestant ministers, and if the pastor spoke a disparaging word of the Virgin, or any saint of the Romish calendar, he was indicted for blasphemy. If one pleaded a suit-at-law, and were doubtful of success, he had only to say that he was arguing against a heretic, and the magic words were instantly followed by an award in his favor. Protestants were excluded from all offices under the crown, from all municipal posts, from the practice of law and medicine, and generally of all the liberal professions. They were forbidden to sing psalms in their workshops or at the doors of their houses. They had to suspend their psalmody when a Roman Catholic procession passed the doors of their churches. They could bury their dead only at break of day or on the edge of night. Not more than ten mourners could follow the bier; and the statutory number of a wedding procession was restricted to twelve. This did not satisfy the priesthood, however. In 1665 they declared that more zeal must be exercised in order “to cause the formidable monster of heresy to expire completely.” From this time the Protestants began to flee from their native land. It was now, too, that Marshal Turenne abjured in his old age the faith he had professed through life. His virtue had declined before his Protestantism was renounced. His example was followed by the great nobles about court, and it was remarked of all of them, as of Turenne, that they had espoused the morals of the king before embracing his faith. The names of Count Schomberg, the Duke de la Force, the Marquis de Ruvigny, and also several descendants of Duplessis-Mornay stand out in noble relief from this degenerate crowd.[2]

Attempts were next made to unite the two Churches. These came to nothing, notwithstanding the numerous reforms in the Romish Church promised by the king, all the more freely, perhaps, that he had no power to fulfil them. Then, after a little space, the work of persecution was resumed; a new discharge of ordinances and arrets struck the Protestants. We can mention only a very few of the new grievances. The Reformed were forbidden to print religious books without permission of a magistrate of the Romish communion; to celebrate worship when the bishop was holding a visitation; their domestic privacy was invaded; their rights as parents violated; their temples demolished; and if they dared to meet around the ruins and pray beside the sanctuaries in which their fathers had worshipped they were punished.

But perhaps the most extraordinary means employed was the creation of a fund for the purchase

[2]Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France in the Reign of Louis XIV., vol. 1., p. 94 (a work of great research).

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of consciences. This fund was fed from the resources of vacant bishoprics, which were the right of the crown, but which the king now made over to this fund. In every case, when a see became vacant, a year’s revenue was thus applied, but sees were often kept vacant for years that the fund for conversions might profit thereby. Pellisson, by birth a Calvinist, but who, having gone over to the king’s religion, from a convert became a zealous converter, presided over this fund. It was, in truth, a great mercantile establishment, organized according to the rules and wielding the machinery of other mercantile establishments. It had its head office in Paris, and branch offices in all the provinces. It had its staff of clerks, its correspondents, its table of prices, its letters of credit, and its daily published lists of articles purchased, these articles being the bodies and the souls of men. A curious circular letter (June 12th, 1677) of its president, Pellisson, has been given by the historian Felice, and is as follows:-“Although you may go as far as a hundred francs, it is not meant that you are always to go to this extent, as it is necessary to use the utmost possible economy; in the first place, to shed this dew on as many persons as possible and, besides, if we give a hundred francs to people of no consequence, without any family to follow them, those who bring a number of children after them will demand far larger sums. This, however, need not hinder you from furnishing still larger assistance in very important cases, if you advise me of it beforehand, whenever his Majesty, to whom explanations will be given, thinks it proper.” The daily lists of abjurations amounted to many hundreds; but those who closely examined the names said that the majority were knaves, or persons who, finding conversion profitable, thought it not enough to be once, but a dozen times converted. The king, however, was delighted with his success,and nothing was talked of at court but the miracles of Pellisson. Every one lauded his golden eloquence-less learned, they said, but far more efficacious than that of Bossuet.

Louis XIV was now verging on old age, but his bigotry grew with his years. His great minister Colbert, whose counsels had ever been on the side of moderation, was now in his grave. There were left him the Chancellor, Le Tellier, and the Minister of War, Louvois, both stern haters of the Huguenots. His confessor was the well-known Father la Chaise. No fitter tool than Louis XIV could the Jesuit have found. His Spanish mother had educated him not to hesitate at scruples, but to go forward without compunction to the perpetration of enormous crimes. To make matters still worse, the king now fell entirely under the influence of Madame de Maintenon. This woman, who figures so prominently in these awful tragedies, was the grand-daughter of the Protestant historian Agrippa dl’Aubigne. She was a Calvinist by birth, but changed her religion at an early age, and being governess in the family of one of the royal mistresses, her beauty and address fascinated the king, who privately married her on the death of the queen, Maria Theresa. Madame de Maintenon did not particularly hate her former co-religionists, but being resolved above all things to retain her influence over Louis, and seeing the direction in which his humor set-namely, that of expiating his profligacies by the sacrifice of the Huguenot heretics-she and Father la Chaise became the counselors and partners of the unhappy monarch in those deeds of tyranny and blood which shed an ever-deepening darkness and horror over the life of Louis XIV as he approached the grave.

Whether it was the number or the quality of the conversions that did not satisfy the court it is hard to say, but now greater severities were had recourse to. It was deemed bad economy, perhaps, to do with money what could be done by the sword. Accordingly the dragonnades were now set on foot. A commencement was made in Poitou. In 1681 a regiment of cavalry was sent into this province, with instructions from the Minister of War, Louvois, that the greater part of the men and officers should be quartered on the Protestants. “If,” said he, “according to a fair distribution, the Religionists ought to have ten, we may billet twenty on them.” The number of soldiers allotted to each Protestant family varied from four to ten. The men were made aware that they might do as they had a mind, short of actually killing the inmates. “They gave the reins to their passions,” says Migault, describing the horrors of which he was eyewitness; “devastation, pillage, torture-there was nothing they recoiled at.” The details must be suppressed; they are too horrible to be read. The poor people knew not what to do; they fled to the woods; they hid themselves in the caves of the mountains; many went mad; and others, scarce knowing what they did, kissed a crucifix, and had their names enrolled among the converts. The emigration was resumed on a great scale. Thousands rose to flee from a land where nothing awaited them but misery. The court attempted to arrest the fugitives by threatening them with the galleys for life. The exodus continued despite this terrible law. The refugees were joyfully welcomed in England and in the other Protestant lands to which, with their persons, they transferred their industry, their [330] knowledge of art and letters, and their piety. They now made Europe resound with their wrongs-though not one of their books could cross the frontier of their native land. We quote a few sentences from Jurieu (1682), who, fleeing to Holland, became Pastor of the French Church in Rotterdam:-“We were treated as if we were the enemies of the Christian name. In those places where Jews are tolerated they have all sorts of liberties; they exercise the arts, and carry on trades; they are physicians; they are consulted, and Christians put their lives and health into their hands. But we, as if polluted, are forbidden to touch children on their entrance into the world; we are excluded from the bar, and from all the faculties; we are driven away from the king’s person; all public posts are taken away from us; we are forbidden to use those means by which we save ourselves from dying of hunger; we are given up to the hatred of the mob; we are deprived of that precious liberty which we have purchased by so many services; our children, who are part of ourselves, are taken away from us. Are we Turks or infidels? We believe in Jesus Christ, we believe in the eternal Son of God, the Redeemer of the world; the maxims of our morality ate pure beyond contradiction; we respect kings; we are good subjects and good citizens; we are as much Frenchmen as we are Reformed Christians.”

The Protestants thought one other attempt ought to be made, though not by arms, to recover some little from the wreck of their liberties. They agreed that such of their churches as were still standing should be re-opened for public worship on the same day in all the southern provinces of France. This they thought would prove to the king in a peaceable way that the abjurations, so loudly vaunted by his counselors, were a wholesale delusion. The project was carried into effect, but the Government pretended to see in it insurrection, and the poor Huguenots were visited with a yet heavier measure of vengeance. The dragonnades were extended to all the provinces of Southern France. The Protestants fled to the forests, to the deserts of the Cevennes, to the mountains of the Pyrenees. They were tracked by the soldiers, and on refusing to abjure, were sabered or hanged. Some of the pastors were broken on the wheel. Many of the churches spared till now were demolished, and a hideous devastation was inflicted on private dwellings [331] [332] and property. Everywhere there was a Reign of Terror; and the populace, entirely in the hands of ruffians, who, if they forbore to kill, did so that they might practice excruciating and often unnameable tortures upon their victims, now came in crowds to the priests to abjure. “Not a post arrives,” wrote Madame de Maintenon, in September, 1685, “without bringing tidings that fill him (the king) with joy; the conversions take place every day by thousands” Twenty thousand abjured in Bearn, sixty thousand in the two dioceses of Nimes and Montpellier: and while this horrible persecution went on, the Edict of Nantes was still law.[3]

[3]Elie Benoit, Histoire de L’Edit de Nantes, tom. 4., livr. 17., 18.; Delft, 1695.

Chapter 5: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

Edict of Revocation—Summary of its Enactments—The Protestant Churches Demolished—Charenton, etc—The Pastors Banished—Severe Penalties—No Burial without the Sacrament—Lay Protestants Forbidden to Emigrate—Schomberg and Admiral Duquesne—The Ports and Outlets from France Closed—The Flight of the Huguenots—Their Disguises—Flight of Women—Their Sufferings on the Way—Probable Numbers of the Refugees—Disastrous Influence of the Revocation on Science and Literature—on Trade and Manufactures—on the Army and Navy—France Weakened and Other Countries Enriched—Panegyrics of the Clergy—Approval of the Pope—A Te Deum at Rome—Medals in Commemoration of the Event

Picture: Portrait of Louis XIV.

The Edict of Nantes was already in effect repealed. There was hardly one of its provisions which had not been set aside either by interpretations which explained it away, or by edicts which directly nullified it; and now scarcely anything remained of that famous charter of Huguenot rights, save the parchment on which it was written and the seals that attested its stipulations and promises, which, read in the light of the scenes that were being enacted all over France, looked like mockery.[1] But the work must be completed. The king judged that the hour had now arrived for dealing the blow which should extinguish for ever Protestantism in France. By the advice of his counselors-Father la Chaise, his confessor; Madame de Maintenon, his wife; the Chancellor Le Tellier, and Count Louvois-the king, on the 18th of October,[2] 1685, signed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The Revocation swept away all the rights and liberties which Henry IV. and Louis XIII had solemnly guaranteed to the Protestants It declared all further exercise of the Reformed worship within the kingdom illegal; it ordered the demolition of all the Protestant churches; it commanded the pastors to quit the kingdom within a fortnight, and forbade them to perform any clerical function on pain of the galleys; all Protestant schools were closed; and all infants born subsequent to the revocation of the edict were to be baptized by priests, and educated as Roman Catholics; all refugees were required to return to France and abjure their religion within four months, and after the expiry of that term non compliance was to be punished with confiscation of all their property; all Protestants were forbidden to quit the kingdom under pain of the galleys of men, and of confiscation of body and goods if women; and, in fine, all laws against relapsed heretics were confirmed. A clause was added which occasioned a cruel disapointment: it was couched in the following seemingly clement terms:-“Those Protestants who have not changed their religion shall be allowed to dwell in the cities and places of our realm unmolested till it shall please God to enlighten them, as he has others.” This clause was interpreted as a permission to the Reformed to hold their opinions in their own breast and practice their worship in private. It was not long before they had discovered that the true reading of the clause was as follows-until they shall be converted, as others have been, by the dragoons.

On the 22nd of October the Act was registered, and on the same day the Protestants were notified by a public spectacle that its execution had commenced. The great Church of Charenton, in the neighborhood of Paris, built by the celebrated

[1]See Bulletin de la Societe de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Francais: Deuxieme annee; p. 167 et seq.; Paris, 1854.

[2]Weiss says the 22nd of October. It was probably signed on the 18th and published on the 22nd of October.

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architect Jacques Debrosse, and capable of containing 14,000 persons, was razed to the ground. The first blow was dealt the detested structure by two Government commissioners; then a mob of some hundreds threw themselves upon it, win pickaxes and levers; in five days not a trace of the colossal fabric was to be seen, and a cross twenty feet high, adorned with the royal arms, rose in triumph over the demolished edifice. Other temples throughout France, venerable for their age, or imposing from their size, which had escaped the demolitions of former years, were now swept away. Alas, the sorrowful scenes that marked the closing of these churches! Drowned in tears, the congregation assembled to hear their pastor’s farewell sermon, and sing their last psalm; then, forming a long and mournful procession, they passed before the minister, who bestowed on each singly his benediction, exhorting him to be steadfast unto the death. With many a hallowed Communion Sunday lingering in their memories, they then passed out for ever. Many of these churches fell amid a confused noise of blaring trumpets, the shoutings of Romanists, and the sobbings of Protestants. Topping the ruins of the Church of Nimes might long be seen a stone which had formed the lintel of the portico of the now overthrown edifice, on which were graven the words, “This is the House of God, this is the Gate of Heaven.”[3]

Though but the crowning act of a treacherous, cruel, and most tyrannical policy under which they had groaned for years, the Revocation fell upon the Huguenots like a thunder-bolt. Their eyes opened on blank desolation! Not a single safe-guard had been left them; not a single right of conscience, or of property, or of body of which they had not been stripped. The fact seemed too terrible to be real; the crime-the folly-too stupendous for any king to commit! The Protestants amounted to between one and two millions; their factories and workshops were to be found in nearly all parts of France; their commerce and merchandise upheld its great cities, their energy and enterprise were the life of the nation; and to be all at once flung beyond the, pale of law, beyond the pale of humanity! They were stupefied.

But they soon found that the first blow was far indeed from exhausting the calamities with which this measure was pregnant. The edict opened out in a series of oppressions to which they could see neither limit nor end. Troops were sent into the provinces to execute it. As an inundation breaks in, or as a tempest sweeps onward, so did a torrent of pillagings, outrages, and murders rush upon France. Louis XIV in all this was not persecuting, he was only converting; for had not the Savior said, “Compel them to come in”? An army of “booted apostles” scouring the country and 800 Protestant churches now in ruins attested the reality of the Revocation; but instantly came new provisions to amplify and perfect the edict. Protestant preaching had already been forbidden on land; now it was forbidden on board ship. Protestants, or new Catholics, as they were termed-for it was assumed that now there were not any more Protestants in France-were forbidden to employ as servants any save Roman Catholics, under penalty of a fine of 1,000 lives. Huguenots were absolutely forbidden to enter, in the capacity of servants, any family, whether Roman Catholic or Huguenot, under pain, if men, of being sent to the galleys, and if women, of being flogged and branded with a fleur-de-lis. Even English families resident in France were not exempt from the operation of this law. Protestant ministers found lurking in France after the expiry of the fifteen days given them for removal were to be put to death; and, to hasten their departure and make sure that not one heretical teacher remained in the country, a reward of 5,500 lives was offered for the apprehension of ministers in hiding. Pastors who should return to their native land without a written permission from the king were to expiate their offense with their lives, while the terrors of the galleys, imprisonment for life, and confiscation of property were suspended above those who should dare to harbor such. Not a few foreigners, particularly Englishmen, were summoned to abjure, and on their refusal were thrown into prison. The English monarch sent tardy remonstrances against these insults to his crown, and the Court of Versailles responded with an equally tardy satisfaction.

Nor did these annoyances and torments terminate with life. Not only were the death-beds of all Protestants besieged, and their last moments disturbed by the presence of priests, but no grave could receive the body of the man who died without confession and without the Sacrament of extreme unction. His corpse was a thing too vile to rest in the bosom of the earth-it must rot above ground; it was exposed on the highway, or was flung into the public sewer. The body of M. de Chevenix, a man illustrious for his learning and piety, was subjected to this indignity. Dragged away on a hurdle, it was thrown upon a dung-hill. His friends came by night, and wrapping it in linen, bore it reverently on their shoulders, and buried it in a garden, giving vent to their sorrow, as they lowered

[3]Weiss, p. 72.

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it slowly into its place of sepulture, by singing the seventy-ninth Psalm: “Save me, O Lord, for the waters are come into my soul.”[4]

While one clause of the Act of Revocation made it death for the pastor to remain in France, another clause of the same Act made it death for the layman to flee from it. The land was converted into a vast prison. The frontiers were jealously guarded; sentinels were placed at aft the great outlets of the kingdom; numerous spies kept watch at the seaports; officers patrolled the shore; and ships of war hovered off the coast to prevent escape beyond those dismal limits within which the Protestant had only the terrible alternative of sacrificing his conscience, or surrendering his liberty or life. Many earnestly petitioned for leave to withdraw from a land where to obey God was to incur the wrath of the king, but they petitioned in vain. Of the native subjects of Louis, we know of only two to whom this favor was conceded. The Marshal Schomberg and the Marquis de Ruvigny were permitted to retire, the first to Portugal, and the second to England. The Admiral Duquesne was summoned into the presence of Louis XIV., and urged to change his religion. Pointing to his hairs, which tempest and battle had bleached, the hero said, “For sixty years, sire, have I rendered unto Caesar that which I owe to Caesar: suffer me still to render to God that which I owe to God.” He was permitted to live in his native land unmolested. Among the names that lent a glory to France there were none greater than these three. Schomberg was at the head of the army, Duquesne was the creator of the navy, and De Ruvigny was equally renowned in diplomacy; the Revocation deprived France of the services of all the three. This was much, and yet it was but the first installment of that mighty sum which France was destined to pay for the Revocation in after-years.

Nothing can be imagined more appalling than was now the condition of the Protestant, as he looked around him in his native land. The king was his enemy, the law was his enemy, his fellow-countrymen were his enemies; and on all sides of him was a cordon of guards and gens-d’armes, to apprehend and subject him to terrible sufferings should he attempt to escape from the vast prison which had shut him in. But fruitless were all the means taken to prevent the flight of the Huguenots. Fruitless were the peasants that clay and night, armed with scythes and similar weapons, guarded the high-roads, and watched the fords of rivers; fruitless the troops that lined the frontier, and the ships that cruised off the ports and examined all outward-bound vessels; fruitless the offered spoils of the captured fugitives, by which it was sought to stimulate the vigilance of the guards; fruitless even the reports which were put in circulation, that no asylum was to be found in foreign countries that 10,000 refugees had died of starvation in England, and that of those who had fled, the vast majority were soliciting permission to return. In vain were all these efforts to check the emigration; danger was braved, vigilance was eluded; and the frontiers were crossed by an ever-enlarging crowd, who were even more anxious to find liberty of conscience than to escape from death.

The devices resorted to and the disguises assumed by the fugitives to avoid detection were infinite. Some attired themselves in the garb of pilgrims, and with shallop and palmer-staff pursued their journey to their much-wished-for shrine-a land of liberty. Some traveled as couriers; some as sports-men, carrying a gun on their shoulder; some as peasants driving cattle; some affected to be porters, carrying burdens; others were attired in footmen’s liveries, and others wore soldiers’ uniforms. The rich in some cases hired guides, who, for sums varying from 1,000 to 6,000 livres, conducted them across the frontier. The poor, setting out alone, chose by-paths and difficult mountain-tracks, beginning each day’s journey at night-fall, and when the dawn appeared, retiring to some forest or cavern for rest and sleep. Sometimes they lay concealed in a barn, or burrowed in a hay-stack, till the return of the darkness made it safe for them to continue their flight. Nobles and gentlemen, setting their servants on horseback, would put on their dress, and follow on foot as though they were lackeys.

The women were not less fertile in artifices and disguises. They dressed themselves as servants, as peasants, as nurses; even noble ladies would journey onward trundling wheel-barrows, or carrying hods, or bearing burdens. The young disfigured their faces by smearing or dyeing their skin and cutting off their hair, thus converting blooming youth into withered and wrinkled age. Some dressed themselves as beggars, some sold rosaries, and some reigned to be deaf or insane.[5] The perils that environed them on every side could not daunt their heroic resolution. They urged their fleeing steps onward through the darkness of night and

[4]The Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Chevenix Trench, is his greatgrandson. The archbishop is descended by the mother’s side from the family of Chevenix, and by the father’s side from another Huguenot family, that of La Tranches.

[5]Elie Benoit, vol. 5., pp. 554, 953.

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the tempests of winter, through tangled forests and quaking morasses, through robbers and plunderers, forgetting all these dangers in their anxiety to escape the guards of the king and arrive at the rendezvous, and rejoin fathers, or brothers, or husbands, who had reached the appointed place by another route. The terrors of the persecutor had overcome the sense of weariness, and hundreds of miles seemed short to some who, brought up in luxury and splendor, had never before, perhaps, walked a league on foot. The ocean had no terrors to those who knew that there was a land of liberty beyond it, and many crossed the English Channel at that inclement season in open boats. Those on the sea-board got away in Dutch, in English, and in French merchantmen, hidden in bales of goods, or buried under heaps of coal, or stowed in empty barrels, where they had only the bung-hole to breathe through. The very greatness of their misery wrought some alleviation of their hardship. Their woeful plight melted the hearts of the peasants on the frontier, and they suffered them in some instances to escape, when it was in their power to have delivered them up to the dragoons. Even the sentinels sometimes acted as the guides of those whom they had been appointed to arrest. There was hardly a country in Europe into which these men did not flee, but England and Holland and Germany were their main asylums.

It is only an approximate appreciation that can now be formed of the numbers of Protestants who succeeded in escaping from France. The official reports sent in to the Government by the Intendants are not to be relied on. Those whose duty it was to frame them had many motives for making the emigration appear less than it really was. They naturally were unwilling to falsify the previsions of the court which had buoyed itself up with the hope that only a very few would leave their native land. Besides, to disclose the real extent of the emigration might seem to be to present an indictment against themselves, as chargeable with lack of vigilance in permitting so many to escape. It is vain, then, to think of arriving at an exact estimate from these documents, and these are the only official sources of information open to us. But if we look at the dismal blanks left in France, at the large and numerous colonies planted in foreign countries, and at the length of time during which the exodus continued, which was not less than from fifteen to twenty years, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the emigration was on a scale of gigantic magnitude. Of the one million Protestants and upwards scattered among the twenty millions of Frenchmen, it is probable that from a quarter to half a million emigrated. Jurieu estimates that in 1687, 200,000 persons had already left France. Antoine Court, one of the preachers of the desert, makes the total 800,000 persons. Sismondi says from 300,000 to 400,000. In a celebrated memorial addressed to Louvois in 1688, Vauban says “that France had lost 100,000 inhabitants, 60,000,000 of francs in specie, 9,000 sailors, 12,000 veterans, 600 officers, and her most flourishing manufactures. The Duke de Saint Sinton says in his Memoirs that all branches of trade were ruined, and that a quarter of the kingdom was perceptibly depopulated.”[6]

The face of France was changed in a day. Its framework was suddenly and violently shaken and loosened, as if an earthquake had rocked the land. The current of the nation’s life was not indeed stopped outright, but its flow became languid and sluggish beyond the power of king or of parliament again to quicken it. The shock was felt in every department of national enterprise, whether mental or industrial. It was felt at the bar, which it stripped of some of its brightest ornaments. It was felt in the schools of philosophy. Some of the ablest cultivators of science it drove away. The great astronomer and mathematician, Huygens, had to quit France and seek asylum in Holland. It was felt in the ranks of literature. It chased beyond the frontier some of the finest writers and most eloquent orators that France contained. In the list of these illustrious refugees we find Claude, Jurieu, Lenfant, Saurin, Basnage, Bayle, and Rapin. It was felt in the army and navy. The Revocation drove beyond the frontier the flower of the French soldiers, and decreed that henceforth those banners which had waved so proudly on many a victorious field should be folded in humiliation and defeat. The Revocation was felt in the iron works and smelting furnaces on the Vrigne and at Pouru-Saint-Remy. It was felt in the manufactures of arms and implements of husbandry in the Sedanais. It was felt in the gold and silver lace works of Montmorency and Villiers-le-Bel. It was felt in the hat factories of Coudebec. It was felt in the wool-carding establishments of Meaux; in the cloth manufactories of Picardy, Champagne, and Normandy; in the silk-weaving establishments of Tours and Lyons; in the paper mills of Auvergne and the Angoumois; in the tanneries of Touraine; on the shipping wharves and in the trading establishments of Bordeaux, La Rochelle, and other towns, where the foreign trade had been almost exclusively in

[6]Felice, vol. 2., p. 63. See also Bulletin de la Societe de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Francais: Premiere Annee; pp. 316, 535; Paris, 1853.

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the hands of Protestants. In short, not an art was cultivated, not a trade was carried on in France which did not suffer from this blow;not a province was there where the blight it had inflicted was not to be seen in villages half-depopulated, in habitations deserted, in fields lying unploughed, and in gardens and vineyards overgrown with weeds and abandoned to desolation. The ravages inflicted by the Revocation were to be traced not on the land only, but on the ocean also. The fleet of foreign ships which had gladdened the shores and crowded the harbors of France, to carry thence the beautiful and varied fabrics which her ingenious sons had worked on her looms and forged on her anvils, from this time all but disappeared. The art and genius which created these marvels had transferred themselves to Germany, to Holland, to England, and to Scotland, where they had taken root, and were producing those implements with which France had been accustomed to enrich other nations, but which now she had to beg from her neighbors.

Thus strangely did that country defeat what had been the grand object of her policy for half a century. Her aim all through the administrations of Richelieu and Mazarin was to consolidate her power, and lead in the councils of Europe. But this one act of Louis XIV did more to weaken France than all that Richelieu and Mazarin had done to strengthen her. Not only did Louis weaken the fabric of his own power, he enhanced the strength of that interest which it was his great object to abase. The learning, the genius, the art which were the glory of his realm, and would have been the bulwark of his throne, he drove away and scattered among Protestant nations. His folly herein was as conspicuous and as stupendous as his wickedness.

But the Revocation was not the act of the king alone. The clergy and the nation equally with Louis must bear the guilt of his great crime. The people by their approbation or their silence became the accomplice of the monarch; and the clergy made his act their own by exhausting the whole vocabulary of panegyric in its praise. According to them the past history of the world had nothing more wise or more magnanimous to show, and its author had placed himself among the heroes and demi-gods of fame. We might fill almost a volume with the laudations written and spoken on the occasion. “You have doubtless seen the edict by which the king revokes that of Nantes,” wrote Madame de Sevigne to her daughter a few days after the publication of the decree. “There is nothing so fine as all that it contains, and never has any king done or ever will do ought so memorable!” The chancellor, Le Tellier, was so carried away by the honour of affixing the seal of state to this atrocious edict, that he declared that he would never seal another, and in a fit of devout enthusiasm he burst out in the song with which the aged Simeon celebrated the advent of the Savior: “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, since mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” When the men of law were so moved, what might we not expect in the priests? They summoned the people to the churches to unite in public thanksgivings, and they exhausted all their powers of eloquence in extolling the deed. “Touched by so many marvels,” exclaimed Bossuet, “let us expand our hearts in praises of the piety of Louis. Let our acclamations ascend to the skies, and let us say to this new Constantine, this new Theodosius, this new Marcian, this new Charlemagne, what the thirty-six Fathers formerly said in the Council of Chalcedon: ‘You have strengthened faith, you have exterminated heretics; it is a work worthy of your reign, whose proper character it is. Thanks to you, heresy is no more.’ God alone can have worked this marvel. King of heaven, preserve the king of earth: it is the prayer of the Church; it is the prayer of the bishops.”

The other great preachers of Paris also celebrated this edict, as throwing into the shade all past monuments of wisdom and heroism. It is in the following terms that Massillon glorifies Louis’ victory over heresy: “How far did he not carry his zeal for the Church, that virtue of sovereigns who have received power and the sword only that they may be props of the altar and defenders of its doctrine! Specious reasons of state! in vain did ye oppose to Louis the timid views of human wisdom, the body of the monarchy enfeebled by the flight of so many citizens, the course of trade slackened either by the deprivation of their industry or by the furtive removal of their wealth; dangers fortify his zeal; the work of God fears not man; he believes even that he strengthens his throne by overthrowing that of error. The profane temples are destroyed, the pulpits of seduction are cast down, the prophets of falsehood are torn from their flocks. At the first blow dealt to it by Louis, heresy falls, disappears, and is reduced either to hide itself in the obscurity whence it issued, or to cross the seas, and to bear with it into foreign lands its false gods, its bitterness, and its rage.”[7]

Nor was it popular assemblies only who listened approvingly to these flights of rhetoric; similar laudations of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were pronounced before the French Academy, and

[7]Massillon’s Funeral Oration on Louis XIV.

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received the meed of its applause. The Abbe Tallemand, when speaking of the demolition of the Protestant church at Charenton, exclaimed-“Happy ruins, the finest trophy France ever beheld! The statues and the triumphal arches erected to the glory of the king will not exalt it more than this temple of heresy overthrown by his piety. That heresy which thought itself invincible is entirely vanquished.” Bossuet had compared Louis to Constantine and Theodosius; Tallemand, discoursing to a body of learned men, seeks for a more classic prototype of the King of France. A second Hercules had arisen, he told the Academy, and a second hydra, more terrible by far than the monster which the pagan god had slain, had fallen beneath the blows of this second and greater Hercules.

In the midst of this universal chorus of applause we expect to hear one dissenting voice lifted up. Surely the Jansenists will rebuke the madness of the nation, and in some small degree redeem the honour of France. Alas! they are silent. Not one solitary protest do we hear against this great crime. But the Jansenists are not content to Be silent; they must needs speak, but it is to approve of the Revocation. Through their great interpreter Arnault, they declared that “the means which had been employed were rather violent, but nowise unjust.”

It remained for one other and mightier voice to speak. And now that voice is heard, from the other side of the Alps, expressing a full approval of the Revocation. All the previous inferior utterances are repeated and sanctioned in this last [338] and greatest utterance, and thus the Roman Catholic world makes the deed its own, and accepts the Revocation with all its plunder and blood, and the punishment that is to follow it. The Pope, Innocent XI, made a Te Deum be sung at Rome for the conversion of the Huguenots, and sent a special brief to Louis XIV, in which he promised him the eternal praises of the Church, and a special recompense from God for the act of devotion by which he had made his name and reign glorious.

Art was summoned to lend her aid in appropriately commemorating the triumph of Louis over heresy. In front of the Hotel de Ville the provost and sheriffs of Paris erected a brazen statue in honour of the king.[8] It bore the proud words-Ludovico Magno, Victori perpetuo, Ecclesiae ac Regum Dignitatis Assertori (To Louis the Great, eternal Conqueror, and Assertor of the Dignity of the Church and of Kings). Its bas-reliefs displayed a frightful bat hovering above the works of Calvin and Huss, and enveloping them in its dark wings-emblematic imagery borrowed probably from one of Lesueur’s masterpieces in Versailles, commemorating a similar event. Three medals were struck to perpetuate the memory of the Revocation.[9] One of them represented Religion planting a cross on a heap of ruins, denoting the triumph of truth over error; with this legend, Religio Victrix (Religion the Conqueror); and underneath were the words, Templis Cal-vinianorum eversis, 1685 (The Temples of Calvin overturned, 1685). Another displays a figure holding a cross, its foot planted on a prostrate foe, while in the background rises proudly an edifice, surmounted by the motto, Haeresis Extincta, and underneath are the words, Edictum Octobris, 1685,-intimating that by the edict of October, 1685, heresy had been extinguished. A third represents Religion placing a crown on the head of Louis, who stands leaning upon a rudder, and trampling under foot a dead enemy, the symbol of heresy. The motto

- which, says Weiss, “comprises at once an error and a lie”-is Ob vicies centena millia Cal-vinianorum ad Ecclesiam revocata, 1685 (For a hundred thousand Calvinists, twenty times told, brought back to the Church, 1685).

All these medals proclaim what Louis XIV and the Jesuits believed to be the fact, that Calvinism had been eternally extinguished. The edict of October, 1685, was the date (they imagined) of its utter overthrow. As a matter of fact, however, it was the treachery and cruelty of the Revocation that, above most things, aroused the Protestant spirit of Europe, and brought about that great Revolution which, three short years afterwards, placed William of Orange on the throne of Great Britain.

[8]This statue was melted in 1792, and cast into cannon, which thundered at Valmy. (Weiss, p. 93.).

[9]We say three, although there are five, because two of the number axe obviously reproductions with slight variations in the design.

Chapter 6: The Prisons and the Galleys

“New Catholics”—Suspected and Watched—New and Terrible Persecutions—Described by Quick—The Dungeons—Their Horrors—M. de Marolles, and other Prisoners—Other Modes of Punishment—Transportation—Sold into Foreign Slavery—Martyrdom of Fulcran Rey—Claude Brousson—His Preaching—His Martyrdom—Drums round the Scaffold—The Galley Chain—Chateau de la Tournelle—The Galleys

Picture: Facsimiles of Medals struck in honour of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Of the tens of thousands of Frenchmen, of all ranks, and in every disguise who were now hurrying along the highways and byways of France, intent only on escaping from the sod that gave them birth, all were not equally fortunate in reaching the frontier. Many hundreds were arrested in their flight, and brought back to endure the rage of their persecutors. Their miserable fate it now becomes our duty to describe. Nor of these only shall we speak, but also of their many companions in suffering, who remained in their native land, when their brethren had fled before the awful tempest that was now thundering in the skies of France. It is a tale of woe, with scarcely one bright feature to relieve it.

Of those who remained, estimated by Sismondi at about a million, many conformed to the king’s religion, impelled by the terrors of the edict, and such now passed under the name of “The New Catholics.” But their downcast looks belied their professions; their sincerity was suspected, and they [339] were constantly watched. So little faith had the Jesuits in the conversions of which they boasted so loudly in public! Inspectors were established in several parishes to examine if the new converts went regularly to mass, if they took the Sacrament at Easter, and if they paid a dutiful obedience to the commandments of the Church. This was a return, in the polished era of Louis XIV, to the regime of the tenth century. Even the monarch deemed this scrutiny somewhat too close, and issued private instructions to his agents to temper their zeal, and moderate the rigor of the Act.[1] According to the edict, all Protestant children must attend a Roman Catholic school, and receive instruction in the catechism. A new ordinance enjoined that all children above six years of age, whose parents were suspected of being still Protestant at heart, should be taken from their homes, and confided to Roman Catholic relations, or placed in hospitals. The convents and asylums of all France were not enough to accommodate the crowd of abducted youth about to be swept into them, and the priests contented themselves with seizing only the children of the rich, who were able to pay for their maintenance.

The edicts of the king threatened books as well as persons with extermination. The Archbishop of Paris had compiled a list of works which the faithful could not read but at the risk of deadly injury. With this list in his hand the officer entered every suspected house, and whenever he found a forbidden book he instantly destroyed it. These visits were repeated so often that many books of rare value, known to have then existed, are now extinct, not one copy having escaped. The records of Synods, and the private papers and books of pastors, were the first to be destroyed. Wherever a Bible was found it was straightway given to the flames.[2] The edict required that the “New Catholics” should be instructed in the faith they professed to have adopted; but the priests were too few and the crowd of converts too many, so the cures lightened their labours by calling the Capuchins to share them with them. But these were rude and illiterate men. The merest youth could put them to silence. To gross ignorance they not infrequently added a debauched life, and in the case of Protestants of riper years, their approach awakened only disgust, and their teachings had no other effect on those to whom they were given, than to deepen their aversion to a Church which employed them as her ministers.

When the first stunning shock of the edict had spent itself, there came a recoil. The more closely “the new converts” viewed the Church into which they had been driven, the stronger became their dislike of it. Shame and remorse for their apostasy began to burn within them. Their sacrilegious participation in the mass awoke their consciences thousands resolved, rather than lead a life of such base and criminal hypocrisy, to abandon, at whatever cost, the communion they professed to have espoused, and return to the open profession of the Protestant worship. They withdrew from the cities. They sought a dwelling in the wildernesses and forests, and practiced their worship in dark caves, in deep ravines, and sometimes on the tops of mountains. There they promised to one another to live and die in the Reformed faith.

When the king and his counselors saw the flag of defiance waving on the mountains of the Cevennes, and the Lower Languedoc, their rage rose to frenzy. New ordinances came to intensify the rigors of the persecution. Quick has grouped the horrors that now overwhelmed the poor Protestants of France, in a recital that is almost too harrowing for perusal.

“Afterwards,” says Quick, “they fell upon the persons of the Protestants, and there was no wickedness, though ever so horrid, which they did not put in practice, that they might enforce them to change their religion. Amidst a thousand hideous cries and blasphemies, they hung up men and women by the hair or feet upon the roofs of the chambers, or nooks of chimneys, and smoked them with wisps of wet hay till they were no longer able to bear it; and when they had taken them down, if they would not sign an abjuration of their pretended heresies, they then trussed them up again immediately. Some they threw into great fires, kindled on purpose, and would not take them out till they were half roasted.

They tied ropes under their arms, and plunged them once and again into deep wells, from whence they would not draw them till they had promised to change their religion. They bound them as criminals are when they are put to the rack, and in that posture putting a funnel into their mouths, they poured wine down their throats till its fumes had deprived them of their reason, and they had in that condition made them consent to become Catholics. Some they stripped stark naked, and afar they had offered them a thousand indignities, they stuck them with pins from head to foot; they cut them with pen-knives, tore them by the noses with red-hot pincers, and dragged them about the rooms till they promised to become Roman Catholics, or till the doleful cries of these poor tormented creatures, calling upon God for mercy,

[1]Felice, vol. 2., p. 79.

[2]Ibid., vol 2, p. 78

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constrained them to let them go. They beat them with staves, and dragged them all bruised to the Popish churches, where their enforced presence is reputed for an abjuration. They kept them waking seven or eight days together, relieving one another by turns, that they might not get a wink of sleep or rest. In case they began to nod, they threw buckets of water on their faces, or holding kettles over their heads, they beat on them with such a continual noise, that these poor wretches lost their senses. If they found any sick, who kept their beds, men or women, be it of fevers or other diseases, they were so cruel as to beat up an alarm with twelve drums about their beds for a whole week together, without intermission, till they had promised to change.”[3]

What follows is so disgusting that it could not be quoted here unless it were covered with the decent veil of a dead language.

The Lutherans of Alsace, protected by recent diplomatic conventions, were exempt from these miseries; but with this exception the persecution raged through the whole of France. In Paris and its immediate neighborhood, matters were not urged to the same dire extremity. Those who had instigated the king to revoke the Edict of Nantes, had assured him that the mere terror of the Act would suffice to accomplish all he wished, and they now strove to conceal from Louis the formidable proportions of the actual horrors. But in other parts of France no check was put upon the murderous passions, the brutal lusts, and the plundering greed of the soldiery, and there a baffled bigotry and tyranny glutted their vengeance to the utmost. Among the dreadful forms of punishment inflicted on the Protestants was the dungeon. Such as were caught in attempts to escape, or refused to abjure, were plunged into loathsome prisons. Here generally there reigned unbroken silence and darkness. The poor prisoner could not receive a visit from pastor or relation; he could not console himself by singing a psalm or by reading his Bible: shut up with lewd and blaspheming felons, he was constrained to hear their horrible talk, and endure their vile indignities. If his meekness and patience overcame their cruelty, or softened the gaoler, he was at once shifted to another prison, to prevent his being treated more tenderly by those whose compassion he had excited. The letters of M. le Febvre, arrested in 1686, and confined fifteen years in a solitary dungeon, have disclosed the terrible sufferings borne by those who were shut up in these places.

“For several weeks,” says he, “no one has been allowed to enter my dungeon; and if one spot could be found where the air was more infected than another, I was placed there. Yet the love of truth prevails in my soul; for God who knows my heart, and the purity of my motives, supports me by his grace.” He shows us his dungeon. “It is a vault of irregular form, and was formerly a stable, but being very damp, it was injurious to horses. The rack and manger are here still. There is no way of admitting light but by an opening with a double grating, in the upper part of the door. Opposite the opening there are iron bars, fastened at their upper ends into the wall. The place is very dark and damp. The air is noisome and has a bad smell. Everything rots and becomes moldy. The wells and cisterns are above me. I have never seen a fire here, except the flame of a candle. You will feel for me in this misery, but think of the eternal weight of glory that will follow.”

Another prisoner, M. de Marolles, a distinguished scientist, tells us that the solitude and perpetual darkness of his prison engendered, at last, the most frightful and terrifying ideas in his mind. Believing himself on the brink of insanity, he had recourse to prayer, and was delivered. A perfect calm filled his mind, and those phantoms took flight that had so troubled his soul. “He makes the days of my affliction pass speedily away,” said he in the last letter he was ever to write. “With the bread and water of affliction, He affords me continually most delicious repasts.”[4]

In the letters of M. le Febvre, cited above, mention is made of a shepherd who was removed from Fort St. Nicholas to a dungeon in the Chateau d’Ife.[5] The descent into this dungeon was by a ladder, and it was lighted only by a lamp, for which the gaoler made the prisoners pay. The shepherd, when first consigned to it, had to lie on its miry bottom, almost without clothing. A monk, who went down into it to visit its wretched inmates, could not help declaring that its horrors made him shudder, that he had not nerve enough to go again. He could not refrain from tears at the sight of the unhappy beings before him, one of whom had already, though still alive, become the prey of worms. This was the terrible fate not of a few hundreds only. It is believed that at one stage of the persecution there were from 12,000 to

[3]John Quick, Synodicon in Gallia Reformata, pp. 130, 131; Lond., 1692.

[4]History of the Sufferings of M. Louis de Marolles; the Hague, 1699. See also Admiral Baudin’s letter to the President of the Society of the History of French Protestantism-Bulletin for June and July, 1852.

[5]Situated on the rocky isle that fronts the harbor of Marseilles.

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15,000 persons in the prisons and dungeons of France.

Another mode of punishment was transportation to Canada-the Canada of 200 years ago. This method was resorted to in order to relieve the prisons, which, full to overflow, could not receive the crowds that were being daily consigned to them. Collected from the various prisons of France, or gathered from the country around Nimes and Montpellier, these confessors of the Gospel were brought down in gangs to Marseilles, the women strapped down in carts, and the men mounted on horses, their feet tied below the animals belly. The embarkation and voyage entailed incredible and protracted suffering. The vessels that bore them across the Atlantic were small, filthy, and often unseaworthy. Nor did their miseries end with their voyage. On their arrival in the New World they were sold into a slavery so cruel, that in most cases they speedily perished. Those who were thus dragged from the pleasant fields of France, and put under the lash of barbarous task-masters in a foreign land, were not the refuse of French society; on the contrary, they were the flower of the nation. In these manacled gangs were men who had shone at the bar, men who had been eminent in the pulpit, writers who were the glory of their country, and men and women of noble or of gentle birth; yet now we see them borne across the deep, and flung into bondage, because a sensualist king-the slave of mistresses and priests-so willed it.

The policy of the persecutors was to “wear out” the Protestants, in preference to summarily exterminating them by fire and cord. It is true the murders in the fields were numerous; there were few spots in the Cevennes which martyr-blood did not moisten, but only occasionally in the cities was the scaffold set up. We select from the Lettres Pastorales of Jurieu[6] a few instances. One of the first to suffer in this way was Fulcran Rey, a young man of Nimes. He had just finished his course of theological study when the storm burst. Does he now decline the office of pastor? No: accepting martyrdom beforehand, he writes a farewell letter to those at his father’s house, and goes forth to break the silence which the banishment of the ministers had created in France by preaching the Gospel. In a little while he was arrested. On his trial he was promised the most flattering favors if he would abjure, but his constancy was invincible. He was sentenced to be hanged, after having been tortured. On hearing his doom, he exclaimed, “I am treated more gently than my Savior was in being condemned to so mild a form of death. I had prepared my mind to being broken on the wheel, or being burnt to death.” Then, raising his eyes to heaven, he gave thanks to God for this mitigation of his anticipated agonies. Being come to the scaffold, he wished to address the crowd, and confess before them the faith in which he died; but, says Jurieu, “they were afraid of a sermon delivered by such a preacher, and from such a pulpit, and had stationed around the gibbet a number of drummers, with orders to beat their drums all at once.” He died at Beaucaire, July 7th, 1686, at the age of twenty-four.

But the martyr of greatest fame of that era is Claude Brousson. Brousson had been a distinguished member of the bar at Toulouse, where he pleaded the cause of the oppressed Churches. Silenced as an advocate, he opened his lips as a preacher of the Gospel. His consecration to his office took place in the wilds of the Cevennes, which were then continually resounding with the muskets of the murderous soldiery. The solitary hut, or the dark wood, or the deep ravine henceforth became his home, whence he issued at appointed times to preach to the flock of the desert. After awhile he was so hotly pursued that he judged it prudent to withdraw from France. But in his foreign asylum his heart yearned after his flock, and, finding no rest, he returned to those “few sheep in the wilderness.” A sum of 500 louis was offered to any one who would bring him to the Intendant, dead or alive; nevertheless Brousson went on for five years in the calm exercise of his ministry. His sermons were published at Amsterdam in 1695, under the title of The Mystical Manna of the Desert. “One would have expected,” says Felice, “that discourses composed by this proscribed man, under all oak of the forest, or on a rock by some mountain torrent, and delivered to congregations where the dead were frequently gathered as on a field of battle, would have been marked by eager and gloomy enthusiasm. Nothing of the kind is, however, to be found in this Mystical Manna. The preacher’s language is more moderate and graceful than that of Saurin in his quiet church of the Hague; in the persecution he points only to the hand of God, and is vehement only when he censures his hearers.”[7] At last, in 1698, he was arrested at Oleron and carried to Montpellier. Before his judges he freely admitted the graver charge of his indictment, which was that he had preached to the Protestant outlaws; but he

[6]Published by him every fortnight after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

[7]Felice, vol. 2., p. 87.

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repudiated energetically another accusation preferred against him, that he had conspired to bring Marshal Schomberg into France at the head of a foreign army. He was condemned to die. On the scaffold, which he mounted on the 4th of November, he would once more have raised his voice, but it was drowned by the roll of eighteen drums. Little did Louis XIV then dream that his great-grandson, and next successor save one on the throne of France, should have his dying words drowned by drums stationed round his scaffold.

Of all the punishments to which the proscribed Protestants of France were doomed, the most dreadful was the galleys. The more famous galleys were those of Marseilles, and the journey thither entailed hardships so terrible that it was a common thing for about three-fourths of the condemned to die on the road. They marched along in gangs, carrying heavy irons, and sleeping at night in stables or vaults. “They chained us by the neck in couples,” says one who underwent this dreadful ordeal, “with a thick chain, three feet long, in the middle of which was a round ring. After having thus chained us, they placed us all in file, couple behind couple, and they passed a long thick chain through these rings, so that we were thus all chained together. Our chain made a very long file, for we were about four hundred.”[8] The fatigue of walking was excessive, each having to carry about fifty pounds weight of chains. One of their halting-places, the Chateau de la Tournelle, he thus speaks: “It is a large dungeon, or rather spacious cellar, furnished with huge beams of oak placed at the distance of about three feet apart. To these beams thick iron chains are attached, one and a half feet in length, and two feet apart, and at the end of these chains is an iron collar. When the wretched galley-slaves arrived in this dungeon, they are made to lie half down, so that their heads may rest upon the beam; then this collar is put round their necks, closed, and riveted on an anvil with heavy blows of a hammer. And these chains with collars are about two feet apart, and as the beams are generally about forty feet long, twenty men are chained to them in file. This cellar which is round, is so large that in this way they can chain up as many as five hundred. There is nothing so dreadful as to behold the attitudes and postures of these wretches there chained. For a

[8]Autobiography of a French Protestant condemned to the Galleys for the sake of his Religion (transl. from the French), p. 209. This work was written by Jean Marteilhe, who passed some years in the French galleys. It was translated by Oliver Goldsmith, first published at Rotterdam in 1757, and has since been re-published by the Religious Tract Society, London. See also Elie Benoit, bk. 24.

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man so chained cannot lie down at full length, the beam upon which his head is fixed being too high; neither can he sit, nor stand upright, the beam being too low. I cannot better describe the posture of such a man than by saying he is half lying, half sitting,-part of his body being upon the stones or flooring, the other part upon this beam. The three days and three nights which we were obliged to pass in this cruel situation so racked our bodies and all our limbs that we could not longer have survived it-especially our poor old men, who cried out every moment that they were dying, and that they had no more strength to endure this terrible torture.”[9]

This dreadful journey was but the prelude to a more dreadful doom. Chained to a bench of his galley, the poor prisoner remained there night and day, with felons for his companions, and scarcely any clothing, scorched by the sun, frozen by the cold, or drenched by the sea, and compelled to row at the utmost of his strength-and if, being exhausted, he let the oar drop, he was sure to be visited with the bastinado. Such were the sufferings amid which hundreds of Protestants of France wore out long years. It was not till 1775, in the beginning of Louis XVI’s reign that the galleys released their two last Protestant prisoners, Antoine Rialle and Paul Archard.[10]

[9]Autobiography of a French Protestant, etc., pp. 203, 204.

[10]Bulletin de la Societe de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Francais, pp. 176, 320; Paris, 1853.

Chapter 7: The “Church of the Desert”

Secessions—Rise of the “Church of the Desert”—Her Places of Meeting—Her Worship—Pastors—Communion “Tokens”—Night Assemblies—Simplicity yet Sublimity of her Worship—Renewed Persecutions—War of the Camisards—Last Armed Struggle of French Protestantism—No Voice—Bossuet—Antoine Court—The “Restorer of Protestantism”—Death of Louis XIV—Theological Seminary at Lausanne—Paul Rabaut—The Edict of Malesherbes—The Revolution

It seemed in very deed as if the once glorious Protestant Church of France had fallen before the storm, and passed utterly from off the soil she had but a century before covered with her goodly boughs. Her ministers banished, her churches razed, her colleges closed, her sons driven into exile, and such of them as remained in the land languishing in prison, or dragging out a life of wretched conformity to the Romish Church-all public monument of French Protestantism had been swept [344] away, and the place that had known it once seemed fated to know it no more for ever.

A deep spiritual decay proved the forerunner of this sore judgment. An emasculated Protestantism had taken the place of that grand Scriptural faith which had given such breadth of view and elevation of soul to the fathers of the Huguenots. This cold belief, so far from rallying new champions to the Protestant standard, could not even retain those who were already around it. The nobles and great families were apostatizing; the ministers were going over to Rome at the rate of a score or so year by year; and numbers of the people had enlisted in the armies of Louis XIV, although they knew that they should have to contend on the battle-field against their brethren in the faith, and that the king’s object in the war was to make France strong that it might be able to deal a fatal blow to the Protestantism of Europe.[1] These were symptomatic of a most melancholy decline at the heart of French Protestantism, and now the axe was laid at the root of that tree which, had it been left standing in the soil, would in a few years have died of utter rottenness.

The cutting down of the trunk was the saving of the life, for that moment shoots began to spring forth from the old root. In the remote south, amid the mountains of Dauphine and the Cevennes, after the first stunning effects of the blow had abated, the Reformed began to look forth, and draw to one another; and taking courage, they met in little companies to celebrate their worship, or to partake of the Sacramental bread. Thus arose The “Church of the Desert.” These assemblies speedily increased from a dozen or score of persons to hundreds, and from hundreds at last to thousands. They were ministered to by men who had learned their theology in no school or college, nor had the hands of presbyter been laid upon their head; on them had come only “the anointing of the Holy Spirit.” The assemblies they addressed met on the side of a mountain, or on some lonely moor, or in a deserted quarry or gloomy cavern, or amid the great stems and overshadowing branches of a forest. Intimation of the meeting was sent round only on the evening before, and if any one had scandalized his brethren by immorality, he was omitted in the invitation. It was the only ecclesiastical discipline which was administered. Sentinels, stationed all round, on rocks or on hilltops, signaled to the worshippers below the approach of the dragoons, indicating at the same time the quarter from which they were advancing, that the people might know in what direction to flee. While the congregation was assembling, worship was commenced by the singing of a psalm, the Hundredth being commonly selected. The elders then read several chapters of the Bible. At this stage the pastor, who had kept his place of concealment till now, made his appearance, attended by a body-guard of young men, who escorted him to and from the place of meeting, and were prepared to protect his flight should they be surprised by the soldiers. The sermon was not to exceed an hour and a quarter in length. Such were the limits which the Synods of the Church had fixed, with an obvious regard to the safety of the worshippers.

The “Church of the Desert” had been some time in existence before she had the happiness of enjoying the ministry of her exiled pastors. A few returned, at the peril of their lives, when they heard that their scattered flocks had begun to meet together for the performance of worship. About 1730 a theological academy was established at Lausanne, in Switzerland, and thence emanated all the Protestant pastors of France till the reign of Napoleon. The same forms of worship were observed in the wilderness as in the city church in former times. Public prayer formed an important part of the service, conducted either by the ministers or, in their absence, by the elders. The prayers of the pastors were commonly extemporaneous, whereas the elders usually availed themselves of the aid of a liturgy. The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was dispensed at Christmas, at Easter, and at Pentecost, as well as at other times. The purity of the table was anxiously guarded. No one was admitted to it till first he had signified his desire to an elder, and received from him a little medal or “token.”[2] These were made of lead, and roughly engraved, having on one side all open Bible, with the rays of the sun, emblematic of the Spirit’s light, illuminating its page, and the motto, “Fear not, little flock;” and on the other, a shepherd tending his sheep, or a Communion cup, and a cross, suggestive of persecution. The communicant put down his “token” on the table, and the bread and cup were then given to him. Often would it happen that those who had gone to mass would beg, with tears in their eyes, admission to the table, but there they could not sit till they had given ample proof of their Penitence.

[1]Weiss-Bulletin de la Societe de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Francais, pp. 231-234; Paris, 1853.

[2]These medals or “tokens” are engraved on page 324. See Bulletin de la Societe de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Francais, p. 13; Paris, 1854.

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These worshipping assemblies were usually convened at night, the more effectively to avoid pursuit. When they met in a wood, as very often happened, they hung lamps on the boughs of the trees, that they might see the passages of Scripture which were read, and the psalms that were sung. Afterwards, when the congregations had swelled to thousands, they met during day, selecting as their rendezvous the mountain-top, or some vast stretch of solitary moor. Their worship, how simple in its outward forms, but in spirit how sublime, and in its accessories how grand! the open vault above, the vast solitude around, the psalm and prayer that rose to heaven amidst the deep stillness, the dangers that environed the worshippers-all tended to give a reality and earnestness to the devotions, and impart a moral dignity to the worship, compared with which the splendor of rite or of architecture would have, been but desecration. The Protestant Church of France had returned to her early days. It was now with her as when Calvin administered to her the first Communion on the banks of the Clain. This was her second birthday.

When the king and the Jesuits learned that the Protestants had begun again to perform their worship, they broke out into a transport of wrath that was speedily quenched in blood. More arrests, more dragoons, more sentences to the galleys, more scaffolds; such were the means by which they sought to crush the “Church of the Desert.” Everywhere in Languedoc and Dauphine the troops were on the alert for the Reformed. “It was a chase,” as Voltaire has expressed it, “in a wide ring.” The Marquis de la Trousse, who commanded in the Cevennes, when he surprised a congregation, made his soldiers fire into it as if it was a covey of game. The Protestants had no arms, and could offer no resistance. They dropped on their knees, and raising their hands to heaven, awaited death. The truthful Antoine Court says that “he was furnished with an exact list of assemblies massacred in different places, and that in some of these encounters from 300 to 400 old men, women, and children were left dead upon the spot.”[3] But no violence ould stop these field-preachings. They grew ever larger in numbers, and ever more frequent in time, till at last, we are assured, it was nothing uncommon, in traversing the mountain-side or the forest where they had met, to find, at every four paces, dead bodies dotting the sward, and corpses hanging suspended from the trees.

The outbreak of the Camisards came to diversify with new and even greater horrors this terrible tragedy. Driven to desperation and stung to madness by the numberless cruelties, injustices, and infamies of the Government, and permitting themselves to be directed by certain of their own number whom they regarded as prophets, the peasants of Vivarais and Languedoc rose in arms against the royal troops. Ignorant of the art of war, and provided only with such weapons as they took from their enemies, they lurked behind the bushes and crags of their mountains, and sold their lives as dearly as they were able. They never amounted to more than 10,000, but at times they held in check armies of double that number. This guerilla warfare lasted from 1702 to 1706, and was attended with frightful slaughter on both sides. The Cevenols joined the Camisards, which enlarged the seat and intensified the fury of the war. The court took the alarm, and more soldiers were poured into the infected provinces.

The more effectually to suppress the rising, the Romanist population were removed into the cities, and the country was laid waste. And the work of devastation not proceeding rapidly enough with the musket, the sword, and the axe, the faggot was called in to expedite it; the dwellings of the peasantry were burned down, and the district, so flourishing before the Revocation, was converted into one vast gloomy wilderness. This was the last armed struggle of the Reformation in France. No noble or pastor took part in it; it was waged for liberty rather than for religion, and though it stained rather than honoured the cause in the name of which it was waged, it emboldened the Protestants, who from this time were treated somewhat less mercilessly, not because the Government hated them less, but because it feared them more.

These atrocities were enacted upon no obscure stage, and in no dark age, but in the brilliant era of Louis XIV. Science was then cultivated, letters flourished, the divines of the court and of the capital were learned and eloquent men, and greatly affected the graces of meekness and charity. We wait to hear these lights of their age exclaim against the awful crimes of which France was the theater. Surely some voice will be lifted up.

Bossuet, “the Eagle of Meaux,” has come to be credited with a “charity” superior to his country, and which shone all the brighter from the darkness that surrounded it. It would unspeakably delight one to find a name, otherwise so brilliant, unstained by the oppressions and crimes of the period; but the facts brought to light by M. M. Haag, in La France Protestante, completely disprove the truthfulness of the panegyrics which the too partial biographers of the distinguished bishop have

[3]Felice, vol. 2., p. 82.

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pronounced upon his moderation. These show that Bossuet was not superior in this respect to his contemporaries. In giving vigorous enforcement to the edicts of the king within his own diocese, he but acted consistently with his avowed principles. “It behooves us to give obedience to kings,” said Bossuet, “as to Justice itself. They are gods, and participate in a certain sense in the independence of God. No other than God can judge their sentences or their persons.”[4] This prepares us for the part he acted against the Protestants.The Intendant who executed the law in his diocese, and who had orders to act according to Bossuet’s advice, condemned to death several Protestants of Nanteuil, and even the Abbe le Dieu admits that the bishop demanded their condemnation. True, he demanded also their pardon, but this “pardon” consisted in the commutation of the penalty of death to the galleys for life. Further, it is certified by a letter of Frotte, a former canon of St. Genevieve, and whom Bossuet himself describes as a very honest man, that the bishop caused Protestants to be dragged from the villages of his diocese, cited them before him, and with a military officer sitting by his side, summoned them to abjure their religion; that he used to have children torn from their parents, wives from their husbands, and to have dragoons quartered upon Calvinists to force them to abandon their faith. He asked for lettres de cachet to be issued against the Crochards, father and son, at the very time that the former was dying.[5] He instigated a ruthless persecution of two children, the Mitals.[6] We find him too in the memoir addressed to the minister Pontchartrain, which is published in the seventeenth volume of his works, demanding the imprisonment of two orphans, the Demoiselles de Neuville, whose father was serving in the army of William of Orange, thus punishing the children for the faults, as he deemed them, of the parent. These facts, which are beyond dispute, completely overthrow the claim for superior clemency and mildness which has been set up for the eloquent bishop.

To pursue the century year by year to its close would only be to repeat endlessly the same tale of crime and blood; the facts appertaining to the progress of Protestantism in France, from the war of the Camisards until the breaking out of the great Revolution group themselves around two men-Antoine Court and Paul Rabaut. Antoine Court has received from the French Reformed the well-earned title of “Restorer of Protestantism.” He found the French Protestant Church at the close of the Camisard war at the last extremity. She needed educated pastors, she needed public instruction, she needed order and discipline, and above all a revival of piety; and he set about restoring the Protestant Church as originally constructed by the first Synod at Paris in 1559. He was then young, and his task was great, but he brought to it a sound judgment and admirable prudence, an indefatigable zeal, and a bodily constitution that sustained itself under the pressure of prodigious labours, and he succeeded in raising again the fallen edifice. Commencing with assemblies of ten or a dozen, he saw around him before ending his career congregations of eight and ten thousand. By his missionary tours he revived the all but extinct knowledge and zeal of the Protestants. He re-organized the worshipping assembly; he re-constituted the Consistory, the Colloquy, and the Synod; and he provided a race of educated and pious pastors. He convoked a Synod (October 21st, 1715), the first which had met since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. At that moment Louis XIV lay dying in his splendid palace of Versailles. History delights in contrasts, and we have here one that will repay our attention. On the one side is the great monarch; his children dead; his victories swept away; the commerce and industry of his kingdom ruined; many tracts lying untilled; while his subjects, crushed under enormous taxes, and cursing the man whose wars and pleasures had plunged his realm into millions of debt, waited gloomily till his remains should be borne to the grave,that they might throw stones and mud at his coffin. On the other side we behold a youth of nineteen laying anew the foundations and raising up the walls of that Protestantism to commemorate the entire destruction of which Louis XIV had caused so many medals to be struck, and a bronze statue to be erected.

Having re-constituted upon its original bases the Reformed Church of France, Antoine Court in 1730 retired to Lausanne to preside over the seminary he had there founded, and which continued for eighty years to send forth pastors and martyrs to France.[7] Paul Rabaut took his place as nourisher of that Protestantism which Antoine Court had restored. The life of Rabaut was full of labours and

[4]Politique Tiree de l’Ecriture Sainte, livr. 4., art. 1., prop. 2.

[5]Bulletin de la Societe de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Francais, vol. 4.

[6]Ibid., vol. 10. p. 50.

[7]Weiss, in his History of the Refugees, says that more than 700 pastors emanated from this famous school. M. Coquerel, in his History of the Churches of the Desert, reduces the number to 100. The most reasonable calculation would not give less than 450, among whom were Alphonse Turretin and Abraham Ruchat, the historian of the Reformation in Switzerland.

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perils; but he had the satisfaction of seeing the Protestant Church growing from day to day in spite of bloody arrets, and in defiance of the continued operation, sometimes in greater and sometimes in less intensity, of the dragonnade, the galleys, and the scaffold. As the result of continual journeynights, during which he seldom slept more than two nights in the same hiding-place, he kept flowing the fountains that his great predecessor had opened, and streams went forth to water the weary land. But neither then nor since has the Protestant Church of France attained the glory of her former days, when sovereigns and princes sat in her Synods, when great generals led her armies, and learned theologians and eloquent preachers filled her pulpits. She continued still to wear her chains. At length in 1787 came the Edict of Malesherbes, which merely permitted the Protestants to register their births, marriages, and deaths; in other words, recognized them as subjects, and permitted them to prosecute their professions and trades, but still held them punishable for their religious opinions. At last, amid clouds of seven-fold blackness, and the thunderings and lightnings of a righteous wrath, came the great Revolution, which with one stroke of awful justice rent the fetters of the French Protestants, and smote into the dust the throne which had so long oppressed them. [348]

Book 23: Protestantism in England from the Times of Henry VIII.

Chapter 1: The King and the Scholars

The Darkness Fulfils its Period—Two Currents in Christendom—Two Phases of the One Movement in England—Henry VIII—His Education—His Character—Popularity—Dean Colet—His Studies at Florence—Englishmen in Italy—Colet’s Lectures at St. Paul’s School—WilliamGrocyn—Colet Founds St. Paul’s School—William Lily—Linacre—Dean Colet’s Sermon at St. Paul’s—Fitzjames, Bishop of London—Warham, the Primate—Erasmus—Sir Thomas More—The Plough of Reform Begins again to Move

Picture: Protestants Worshipping by Night in the Church of the Desert.

Picture: Old St. Paul Cathedral.

It is around the person and ministry of Wicliffe that the dawn of the new times is seen to break. Down to his day the powers of superstition had continued to grow, and the centuries as they passed over the world beheld the night deepening around the human soul, and the slavery in which the nations were sunk becoming ever viler. But with the appearance of Wicliffe the darkness fulfils its period, and the great tide of evil begins to be rolled back. From the times of the English Reformer we are able to trace two great currents in Christendom, which have never intermitted their flow from that day to this. The one is seen steadily bearing down into ruin the great empire of Roman superstition and bondage; the other is seen lifting higher and higher the kingdom of truth and liberty.

Let us for a moment consider, first, the line of calamities which fell on the anti-Christian interest, drying up the sources of its power, and paving the way for its final destruction; and next, that grand chain of beneficent dispensations, beginning with Wicliffe, which came to revive the cause of righteousness, all but extinct.

In the days of Wicliffe came the Papal schism, the first opening in that compact tyranny which had so long burdened the earth and defied the heavens. Next, and as a consequence, came the struggles of the Councils against the Papal autocracy: these were followed by a series of terrible wars, first in France and next in England, by which the nobles in both countries were nearly exterminated. These wars broke the power of feudalism, and raised the kings above the Papal chair. This was the first step in the emancipation of the nations; and by the opening of the sixteenth century, the process was so far advanced that we find only three great thrones in Europe, whose united power was more than a match for the Popedom, but whose conflicting interests kept open the door for the escape of the nations.

When we turn to the other line of events, we find it too taking its rise at the feet, so to speak, [349] of Wicliffe. First comes the translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue, with the consequent spread of Lollardism-in other words, of Protestant doctrines in England; this was followed by the fall of Constantinople, and the scattering of the seeds of knowledge over the West; by the invention of the art of printing, and other discoveries which aided the awakening of the human mind; and finally by the diffusion of the light to Bohemia and other countries; and ultimately by the second great opening of the day in the era of Luther and the Reformers. From the Divine seed deposited by the hand of Wicliffe spring all the influences and events that constitute the modern times. The reforming movements which we have traced in both the Lutheran and the Calvinistic countries are about to culminate in the British Reformation-the top-stone which crowns the edifice of the sixteenth century.

The action into which the English nation had been roused by the instrumentality of Wicliffe took a dual form. With one party it was a struggle for religious truth, with the other it was a contest for national independence. These were but two phases of one great movement, and both were needed to create a perfect and powerful Protestantism. For if the corruptions of the Papacy had rendered necessary a reformation of doctrine, not less had the encroachments and usurpations of the Vatican necessitated a vindication of the national liberties. The successive laws placed on the statute-book during the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI, remain the monuments of the great struggle waged by England to disenthral herself from the fetters of the Papal supremacy. These we have narrated down to the times of Henry VIII, where we now resume our narrative.

Henry VIII ascended the throne in 1509, and thus the commencement of his reign was contemporaneous with the birth of Calvin, of Knox, and of others who were destined, by their genius and their virtues, to lend to the age now opening a glory which their contemporaries, Henry and Francis and Charles, never could have given it by their arms or their statesmanship. It was a long while since any English king had mounted the throne with such a prospect of a peaceful and glorious reign, as the young prince who now grasped [350] the scepter which had been swayed by Alfred the Great. Uniting in his person the rival claims of York and Lancaster, he received the warm devotion of the adherents of both houses. Of majestic port, courteous manners, and frank and open disposition, he was the idol of the people. Destined to fill the See of Canterbury, his naturally vigorous understanding had been improved by a carefully conducted education, and his mental accomplishments far exceeded the customary measure of the princes of his age.He had a taste for letters, he delighted in the society of scholars, and he prodigally lavished in his patronage of literature, and the gaieties and entertainments for which he had a fondness, those vast treasures which the avarice and parsimony of his father, Henry VII, had accumulated. The court paid to him by the two powerful monarchs of France and Spain, who each strove to have Henry as his ally, also tended to enhance his importance in the eyes of his subjects, and increase their devotion to him. To his youth, to the grace of his person, to the splendor of his court, and the wit and gaiety of his talk, there was added the prestige that comes from success in arms, though on a small scale. The conquest of Tournay in France, and the victory of Flodden in Scotland, were just enough to gild with a gleam of military glory the commencement of his reign, and enhance the favorable auspices under which it opened. But we turn from Henry to contemplate persons of lower degree, but of more inherent grandeur, and whose lives were destined to yield richer fruit to the realm of England. It is not at the foot of the throne of Henry that the Reformation is seen to take its rise. The movement took root in England a full century before he was born, or a Tudor had ascended the throne. Henry will reappear on the stage in his own time; meanwhile we leave the palace and enter the school.

The first of those illustrious men with whom we are now to be concerned is Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s. The young Colet was a student at Oxford, but disgusted with the semi-barbarous tuition which prevailed there, and possessed of a large fortune, he resolved to travel, if haply he might find in foreign universities a more rational system of knowledge, and purer models of study. He visited Italy, where he gave himself ardently in the acquisition of the tongue of ancient Rome, in company with Linacre, Grocyn, and William Lily, his countrymen, who had preceded him thither, drawn by their thirst for the new learning, especially the Greek. The change which the study of the classic writers had begun in Colet was completed by the reading of the Scriptures; and when he returned to England in 1497, the shackles of the schoolmen had been rent from his mind, and he was a discountenancer of the rites, the austerities, and the image-worship of the still dominant Church.[1] To the reading of the Scriptures he added the study of the Fathers, who furnished him with additional proofs and arguments against the prevailing doctrines and customs of the times. He began a course of lectures on the Epistles of St. Paul in his cathedral church; and deeming his own labours all too little to dispel the thick night that brooded over the land, he summoned to his aid laborers whose minds, like his own, had been enlarged by the new learning, and especially by that diviner knowledge, to the fountains of which that learning had given them access. Those who had passed their studious hours together on the banks of the Arno, and under the delicious sky of Florence, became in London fellow-workmen in the attempt to overthrow the monkish system of tuition which had been pursued for ages, and to introduce their countrymen to true learning and sound knowledge. Colet employed William Grocyn to read lectures in St. Paul’s on portions of Holy Scripture; and after Grocyn, he procured other learned men to read divinity lectures in his cathedral.[2]

But the special service of Colet was the founding of St. Paul’s School, which he endowed out of his ample fortune, in order that sound learning might continue to be taught in it by duly qualified instructors. The first master of St. Paul’s School was selected from the choice band of English scholars with whom Colet had formed so endearing a friendship in the capital of Tuscany. William Lily was appointed to preside over the newly-founded seminary, which had the honour of being the first public school in England, out of the universities, in which the Greek language was taught. This eminent scholar had been initiated into the beautiful language of ancient Greece at Rhodes, where he is said to have enjoyed for several years the instruction of one of the illustrious refugees whom the triumph of the Ottoman arms had chased from Constantinople. Cornelius Vitelli, an Italian, was the first who taught Greek in the University of Oxford. From him William Grocyn acquired the elements of that tongue, and, succeeding his master, he was the first Englishman who taught it at Oxford. His contemporary, Thomas Linacre, was not less distinguished as a “Grecian.” Linacre had spent some delightful years in Italy-the friend of Lorenzo de Medici, and the pupil of Politianus and

[1]Knight, Life of Colet, p. 67; Oxford, 1823.

[2]Ibid., p. 61.

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Chalcondyles, at that time the most renowned classical teachers in Europe-and when afterwards he returned to his native land, he became successively physician to Arthur, Prince of Wales, and to Henry VIII. These men were scholars rather than Reformers, but the religious movement owed them much. Having caught on the soft of Virgil and Cicero an enthusiastic love of classic learning, they imbibed therewith that simplicity and freedom, that vigor and independence of thought which characterized the ancients, and they transplanted these great qualities into the soft of England. The teaching of the monks now began to offend the quickened intellect of the English people, and the scandalous lives of the clergy to revolt their moral sense. Thus the way was being paved for greater changes.

Colet, however, was more than the scholar; he attained the stature of a Reformer, though, the time not being ripe for separation from Rome, he lived and died within the pale of the Church. In a celebrated sermon which he preached before Convocation on Conformation and Reformation, he bewailed the unhappy condition of the Church as a flock deserted by its shepherds. The clergy he described as greedy of honors and riches, as having abandoned themselves to sensual delights, as spending their days in hunting and hawking, and their nights in feasting and revelry. Busied they truly were, but it was in the service of man; ambition they lacked not, but it rose no higher than the dignities of earth; their conversation was not in heaven, nor of heavenly things, but of the gossip of the court; and their dignity as God’s ministers, which ought to transcend in brightness that of princes and emperors, was sorely bedimmed by the shadows of earth. And referring to the new doctrines which were beginning to be put forth in many quarters, “We see,” said the dean, “strange and heretical opinions appearing in our days, and I wonder not; but has not St. Bernard told us that there is no heresy more dangerous to the Church than the vicious lives of its priests?” And coming in the close to the remedy, “The way,” said he, “by which the Church may be reformed into a better fashion is not to make new laws-of these there are already enough-but to live new lives. With you, O Fathers and bishops, must begin the reformation so much needed; we, the priests, will follow when we see you going before, and then we need not fear that the whole body of the people will come after. Your holy lives will be as a book in which we shall read the Gospel, and be taught how to practice it; your example will be a sermon, and its sweet eloquence will be more effectual to draw the people into the right path than all the terror of cursings and excommunications.”[3]

The people listened with delight to the Dean of St. Paul’s; but not so the clergy. The times were too early, and the sermon too outspoken. Among Colet’s auditors was the Bishop of London, Fitzjames. He was a man of eighty, of irritable temper, innocent of all theology save what he had learned from Thomas Aquinas, and he clung only the more tenaciously to the traditions of the past the older he grew. His ire being kindled, he went with a complaint against Color to Warham of Canterbury. “What has he said?” asked the archbishop. “Said!” exclaimed the aged and irate bishop, “what has he not said?” He has said that it is forbidden to worship by images; that it is lawful to say the Lord’s Prayer in one’s mother tongue; that the text, ‘Feed my sheep,’ does not impose temporal dues on the laity to the priest; and,” added he, with some hesitation, “he has said that sermons in the pulpit ought not be read.” Warham smiled, for he himself was wont in preaching to read from his manuscript. To these weighty accusations, as Fitzjames doubtless accounted them, the dean had no defense to offer; and as little had the archbishop, an able and liberal-minded man, ecclesiastical censure to inflict. Another indication had been given how the tide was setting; and Dean Colet, feeling his position stronger, labored from that day more zealously than ever to dispel the darkness around him. It was after the delivery of this famous sermon that he resolved to devote his ample fortune to the diffusion of sound learning, knowing that ignorance was the nurse of the numerous superstitions that deformed his day, and the rampart around those monstrous evils he had so unsparingly reprobated.

Erasmus, the famous scholar of Holland, and More, the nearly as famous scholar of England, belong to the galaxy of learned men that constituted the English Renaissance. Both contributed aid to that literary movement which helped to fill, at this early hour, the skies of England with light. The service rendered by Erasmus to the Reformation is worthy of eternal remembrance. He it was who first opened to the learned men of Europe the portals of Divine Revelation, by his edition of the Greek New Testament, accompanied by a translation in Latin. It was published in 1516, and fracas a great epoch in the movement. Erasmus visited England, contracted a warm friendship with Colet, and learned from him to moderate his admiration

[3]Colet’s Sermon to the Convocation-Phoenix, vol. 2., pp. 1-11.

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of the great schoolman, Aquinas He was introduced at court, was caressed by Henry, and permitted to share in the munificence with which that monarch then patronized learned men. Erasmus could not endure the indolence, the greed, the gluttony, the crass ignorance of the monks, and he lashed them mercilessly with his keen wit and his pungent satire. The two great scholars, Erasmus and More, met for the first time at the table of the Lord Mayor of London. A short but brilliant encounter of wits revealed the one to the other. More was the Erasmus of England; the Utopia of the former answers to the Praise of Folly (Encomium Morice) of the latter. Possessing a playful fancy, a vigorous understanding, and a polished sarcasm, More delighted to assail with a delicate but effective raillery the same class of men against whom Erasmus had leveled his keenest shafts. He united with Erasmus in calling for a reformation of that Church of which, as says one, “he lived to be the champion, the inquisitor, and the martyr.”[4] In his Utopia he shows us what sort of world he would fain have given us-a commonwealth in which there should be no place for monks, in which the number of priests should not exceed the number of churches, and in which the right of private judgment should be accorded to every one, and if any should think wrong, he was to be, put right by argument, and not by the rack or the faggot. Of great intellect, but not of equally great character, the two scholars had raised their voices, as we have said, for a reformation of abuses; but when they heard the voice of Luther resounding through Europe, and raising the same cry, and when they saw the reformation they had demanded at last approaching, they drew back in affright. They had failed to take account of the strength of error, and the forces necessary to uproot it; and when they saw altars overturned and thrones shaken-in short, a tempest arise that threatened to shake “not the earth only, but also heaven”-they resembled the magician who shudders at the spirit himself hath conjured up.

Such were the men and the agencies now at work in England. They were not the Reformation, but they were necessary preparatives of that great and much-needed change. The spiritual principles that Wicliffe had taught were still in the soft; but, like flowers in the time of winter, they had hidden themselves, and waited in the darkness the coming of a more mollient time to blossom forth. Letters might exist where they would not be suffered to live. But meanwhile the action of these principles was by no means suspended. Wicliffe’s Bible was being disseminated among the people; the line of his disciples was perpetuated in the poor and despised Lollards: Protestant tracts were frequently arriving in the Thames from Germany: and here and there young priests and scholars were reading public lectures on portions of the Scriptures. In the political sphere, also, preparations were going forward. England had been overturned-the old tree had been cut down to its roots, as it were, in order that fresh and more friendly shoots might spring forth. The barons had fallen in the wars: the Plantagenets had disappeared from the throne: a Tudor was now swaying the scepter; inveterate customs and traditions were vanishing in the clear though chilly dawn of letters; and the plough of Reform, which had stood motionless in the furrow for well-nigh a century, was once more about to go forward.

[4]Blunt, Reformation in England, p. 105; Lond., 1832.

Chapter 2: Cardinal Wolsey and the New Testament of Erasmus

Arthur, Prince of Wales, Dies—Question of Henry’s Marrying his Widow—Sentiments of the Primate—Dispensation of the Pope—Henry’s Coronation and Marriage—Cardinal Wolsey—His Birth—Made King’s Almoner—Made Archbishop of York—Cardinal—Chancellor—Legate-a-Latere—Rules the Kingdom Ecclesiastically and Civilly—His Grandeur—The Priests knew the War against Parliament—Are Worsted—Resume their Persecution of Heretics—Story of Richard Hun—His Murder—Burning of his Bones—Martyrdom of John Brown—Erasmus Driven out of England—Prints his Greek and Latin New Testament—Its Enthusiastic Reception in England—England’s Reformation eminently Biblical—England constituted the Custodian and Dispenser of the Bible

Picture: View of Linacres House: Knightrider Street, London.

Picture: Sir Thomas More.

Henry VIII again appears on the stage. We find him still the idol of the people; his court continues to be the resort of scholars; and the enormous wealth left him by his father enables him still to extend his munificent patronage to learning, and at the same time provide those shows, tournaments, [353] and banquets, which made his court one of the gayest in all Europe. Nothing, at this hour, was less likely than that this prince should separate himself from the communion of the Roman Church, and withdraw his kingdom from obedience to the Pontifical jurisdiction. He had been educated for the priesthood until the death of Prince Arthur, his elder brother; and though this event placed a crown instead of a mitre upon his head, it left him still so much the churchman that he plumed himself upon his theological lore, and was ever ready to do battle for a hierarchy in whose ranks he had looked forward to being enrolled, and at whose altars he had hoped to spend his life. A disciple of Thomas Aquinas, the subtlest intellect of the thirteenth century, and the man who had done more than any other doctor of the Middle Ages to fortify the basis of the Papal supremacy, Henry was not likely to be wanting in reverence for the See of Rome. Indeed, in one well-known instance he had shown abundance of zeal in the Pope’s behalf: we refer to his book against Luther, for which the conclave at Rome voted him the title of “Defender of the Faith.” But the train for the opposition he was to show, not to the doctrine of the Papacy, but to its jurisdiction, was laid nearly twenty years before; and it is instructive to mark that it was laid in an act of submission to that very jurisdiction, against which Henry was fated at a future day to rebel.

Arthur, Prince of Wales, was realized during his father’s lifetime to Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The bride of the young prince, who was a year older than her husband, was the wealthiest heiress in Europe, and her dowry had been a prime consideration with Henry VII in promoting the match. About five months after the marriage, Prince Arthur fell ill and died (2nd April, 1502), at the age of sixteen. When a few months had passed, and it was seen that no issue was to be expected from Arthur’s marriage, Prince Henry was proclaimed heir to the throne, and Catherine was about to return to Spain. But the parsimonious Henry VII, grieved to think that her dowry of 200,000 ducats[1] should have to be sent back with her, to become, it might be, the possession of a scion of some other royal house, started the proposal that Henry should marry his deceased brother’s widow.

To this proposal Ferdinand of Spain gave his consent. Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, opposed it. “It is declared in the law of God,” said the primate, “that if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: they shall be childless.”(Leviticus 20:21.) Fox, Bishop of Winchester, hinted that the difficulty might be got over by a dispensation from the Pope. The warlike Julius II was then reigning; he thought more of battles than of the Mosaic code, said on being applied to, he readily granted the dispensation sought. In December, 1503, a bull was issued, authorizing Catherine’s marriage with the brother of her first husband. This was followed by the betrothal of the parties, but not as yet by their marriage, the Prince of Wales being then only twelve years of age.[2]

The interval gave the old king time for reflection. He began strongly to suspect that the proposed marriage, the Pope’s bull notwithstanding, was contrary to the law of God; and calling Prince Henry, now fourteen years of age, to him, he caused him to sign a protest, duly authenticated, against the consummation of the marriage.[3] And when four years afterwards he lay on his death-bed, he again summoned the prince to his presence, and conjured him not to marry her who had been the wife of his brother.[4] On the 9th of May, 1509, Henry VII was borne to the tomb; and no sooner had the coffin been lowered into the vault, and the staves of the officers of state, who stood around the grave, broken and cast in after it, than the heralds proclaimed, with flourish of trumpets, King Henry VIII. Henry could now do as he liked in the matter of the marriage. Meanwhile the amiable disposition and irreproachable virtue of Catherine had conciliated the nation, which at first had asked, “Can the Pope repeal the laws of God?” and when on the 24th of June Henry was crowned in Westminster, there sat by his side Catherine, as his bride and queen. Henry thus began his reign with an act of submission to the Papal authority; for in accepting his brother’s widow as his wife, he accepted the Pope’s dispensation as valid; and the Pontiff, on his part, rejoiced in what had taken place, as a new pledge of obedience to the Roman See on the part of England and her sovereign, seeing that with the validity of his bull was now clearly bound up the legitimacy of the future princes of the realm. The two must stand or fall together; for if his bull was naught, so too was their title to the crown.

Years passed away without anything remarkable taking place in the domestic life of Henry and Catherine. These years were spent in jousts and costly entertainments; in the society of scholars and the patronage of learning; in a military raid into

[1]Burnet, History of the Reformation in England, vol. 1., p. 35; Lond., 1681.

[2]Burnet, 1. 35, 36.

[3]Collier, Records, 2:1.

[4]Burnet, 1. 36.

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France, chiefly at the instigation of Julius II, who, himself much occupied on the battle-field, delighted to see his brother-sovereigns similarly engaged, well knowing that their rivalries kept them weak, and that their weakness was his strength. One thing only saddened the king and queen: it seemed as if the woe denounced against him who marries his brother’s widow, “he shall be childless,” were taking effect. Henry’s male progeny all died. Catherine bore him three sons and two daughters; but “Henry beheld his sons just show themselves and then sink into the tomb.”[5] Of all the children of Catherine, Lady Mary alone, born in 1515, survived the period of infancy. Doubts touching the lawfulness of his marriage began to spring up in the king’s mind; but before seeing into what these scruples ripened, it is necessary to attend to another personage who now stepped upon the stage, and who was destined to act a great part in the events which were about to engage the attention, not of England only, but of Christendom.

From the lowest ranks there now sprang up a man of vast ambition and equal talent, who speedily rose to the highest posts in the State, and the most splendid dignities of the Church, and who, by his grandeur and munificence, illustrated once more before the eyes of the English people, the glory of

[5]Soames, History of the Reformation of the Church of England, vol. 1, p. 176; Lond., 1826.

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the Church of Rome before it should finally sink and disappear. His name was Thomas Wolsey-by far the most famous of all those Englishmen who have borne the title of Cardinal. A few sentences will enable us to trace the rapid rise of this man to that blaze of power in which, for a season, he shone, only to fall as suddenly and portentously as he had risen. Wolsey (born 1471) was the son of a butcher at Ipswich, and after studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, he passed into the family of the Marquis of Dorset, as tutor.[6] Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Keeper of the Privy Seal, finding himself eclipsed by the Earl of Surrey in the graces of Henry VII, looked about him for one to counterbalance his rival; and deeming that he had found a suitable instrument in Wolsey, drew him from an obscure sphere in the country, and found a place for him at court as almoner to the king. Wolsey ingratiated himself into that monarch’s favor, by executing successfully a secret negotiation at Brussels, with such dispatch that he returned before he had had time, as Henry thought, to set out. His advancement from that moment would have been rapid but for the death of the king, which happened not long afterwards. Under the young Henry, Wolsey played his part not less adroitly. His versatility developed more freely, in the warm air of Henry VIII’s court, than it had done in the cold atmosphere of that of his predecessor. Business or pleasure came alike to Wolsey. He could be as gay as the gayest of the king’s courtiers, and as wise and grave as the most staid of his councilors. He could retail, for the monarch’s amusement, the gossip of the court, and the town, or edify him by quoting the sayings of some mediaeval doctor, and especially his favorite, the angelic Aquinas. Wolsey was no ascetic; in his presence Vice never hung her head, and he never forbade in his sovereign those liaisons in which, unless public report hugely calumniated him, he himself freely indulged. Royal favors fell thick and fast on the clever and most accommodating churchman. The mitres of Tournay, Lincoln, and York were in one year placed on his head. But Wolsey was one of those who think that nothing has been gained unless all has been won. He refused to lower the cross of York to the cross of Canterbury, thus claiming for himself equality with the primate; and when this was denied him, he reached his end by another road. He solicited, through Francis I, the Roman purple, and in this too he succeeded. In November, 1515, an envoy from Rome arrived in England, bringing to the cardinal his “red hat”-that gift which has ever in the end wrought evil to the wearer, as well as to the realm; converting, as it does, its owner into the satrap of a foreign Power.

Wolsey was not yet satisfied: there was something higher still, and he must continue to climb. The pious Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, wearying of contending with the butcher’s son, who had clothed his person in Roman purple, and his mind in more than Roman pride, now resigned the seals as Chancellor of the Kingdom, and the king put them into the hands of Wolsey.[7] He was now near the summit: one more effort and he would reach it: at last it was gained. There came a bull appointing him the Cardinal Legate-a-Latere of “Holy Church.” This placed him a little, and only a little, below the Papal throne itself. To it Wolsey began to lift his eyes, as the only one of earth’s grandeurs now above him; but meanwhile the pursuit of this dazzling prize was delayed, and he gave himself to the consolidation of those manifold powers which he wielded in England. His jurisdiction was immense. All church courts, all

[6]Hume, vol. 1., chap. 27, p. 488; Loud., 1826.

[7]Hume, vol. 1., chap. 28, p. 495.

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bishops and priests, the primate himself, all colleges and monasteries, were under him. All causes in which the Church was interested, however remotely, were adjudicated by him. He decided in all matters of conscience, in wills and testaments, in marriages and divorces, and in those actions which, though they might not be punishable by the law, were censurable by the Church as violations of good morals. From his sentences there was no appeal to the king’s tribunals. The throne and Parliament must submit to have their prerogatives, laws, and jurisdiction circumscribed and regulated by the cardinal, as the representative of God’s Vicar in England. Those causes which were excluded from his jurisdiction as Legate-a-Latere, came under his cognizance as Chancellor of the Kingdom, so that Wolsey really governed both Church and State. He was virtually king, and his own famous phrase, Ego et Rex meus-“I and my king”-was not less in accordance with fact than it was with the idiom of the language in which it was expressed.

Of the grandeurs of his palace, the sumptuousness of his table, the number of his daily guests, and the multitude of his servants, it is needless to speak. The list of his domestics was upwards of 500, and some of the nobles of England did not account it beneath them to be enrolled in the number. When he moved out of doors he wore a dress of crimson velvet and silk; his shoes glittered with jewels; the goodliest priests of the realm marched before him, carrying silver crosses, while his pomp was swelled by a retinue of becoming length. When Wolsey said mass, it was after the manner of the Pope himself; bishops and abbots aided him in the function, and some of the first nobility gave him water and the towel.[8]

But with his pomps, pleasures, and hospitalities he mingled manifold labours. His capacity was great, and seemed to enlarge with the elevation of his rank and the increase of his offices. His two redeeming qualities were the patronage of learning and the administration of justice. His decisions in Chancery were impartial and equitable, and his enormous wealth, gathered from innumerable sources, enabled him to surround himself with scholars, and to found institutions of learning, for which he had his reward in the praises of the former, and the posthumous glory of the latter. Nevertheless he did not succeed in making himself popular. His haughty deportment offended the people, who knew him to be hollow, selfish, and vicious, despite his grand masses and his ostentatious beneficence.

The rise at this hour of such a man, who had gathered into his single hand all the powers of the State, seemed of evil augury for the Reformation. Rome, in all her dominancy, was in him rising up again in England. The priests were emboldened to declare war, first against the scholars by sounding the alarm against Greek, which they stigmatized as a main source of heresy, and next against Parliament by demanding back the immunities of which they had been stripped during preceding reigns. In addition to former losses of prerogative, the priests were threatened with a new encroachment on their privileges. In 1513 a law was passed, ordering ecclesiastics who should commit murder or theft to be tried in the secular courts-bishops, priests, and deacons excepted. It was discovered that though the Pope could dispense with the laws of God, the Parliament could not. The Abbot of Winchelcomb, preaching at St. Paul’s, gave the signal for battle, exclaiming, “‘Touch not mine anointed,’ said the Lord.” Thereafter a clerical deputation, headed by Wolsey, proceeded to the palace to demand that the impious law should be annulled. “Sire,” said the cardinal, “to try a clerk is a violation of God’s laws.” “By God’s will we are King of England,” replied Henry, who saw that to put the clergy above the Parliament was to put them above himself, “and the Kings in England, in times past, had never any superior but God only. Therefore know you well that we will maintain the right of our crown.”

Baffled in their attack on Parliament, the priests vented their fury upon others. There were still many Lollards who, although living in the bosom of the Roman Church, gave the priests much disquiet. One of these was Richard Hun, a tradesman in London, who spent a portion of each day in the study of the Bible. He was summoned before the legate’s court on the charge of refusing to pay a fee imposed by a priest, which he deemed exorbitant. Indignant at being made answerable before a foreign court, Hun lodged an accusation against the priest under the Act Praemunire.[9] “Such boldness must be severely checked,” said the clergy, “otherwise not a citizen but will set the Church at defiance.” Hun was accused of heresy, consigned to the Lollards’ Tower in St. Paul’s, and left there in irons, chained so heavily that his fetters hardly permitted him to drag his steps across the floor. On his trial no such proof of heresy was produced as would suffice for his condemnation, and his persecutors found themselves in a greater dilemma than before, for to set him at liberty would proclaim

[8]Hume, vol. 1., chap. 28, p. 499.

[9]See ante, vol. 1., p. 394.

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their defeat. Three of their fanatical agents undertook to extricate them from their difficulties. Climbing to his cell at midnight (3rd December, 1514), and dragging Hun out of bed, they first strangled him, and then putting his own belt round his neck, they suspended the body by an iron ring in the wall, to make believe that he had hanged himself.[10]

A great horror straightway fell upon two of the perpetrators of the deed, so that they fled, and thus revealed the crime. “The priests have murdered Hun,” was the cry in London; and the fact being amply attested at the inquest, as well as by the confession of the murderers, the priests were harder put to than ever, and had recourse to the following notable device:

- They examined the Bible which Hun had been wont to read, and found it was Wicliffe’s translation. This was enough. Certain articles of indictment were drafted against Hun; a solemn session of Fitzjames, Bishop of London, with certain assessors, was held, and sentence was pronounced, finding Hun guilty and condemning his dead body to be burned as that of a heretic. His corpse was dug up and burned in Smithfield on the 20th of December. “The bones of Richard Hun have been burned,” argued the priests, “therefore he was a heretic; he was a heretic, therefore he committed suicide.” The Parliament, however, not seeing the force of this syllogism, found that Hun had died by the hands of others, and ordained restitution of his goods to be made to his family. The Bishop of London, through Wolsey, had influence enough to prevent the punishment of the murderers.[11]

There was quite a little cloud of sufferers and martyrs in London, from the accession of Henry VIII to 1517, the era of Luther’s appearance. Their knowledge was imperfect, some only had courage to witness unto the death, but we behold in them proofs that the Spirit of God was returning to the world, and that he was opening the eyes of not a few to see in the midst of the great darkness the errors of Rome. The doctrine about which they were generally incriminated was that of transubstantiation. Among other tales of persecution furnished by the times, that of John Brown, of Ashford, has been most touchingly told by the English martyrologist. Brown happened to seat himself beside a priest in the Gravesend barge. “After certain communication, the priest asked him,” says Fox, “‘Dost thou know who I am?

Thou sittest too near me: thou sittest on my clothes.’ ‘No, sir,’ said Brown; ‘I know not what you are.’ ‘I tell thee I am a priest.’ ‘What, sir, are you a parson, or vicar, or a lady’s chaplain?’ ‘No,’ quoth he again; ‘I am a soul-priest, I sing for a soul,’ saith he. ‘Do you so, sir?’ quoth the other; ‘that is well done.’ ‘I pray you sir,’ quoth he, ‘where find you the soul when you go to mass?’ ‘I cannot tell thee,’ said the priest. ‘I pray you, where do you leave it, sir, when the mass is done?’ ‘I cannot tell thee,’ said the priest.’ ‘You can neither tell me where you find it when you go to mass, nor where you leave it when the mass is done: how can you then have the soul?’ said he. ‘Go thy ways,’ said the priest; ‘thou art a heretic, and I will be even with thee.’ So at the landing the priest, taking with him Walter More and William More, two gentlemen, brethren, rode straightway to the Archbishop Warham.”

Three days thereafter, as Brown sat at dinner with some guests, the officers entered, and dragging him from the house, they mounted him upon a horse, and tying his feet under the animals belly, rode away. His wife and family knew not for forty days where he was or what had been done to him. It was the Friday before Whit-Sunday. The servant of the family, having had occasion to go out, hastily returned, and rushed into the house exclaiming, “I have seen him! I have seen him!” Brown had that day been taken out of prison at Canterbury, brought back to Ashford, and placed in the stocks. His poor wife went forth, and sat down by the side of her husband. So tightly was he bound in the stocks, that he could hardly turn his head to speak to his wife, who sat by him bathed in tears. He told her that he had been examined by torture, that his feet had been placed on live coals, and burned to the bones, “to make me,” said he, “deny my Lord, which I will never do; for should I deny my Lord in this world, he would hereafter deny me. I pray thee, therefore,” said he, “good Elizabeth, continue as thou hast begun, and bring up thy children virtuously, and in the fear of God.” On the next day, being Whir-Sunday, he was taken out of the stocks and bound to the stake, where he was burned alive. His wife, his daughter Alice, and his other children, with some friends, gathered round the pile to receive his last words. He stood with invincible courage amid the flames. He sang a hymn of his own composing; and feeling that now the fire had nearly done its work, he breathed out the prayer offered by the great Martyr: “Into thy hands I commend my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O

[10]Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. 4., pp. 183-155. Lond., 1846.

[11]Ibid., p. 188.

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Lord of truth,” and so he ended.[12] Shrieks of anguish rose from his wife and daughter. The spectators, moved with compassion, regarded them with looks of pity; but, turning to the executioners, they cast on them a scowl of anger. “Come,” said Chilton, a brutal ruffian who had presided at the dreadful tragedy, and who rightly interpreted the feeling of the bystanders-“Come, let us cast the children into the fire, lest they, too, one day become heretics.” So saying, he rushed towards Alice and attempted to lay hold upon her; but the maiden started back, and avoided the villain.[13]

Next to the heretics, the priests dreaded the scholars. Their instincts taught them that the new learning boded no good to their system. Of all the learned men now in England the one whom they hated most was Erasmus, and with just reason. He stood confessedly at the head of the scholars, whether in England or on the Continent. He had great influence at court; he wielded a pungent wit, as they had occasion daily to experience

- in short, he must be expelled the kingdom. But Erasmus resolved to take ample compensation from those who had driven him out. He went straight to Basle, and establishing himself at the printing-press of Frobenius, issued his Greek and Latin New Testament. The world now possessed for the first time a printed copy in the original Greek of the New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It was the result of combined labor and scholarship; the Greek was beautifully pure; the Latin had been purged from the barbarisms of the Vulgate, and far excelled it in elegance and clearness. Copies were straightway dispatched to London, Oxford, and Cambridge. It was Erasmus’ gift to England-to Christendom, doubtless, but especially England; and in giving the country this gift he gave it more than if he had added the most magnificent empire to its dominion.

The light of the English Renaissance was now succeeded by the light of the English Reformation. The monks had thought to restore the darkness by driving away the great scholar: his departure was the signal for the rising on the realm of a light which made what had been before it seem but as twilight. The New Testament of Erasmus was hailed with enthusiasm. Everywhere it was sought after and read, by the first scholars in Greek, by the great body of the learned in Latin. The excitement it caused in England was something like that which Luther’s appearance produced in Germany. The monk of Saxony had not yet posted up his Theses, when the Oracles of Truth were published in England. “The Reformation of England,” says a modern historian, who of all others evinces the deepest insight into history- “The Reformation of England, perhaps to a greater extent than that ofthe Continent, was effected by the Word of God.”[14]

To Germany, Luther was sent; Geneva and France had Calvin given to them; but England received a yet greater Reformer-the Bible. Its Reformation was more immediate and direct, no great individuality being interposed between it and the source of Divine knowledge. Luther had given to Germany his Theses; Calvin had given to France the Institutes; but to England was given the Word of God. Within the sea-girt isle, in prospect of the storms that were to devastate the outer world, was placed this Divine Light-the World’s Lamp-surely a blessed augury of what England’s function was to be in days to come. The country into whose hands was now placed the Word of God, was by this gift publicly constituted its custodian. Freely had she received the Scriptures, freely was she to give them to the nations around her. She was first to make them the Instructor of her people; she was next to enshrine them as a perpetual lamp in her Church. Having made them the foundation-stone of her State, she was finally to put them into the hands of all the nations of the earth, that they too might be guided to Truth, Order, and Happiness.

[12]Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. 4., pp. 181, 182.

[13]Ibid., p. 182.

[14]D’Aubigne, Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, vol. 5., p. 199; Edin., 1853.

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Chapter 3: William Tyndale and the English New Testament

Bilney—Reads the New Testament—Is Converted by it—Tyndale—His Conversion—Fryth—All Three Emancipated by the Bible—Foundations of England’s Reformation—Tyndale at Sodbury Hall—Disputations with the Priests—Preaches at Bristol—Resolves to Translate the Scriptures—Goes to London—Applies to Tonstall—Received into Humphrey Monmouth’s House—Begins his Translation of the New Testament—Escapes to Germany—Leo’s Bull against Luther Published in England—Henry’s Book against Luther—Wolsey Intrigues for the Popedom—His Disappointment—Tyndale in Hamburg—William Roye—Begins Printing the English New Testament in Cologne—Finishes in Worms—Sends it across the Sea to England

Picture: Procession of Wolsey to Westminster Hall

Picture: View of the Interior of Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, looking East

Erasmus had laid his New Testament at the feet of England. In so doing he had sent to that country, as he believed, a message of peace; great was his astonishment to find that he had but blown a trumpet of war, and that the roar of battle was louder than ever. The services of the great scholar to the Reformation were finished, and now he retired. But the Bible remained in England, and wherever the Word of God went, there came Protestantism also.

There was at Trinity College, Cambridge, a young student of the canon law, Thomas Bilney by name, of small stature, delicate constitution, and much occupied with the thoughts of eternity. He had striven to attain to the assurance of the life eternal by a constant adherence to the path of virtue, nevertheless his conscience, which was very tender, reproached him with innumerable shortcomings. Vigils, penances, masses-all, in short, which the “Church” prescribes for the relief of burdened souls, he had tried, but with no effect save that he had wasted his body and spent nearly all his means. He heard his friends one day speak of the New Testament of Erasmus, and he made haste to procure a copy, moved rather by the pleasure which he anticipated from the purity of its Greek and the elegance of its Latin, than the hope of deriving any higher good from it. He opened the book. His eyes fell on these words: “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” “The chief of sinners,” said he to himself, musing over what he had read: “Paul the chief of sinners! and yet Christ came to save him! then why not me?” “He had found,” says Fox, “a better teacher” than the doctors of the canon law-“the Holy Spirit of Christ.”[1] That hour he quitted the road of self-righteous performances, by which he now saw he had been travelling, in pain of body and sorrow of soul, and he entered into life by Him who is the door. This was the beginning of the triumphs of the New Testament at Cambridge. How fruitful this one victory was, we shall afterwards see.

We turn to Oxford. There was at this university a student from the valley of the Severn, a descendant of an ancient family, William Tyndale by name. Nowhere had Erasmus so many friends as at Oxford, and nowhere did his New Testament receive a more cordial welcome. Our young student, “of most virtuous disposition, and life unspotted,”[2] was drawn to the study of the book, fascinated by the elegance of its style and the sublimity of its teaching. He soon came to be aware of some marvelous power in it, which he had found in no other book he had ever studied. Others had invigorated his intellect, this regenerated his heart. He had discovered an inestimable treasure, and he would not hide it. This pure youth began to give public lectures on this pure book; but this being more than Oxford could yet bear, the young Tyndale quitted the banks of the Isis, and joined Bilney at Cambridge.

These two were joined by a third, a young man of blameless life and elevated soul. John Fryth, the son of an inn-keeper at Sevenoaks, Kent, was possessed of marvelously quick parts; and with a diligence and a delight in learning equal to his genius, he would have opened for himself, says Fox, “an easy road to honors and dignities, had he not wholly consecrated himself to the service of the Church of Christ.”[3] It was William Tyndale who first sowed “in his heart the seed of the Gospel.”[4] These three young students were perfectly emancipated from the yoke of the Papacy, and their emancipation had been accomplished by the Word of God alone. No infallible Church had interpreted that book to them. They read their

[1]Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. 4., p. 620; Lond., 1846.

[2]Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. 5., p. 115.

[3]Ibid., p. 3.

[4]Ibid., p. 4.

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Bibles with prayer to the Spirit, and as they read the eyes of their understanding were opened, and the wonders of God’s law were revealed to them. They came to see that it was faith that unlocked all the blessings of salvation: that it was faith, and not the priest, that united them to Christ-Christ, whose cross, and not the Church, was the source of forgiveness; whose Spirit, and not the Sacrament, was the author of holiness; and whose righteousness alone, and not the merits of men either dead or living, was the foundation of the sinner’s justification. These views they had not received from Wittemberg; for Luther was only then beginning his career: their knowledge of Divine things they had received from the Bible, and from the Bible alone; and they laid the foundations of the Protestant Church of England, or rather dug down through the rubbish of ages, to the foundations which had been laid of old time by the first missionaries to Britain.

Henry VIII was aspiring to become emperor; Wolsey was beginning to intrigue for the tiara; but it is the path of Tyndale that we are to follow, more glorious than that of the other two, though it seemed not so to the world. Having completed his studies at Cambridge, Tyndale came back to his native Gloucestershire, and became tutor in the family of Sir John Walsh, of Sodbury Hall. At the table of his patron he met daily the clergy of the neighborhood, “abbots, deans, archdeacons, with divers other doctors, and great beneficed [362] men.”[5] In the conversations that ensued the name of Luther, who was then beginning to be heard of, was often mentioned, and from the man the transition was easy to his opinions. The young student from Cambridge did not conceal his sympathy with the German monk, and kept his Greek New Testament ever beside him to support his sentiments, which startled one half of those around the table, and scandalized the other half. The disputants often grew warm. “That is the book that makes heretics,” said the priests, glancing at the unwelcome volume. “The source of all heresies is pride,” would the humble tutor reply to the lordly clergy of the rich valley of the Severn. “The vulgar cannot understand the Word of God,” said the priests; “it is the Church that gave the Bible to men, and it is only her priests that can interpret it.” “Do you know who taught the eagles to find their prey?” asked Tyndale; “that same God teaches his children to find their Father in his Word. Far from having given us the Scriptures, it; is you who have hidden them from us.”

The cry of heresy was raised against the tutor; and the lower clergy, restoring to the ale-house, harangued those whom they found assembled there, violently declaiming against the errors of Tyndale.[6] A secret accusation was laid against him before the bishop’s chancellor, but Tyndale defended himself so admirably that he escaped out of the hands of his enemies. He now began to explain the Scriptures on Sundays to Sir John and his household and tenantry. He next extended his labours to the neighboring villages, scattering with his living voice that precious seed to which as yet the people had no access, in their mother tongue, in a printed form. He extended his preaching tours to Bristol, and its citizens assembled to hear him in St. Austin’s Green.[7] But no sooner had he sowed the seed than the priests hastened to destroy it; and when Tyndale returned he found that his labor had been in vain: the field was ravaged. “Oh,” said he, “if the people of England had the Word of God in their own language this would not happen. Without this it will be impossible to establish the laity in the truth.”

It was now that the sublime idea entered his mind of translating and printing the Scriptures. The prophets spoke in the language of the men whom they addressed; the songs of the temple were uttered in the vernacular of the Hebrew nation; and the epistles of the New Testament were written in the tongue of those to whom they were sent; and why, asked Tyndale, should not the people of England have the Oracles of God in their mother tongue? “If God spare my life,” said he, “I will, before many years have passed, cause the boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than the priests do.”[8]

But it was plain that Tyndale could not accomplish what he now proposed should be his life’s work at Sodbury Hall: the hostility of the priests was too strongly excited to leave him in quiet. Bidding Sir John’s family adieu he repaired (1523) to the metropolis. He had hoped to find admission into the household of Tonstall, Bishop of London, whose learning Erasmus had lauded to the skies, and at whose door, coming as he did on a learned and pious errand, the young scholar persuaded himself he should find an instant and cordial welcome. A friend, to whom he had brought letters of recommendation from Sir John, mentioned his name to Bishop Tonstall; he even obtained an audience of the bishop, but only to have his hopes dashed. “My house is already full,” said the bishop coldly. He turned away: there was no room for him in the Episcopal palace to translate the Scriptures. But if the doors of the bishop’s palace were closed against him, the door of a rich London merchant was now opened for his reception, in the following manner.

Soon after his arrival in the metropolis, Tyndale began to preach in public: among his hearers was one Humphrey Monmouth, who had learned to love the Gospel from listening to Dean Colet. When repulsed by Tonstall, Tyndale told Monmouth of his disappointment. “Come and live with me,” said the wealthy merchant, who was ever ready to show hospitality to poor disciples for the Gospel’s sake. He took up his abode in Monmouth’s house; he lived abstemiously[9] at a table loaded with delicacies; and he studied night and day, being intent on kindling a torch that should illuminate England. Eager to finish, he summoned Fryth to his aid; and the two friends working together, chapter after chapter of the New Testament passed from the Greek into the tongue of England.

The two scholars had been a full half-year engaged in their work, when the storm of persecution broke out afresh in London. Inquisition was made for all who had any of Luther’s works in their possession, the readers of which were threatened with the fire. “If,” said Tyndale, “to possess the

[5]Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. 5., p. 115.

[6]Ibid.

[7]Ibid., p. 117.

[8]Fox, vol. 5., p. 117.

[9]By his good will he would eat but sodden meat, and drink but small single beer.” (Monmouth, on his examination-Fox, vol. 4., p. 618.)

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works of Luther exposes one to a stake, how much greater must be the crime of translating the Scriptures!” His friends urged him to withdraw, as the only chance left him of ever accomplishing the work to which he had devoted himself. Tyndale had no alternative but to adopt with a heavy heart the course his friends recommended. “I understood at the last,” said he, “not only that there was no room in my lord of London’s palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do it in all England.”[10] Stepping on board a vessel in the Thames that was loading for Hamburg, and taking with him his Greek New Testament, he sailed for Germany.

While Tyndale is crossing the sea, we must give attention to other matters which meanwhile had been transpiring in England. The writings of Luther had by this time entered the kingdom and were being widely circulated.

The eloquence of his words, fitly sustained by the heroism of his deeds, roused the attention of the English people, who watched the career of the monk with the deepest interest. His noble stand before the Diet at Worms crowned the interest his first appearance had awakened. As when fresh oil is poured into the dying lamp, the spirit of Lollardism revived. It leaped up in new breadth and splendor. The bishops took the alarm, and held a council to deliberate on the measures to be taken. The bull of Leo[11] against Luther had been sent to England, and it was resolved to publish it. The Cardinal-legate Wolsey, following at no humble distance Pope Leo, also issued a bull of his own against Luther, and both were published in all the cathedral and parish churches of England on the first Sunday of June, 1521. The bull of Wolsey was read during high mass, and that of Leo was nailed up on the church door. The principal result of this proceeding was to advertise the writings of Luther to the people of England. The car of Reformation was advancing; the priests had taken counsel to stop it, but the only effect of their interference was to make it move onwards at an accelerated speed.

At this stage of the controversy an altogether unexpected champion stepped into the arena to do battle with Luther. This was no less a personage than the King of England. The zeal which animated Henry for the Roman traditions, and the fury with which he was transported against the man who was uprooting them, may be judged of from the letter he addressed to Louis of Bavaria. “That this fire,” said he, “which has been kindled by Luther, and fanned by the arts of the devil, should have raged for so long a time, and be still gathering strength, has been the subject to me of greater grief than tongue or pen can express.... For what could have happened more calamitous to Germany than that she should have given birth to a man who has dared to interpret the Divine law, the statutes of the Fathers, and those decrees which have received the consent of so many ages, in a manner totally at variance with the opinion of the learned Fathers of the Church....We earnestly implore and exhort you that you delay not a moment to seize and exterminate this Luther, who is a rebel against Christ; and, unless he repents, deliver himself and his audacious writings to the flames.”[12]

This shows us the fate that would probably have awaited Luther had he lived in England: happily his lot had been cast under a more benignant and gracious sovereign. But Henry, debarred in this case the use of the stake, which would speedily have consumed the heretic, if not the heresy, made haste to unsheathe the controversial sword. He attacked Luther’s Babylonian Captivity in a work entitled A Defense of the Seven Sacraments. The king’s book discovers an intimate acquaintance with mediaeval and scholastic inventions and decrees, but no knowledge whatever of apostolic doctrine. Luther ascribed it to Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York; others have thought that they could trace in it the hand of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. But we see no reason to ascribe it to any one save Henry himself. He was an apt scholar of Thomas Aquinas, and here he discusses those questions only which had come within the range of his previous studies.[13] He dedicated the work to the Pontiff, and sent a splendidly bound copy of it to Le. It was received at Rome in the manner that we should expect the work of a king, written in defense of the Papal chair, to be received by a Pope. Leo eulogized it as the crowning one among the glories of England, and he rewarded the messenger, who had carried it across the Alps, by giving him his toe to kiss; and recompensed Henry for the labor he had incurred in writing it, by bestowing upon him (1521) the title of “Defender of the Faith,” which was confirmed by a bull of Clement VII in 1523.[14] “We can do nothing against the truth, but for it,” wrote an apostle, and his words were destined to be

[10]Writings of Tindal, p. 4; Religious Tract Society, London.

[11]See ante, vol. 1., p. 310.

[12]Gerdesius, Hist. Reform., tom. 4., appen. 22., p. 117.

[13]Ibid., tom. 4., pp. 177, 178.

[14]See bull in Gerdesius, tom. 4., app. 24.

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signally verified in the case of the King of England. Henry set up Tradition and the Supremacy as the main buttresses of the Papal system. The nation was wearying of both; the king’s defense but showed the Protestants where to direct their assault; and as for the applauses from the Vatican, so agreeable to the royal ear, these were speedily drowned in the thunders of Luther; and most people came to see, though all did not acknowledge it, that if Henry the king was above the monk, Henry the author was below him.

Wolsey now turned his face toward the Popedom. If he had succeeded in achieving this, which was the summit of his ambition, he would have attempted to revive the glories of the era of Innocent III: its substantial power he never could have wielded, for the wars of the fifteenth century, by putting the kings above the Popes, had made that impossible. Still, as Pope, Wolsey would have been a more formidable opponent of the Reformation than either Leo or Clement. It was clear that he could reach the dignity to which he aspired only by the help of one or other of the two great Continental sovereigns of his time, Francis I and Charles V He was on the most friendly footing with Francis, whereas he had contracted a strong dislike to Charles, and the emperor was well aware that the cardinal loved him not. Still, on weighing the matter, Wolsey saw that of the two sovereigns Charles was the abler to assist him; so breaking with Francis, and smothering his disgust of the emperor, he solicited his interest to secure the tiara for him when it should become vacant. That monarch, who could dissemble as well as Wolsey, well knowing the influence of the cardinal with Henry VIII, and his power in England, met this request with promises and flatteries. Charles thought he was safe in promising the tiara to one who was some years older than its present possessor, for Leo was still in the prime of life. The immediate result of this friendship, hollow on both sides, was a war between Francis and the emperor. Meanwhile Leo suddenly died, and the sincerity of Charles, sooner than he had thought, was put to the test. With no small chagrin and mortification, which he judged it politic meanwhile to conceal, Wolsey saw Adrian of Utrecht, the emperor’s tutor, placed in the Papal chair. But Adrian was an old man; it was not probable that he would long survive to sway the spiritual scepter of Christendom, and Charles consoled the disappointed cardinal by renewing his promise of support when a new election, which could not be distant, should take place.[15] But we must leave the cardinal, his eyes still fixed on the dazzling prize, and follow the track of one who also was aspiring to a crown, but one more truly glorious than that of Pope or emperor.

We have seen Tyndale set sail for Germany. Arriving at Hamburg, he unpacked the MS. sheets which he had first begun in the valley of the Severn, and resumed on the banks of the Elbe the prosecution of his great design. William Rove, formerly a Franciscan friar at Greenwich, but who had abandoned the cloister, became his assistant. The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark were translated and printed at Hamburg, and in 1524 were sent across to Monmouth in London, as the first-fruits of his great task. The merchant sent the translator a much-needed supply of money, which enabled Tyndale to pay a visit to Luther in Wittemberg, whence he returned, and established himself at the printing-house of Quentel and Byrckman in Cologne. Resuming his great labor, he began to print an edition of 3,000 copies of his English New Testament. Sheet after sheet was passing through the press. Great was Tyndale’s joy. He had taken every precaution, meanwhile, against a seizure, knowing this archiepiscopal seat to be vigorously watched by a numerous and jealous priesthood. The tenth sheet was in the press when Byrckman, hurrying to him, informed him that the Senate had ordered the printing of the work to be stopped. All was discovered then! Tyndale was stunned. Must the labor of years be lost, and the enlightenment of England, which had seemed so near, be frustrated? His resolution was taken on the spot. Going straight to the printing-house, he packed up the printed sheets, and bidding Roye follow, he stepped into a boat on the Rhine and ascended the river. It was Cochlaeus who had come upon the track of the English New Testament, and hardly was Tyndale gone when the officers from the Senate, led by the dean, entered the printing-house to seize the work.[16]

After some days Tyndale arrived at Worms, that little town which Luther’s visit, four years before, had invested with a halo of historic glory. On his way thither he thought less, doubtless, of the picturesque hills that enclose the “milk-white” river, with the ruined castles that crown their summits, and the antique towns that nestle at their feet, than of the precious wares embarked with him. These to his delight he safely conveyed to the printing-house of Peter Schaefer, the grandson of Fust, one of the inventors of the art. He

[15]Burnet, Hist. of Reform., vol. 1., p. 4.; Lond., 1681.

[16]Anderson, Annals of the English Bible, vol. 1., p. 49 et seq. Cochlaeus, p. 126. Fox, vol. 5., p. 119.

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instantly resumed the printing, but to mislead the spies, who, he thought it probable, would follow him hither, he changed the form of the work from the quarto to the octavo, which was an advantage in the end, as it greatly facilitated the circulation.[17]

The printing of the two editions was completed in the end of 1525, and soon thereafter 1,500 copies were dispatched to England. “Give diligence”

- so ran the solemn charge that accompanied them, to the nation to which the waves were wafting the precious pages-“unto the words of eternal life, by the which, if we repent and believe them, we are born anew, created afresh, and enjoy the fruits of the blood of Christ.” Tyndale had done his great work. While Wolsey, seated in the splendid halls of his palace at Westminster, had been intriguing for the tiara, that he might conserve the darkness that covered England, Tyndale, in obscure lodgings in the German and Flemish towns, had been toiling night and day, in cold and hunger, to kindle a torch that might illuminate it.

[17]In the Museum of the Baptist College at Bristol is a copy of the octavo edition of Tyndale’s New Testament. (Ann. of Eng. Bible, 1:70.)

Chapter 4: Tyndale’s New Testament Arrives in England

Bilney’s Labours at Cambridge—Hugh Latimer—His Education—Monkish Asceticism—Bilney’s Device—Latimer’s Conversion—Power of his Preaching—Wolsey’s College—The Bishops try to Arrest the Evangelization—Prior Buckingham—Bishop of Ely and Latimer—Dr. Barnes and the Augustine Convent—Workers at Cambridge—Excitement at Cambridge and Oxford—Desire for the Word of God—Tyndale’s New Testament Arrives in London—Distributed by Garret in the City—in Oxford—over the Kingdom—Its Reception by the English People

Picture: Facsimile of St. Matthew Gospel 13:1-15, from Tyndale’s Testament (Octavo Edition).

Picture: Henry VIII.

While the English New Testament was approaching the shores of Britain, preparations, all unsuspected by men, were being made for its reception. The sower never goes forth till first the plough has opened the furrow. Bilney, as we have already said, was the first convert whom the Greek New Testament of Erasmus had drawn away from the Pope to sit at the feet of Christ. When Tyndale was compelled to seek a foreign shore, Bilney remained behind in England. His face was pale, for his constitution was sickly, and his fasts were frequent; but his eye sparkled, and his conversation was full of life, indicating, as Fox tells us, the vehement desire that burned within him to draw others to the Gospel. Soon we find him surrounded by a little company of converts from the students and Fellows of Cambridge. Among these was George Stafford, professor of divinity, whose pure life and deep learning made his conversion as great a loss to the supporters of the old religion as it was a strength to the disciples of the Protestant faith. But the man of all this little band destined to be hereafter the most conspicuous in the ranks of the Reformation was Hugh Latimer.

Latimer was the son of a yeoman, and was born at Thurcaston, in Leicestershire, about the year 1472. He entered Cambridge the same year (1505) that Luther entered the Augustine Convent; and he became a Fellow of Clare Hall in the year (1509) that Calvin was born. Of a serious turn of mind from his boyhood, he gave himself ardently to the study of the schoolmen, and he so drank in their spirit, that when he took orders he was noted for his gloomy asceticism. The outbreak of what he deemed heresy at Cambridge gave him intolerable pain; he railed spitefully against Stafford, who was giving lectures on the Scriptures, and he could hardly refrain from using violence to compel his companions to desist from reading the Greek New Testament. The clergy were delighted to see such zeal for the Church, and they rewarded it by appointing him cross-bearer to the university.[1] The young priest strode on before the doctors, bearing aloft the sacred symbol, with an air that showed how proud he was of his office. He signalized the taking of his degree as Bachelor of Divinity, by delivering a violent Latin discourse against Philip Melancthon and his doctrines.

But there was one who had once been as great a zealot as himself, who was watching his career with deep anxiety, not unmingled with hope, and was even then searching in his quiver for the arrow that should bring down this strong man. This was Bilney. After repeated failures he found

[1]Fox, vol. 4., p. 620.

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at last the shaft that, piercing Latimer’s armor, made its way to his heart. “For the love of God,” said Bilney to him one day, “be pleased to hear my confession.”[2] It was a recantation of his Lutheranism, doubtless thought Latimer, that was to be poured into his ear. Bilney dropped on his knees before Latimer, and beginning his confession, he unfolded his former anguish, his long but fruitless efforts for relief, his peace at last, not in the works prescribed by the Church, but in the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; in short, he detailed the whole history of his conversion. As he spoke, Latimer felt the darkness within breaking up. He saw a new world rising around him-he felt the hardness of his heart passing away-there came a sense of sin, and with it a feeling of horror, and anon a burst of tears; for now the despair was gone, the flee forgiveness of the Gospel had been suddenly revealed to him. Before rising up he had confessed, and was absolved by One who said to him, “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee.” So has Latimer himself told us in his sermons. His conversion was instantaneous.

That ardour of temperament and energy of zeal, which Latimer had aforetime devoted to the mass, he now transferred to the Gospel. The black garment of asceticism he put off at once, and clothed himself with the bright robe of evangelical joy. He grasped the great idea of the Gospel’s absolute freeness even better than Bilney, or indeed than any convert that the Protestantism of the sixteenth century had yet made in England; and he preached with a breadth and an eloquence which had never before been heard in an English pulpit. He was now a true cross-bearer, and the effects that followed gave no feeble presage of the glorious light with which the preaching of the Cross was one day to fill the realm.

While the day was opening on Cambridge, its sister Oxford was still sitting in the night, but now the Protestant doctrines began to be heard in those

[2]Latimer’s Sermons.

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halls around which there still lingered, like a halo, the memories of Wicliffe. Wolsey unwittingly found entrance here for the light. Intending to rear a monument which should perpetuate his name to after-ages, the cardinal projected a new college at this university, and began to build in a style of most unexampled magnificence. The work was so costly that the funds soon fell short. Wolsey obtained a supply by the dissolution of the monastery of St. Fridewide, which, having been surrendered [368] to the Crown, was bestowed by Henry on the cardinal. A Papal bull was needed, and procured, to sanction the transfer. Wolsey, protected by this precedent, as he thought, proceeded to confiscate a few smaller monasteries; but a clamor arose against him as assailing the Church; he was compelled to stop, and it was said of him that he began to build a college and ended by building a kitchen. But the more vital part of the college went forward: six public lectureships were established-one of theology, one of civil law, one of medicine, one of philosophy, one of mathematics, and one of the Greek language. Soon after Wolsey added to these a chair of humanity and rhetoric.[3] He sought all through Europe for learned men to fill its chairs, and one of the, first to be invited was John Clark, a Cambridge Master of Arts, learned, conscientious, and enlightened by the Word of God; and no sooner had he taken his place at that famous school than he began to expound the Scriptures and make converts. Are both universities to become fountains of heresy? asked the clergy in alarm. The bishops sent down a commission to Cambridge to make an investigation, and apprehend such as might appear to be the leaders of this movement. The court sat down, and the result might have been what indeed took place later, the planting of a few stakes, had not an order suddenly arrived from Wolsey to stop proceedings. The Papal chair had again become vacant, and Wolsey was of opinion, perhaps, that to light martyr-fires at that moment in England would not tend to further his election: as a consequence, the disciples had a breathing-space. This tranquil period was diligently improved. Bilney visited the poor at their own homes, Stafford redoubled his zeal in teaching, and Latimer waxed every day more bold and eloquent in the pulpit. Knowing on what task Tyndale was at this time engaged, Latimer took care to insist with special emphasis on the duty of reading the Word of God in one’s mother tongue, if one would avoid the snares of the false teacher.

Larger congregations gathered round Latimer’s pulpit every day. The audience was not an unmixed one; all in it did not listen with the same feelings. The majority hung upon the lips of the preacher, and drank in his words, as men athirst do the cup of cold water; but here and there dark faces, and eyes burning with anger, showed that all did not relish the doctrine. The dullest among the priesthood could see that the Gospel of a free forgiveness could establish itself not otherwise than upon the ruins of their system, and felt the necessity of taking some remedial steps before the evil should be consummated. For this they chose one of themselves, Prior Buckingham, a man of slender learning, but of adventurous courage. Latimer, passing over Popes and Councils, had made his appeal to the Word of God; the prior was charged, therefore, to show the people the danger of reading that book. Buckingham knew hardly anything of the Bible, but setting to work he found, after some search, a passage which he thought had a very decidedly dangerous tendency. Confident of success he mounted the pulpit, and opening the New Testament he read out, with much solemnity, “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.” This, said he, is what the Bible bids us do. Alas! if we follow it, England in a few years will be a “nation full of blind beggars.” Latimer was one of those who can answer a fool according to his folly, and he announced that next Sunday he would reply to the Grey Friar. The church was crowded, and in the midst of the audience, planted right before the pulpit, in the frock of St. Francis, sat Prior Buckingham. His fancied triumph could yet be read on his brow, for his pride was as great as his ignorance.

Latimer began; he took up one by one the arguments of the prior, and not deeming them worthy of grave refutation, he exposed their absurdity, and castigated their author in a fine vein of irony and ridicule. Only children, he said, fail to distinguish between the popular forms of speech and their deeper meanings-between the image and the thing which the image represents. “For instance,” he continued, fixing his eye on Buckingham, “if we see a fox painted preaching in a friar’s hood, nobody imagines that a fox is meant, but that craft and hypocrisy are described, which are so often found disguised in that garb.”[4] The blush of shame had replaced the pride on Buckingham’s brow, and rising up, he hastily quitted the church, and sought his convent, there to hide his confusion.

When the prior retired in discomfiture, a greater functionary came forward to continue the battle. The Bishop of Ely, as Ordinary of Cambridge, forbade Latimer to preach either in the university or in the diocese. The work must be stopped, and this could be done only by silencing its preacher. But if the bishop closed one door, the providence of God opened another. Robert Barnes, an Englishman, had just returned from Louvain, with a great reputation for learning, and was assembling daily

[3]Fiddes, Life of Wolsey, p. 209 et seq. Burnet, Hist. of Reform., vol. 1., p. 22.

[4]Gilpin, Life of Latimer, p. 10.

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crowds around him by his lectures on the great writers of antiquity, in the Augustine Convent, of which he had been appointed prior. From the classics he passed to the New Testament, carrying with him his audience. In instructing his hearers he instructed himself also in the Divine mysteries of the Pauline Epistles. About the time that the eloquent voice of Latimer was silenced by the Bishop of Ely, Barnes had come to a fuller knowledge of the Gospel; and, tenderly loving its great preacher, he said to Latimer one day, “The bishop has forbidden you to preach, but my monastery is not under his jurisdiction; come and preach in my pulpit.” The brief period of Latimer’s enforced silence had but quickened the public interest in the Gospel. He entered the pulpit of the Augustine Convent; the crowds that gathered round him were greater than ever, and the preacher, refreshed in soul by the growing interest that was taken in Divine things by doctors, students, and townspeople, preached with even greater warmth and power. The kingdom of the Gospel was being established in the hearts of men, and a constellation of lights had risen in the sky of Cambridge-Bilney, the man of prayer; Barnes, the scholar; Stafford, whose speech dropped as the dew; and Latimer, who thundered in the pulpit, addressing the doctors in Latin, and the common people in their own mother tongue

- true yokefellows all of them; their gifts and modes of acting, which were wonderfully varied, yet most happily harmonized, were put forth in one blessed work, on which God the Spirit was setting his seal, in the converts which, by their labours, were being daily added to the Gospel. This was not as yet the day, but it was the morning-a sweet and gracious morning, which was long remembered, and often afterwards spoken about in terms which have found their record in the works of one of the converts of those times -

“When Master Stafford read, And Master Latimer preached, Then was Cambridge blessed.”[5]

Similar scenes, though not on a scale quite so marked, were at this hour taking place in Oxford. Almost all the scholars whom Wolsey had brought to fill his new chairs evinced a favor for the new opinions, or openly ranged themselves on their side. Wolsey, in selecting the most learned, had unwittingly selected those most friendly to Reform. Besides Clark, whom we have already mentioned, and the new men, there was John Fryth, the modest but stable-minded Christian, who had been Tyndale’s associate in preparing an instrumentality which was destined soon and powerfully to dispel the darkness that still rested above England, and which was only feebly relieved by the partial illumination that was breaking out at the two university seats of Cambridge and Oxford.

A desire had now been awakened in the nation at large for the Word of God, and that desire could be gratified not otherwise than by having the Scriptures in its own tongue. The learned men of England had been these nine years in possession of Erasmus’ Greek and Latin New Testament, and in it they had access to the fountain-heads of Divine knowledge, but the common people must receive the Gospel at second hand, through preachers like Latimer. This was a method of communication slow and unsatisfactory; something more direct, full, and rapid could alone satisfy the popular desire. That wish was about to be gratified. The fullness of the time for the Bible being given to England in her own tongue, and through England to the world in all the tongues of earth, had now come. He who brings forth the sun from the chambers of the sky at his appointed hour, now gave commandment that this greater light should come forth from the darkness in which it had been so long hidden. William Tyndale, the man chosen of God for this labor, had, as we have seen, finished his task. The precious treasure he had put on board ship, and the waves of the North Sea were at this hour bearing it to the shores of England.

Tyndale had entrusted the copies of his New Testament, not to one, but to several merchants. Carrying it on board, and hiding it among their merchandise, they set sail with the precious volume from Antwerp. As they ascended the Thames they began to be uneasy touching their venture. Cochlaeus had sent information that the Bible translated by Tyndale was about to be sent into England, and had advised that the ports should be watched, and all vessels coming from Germany examined; and the merchants were likely to find, on stepping ashore, the king’s guards waiting to seize their books, and to commit themselves to prison. Their fears were disappointed. They were allowed to unload their vessels without molestation. The men whom the five pious merchants had imagined standing over the Word of God, ready to destroy it the moment it was landed on English soil, had been dispersed. The king was at Eltham keeping his Christmas; Tonstall had gone to Spain; Cardinal Wolsey had some pressing political matters on hand; and so the portentous arrival of which they had been advertised was overlooked. The merchants conveyed the precious treasure they had

[5]Becon’s Works, vol. 2., p. 425.

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carried across the sea to their establishments in Thames Street. The Word of God in the mother tongue of the people was at last in England.

But the books must be put into circulation. The merchants knew a pious curate, timid in things of this world, bold in matters of the faith, who they thought might be willing to undertake the dangerous work. The person in question was Thomas Garret, of All Hallows, Honey Lane. Garret had the books conveyed to his own house, and hid them there till he should be able to arrange for their distribution. Having meanwhile read them, and felt how full of light were these holy books, he but the more ardently longed to disseminate them. He began to circulate them in London, by selling copies to his friends. He next started off for Oxford, carrying with him a large supply. Students, doctors, monks, townspeople began to purchase and read.[6] The English New Testament soon found its way to Cambridge; and from the two universities it was in no long time diffused over the whole kingdom. This was in the end of 1525, and the beginning of 1526. The day had broken in England with the Greek and Latin New Testament of Erasmus; now it was approaching noontide splendor with Tyndale’s English New Testament.

We in this age find it impossible to realize the transition that was now accomplished by the people of England. To them the publication of the Word of God in their own tongue was the lifting up of a veil from a world of which before they had heard tell, but which now they saw. The wonder and ravishment with which they gazed for the first time on objects so pure, so beautiful, and so transcendently majestic, and the delight with which they were filled, we cannot at all conceive. There were narratives and doctrines; there were sermons and epistles; there were incidents and prayers; there were miracles and apocalyptic visions; and in the center of all these glories, a majestic

Personage, so human and yet so Divine; not the terrible Judge which Rome had painted him; but the Brother: very accessible to men, “receiving sinners and eating with them.” And what a burden was taken from the conscience by the announcement that the forgiveness of the Cross was altogether free! How different was the Gospel of the New Testament from the Gospel of Rome! In the latter all was mystery, in the former all was plain; the one addressed men only in the language of the schools, the other spoke to them in the terms of every day. In the one there was a work to be done, painful, laborious; and he that came short, though but in one iota, exposed himself to all the curses of the law; in the other there was simply a gift to be received, for the work had been done for the poor sinner by Another, and he found himself at the open gates of Paradise. It needed no one but his own heart, now unburdened of a mighty load, and filled with a joy never tasted before, to tell the man that this was not the Gospel of the priest, but the Gospel of God; and that it had come, not from Rome, but from Heaven.

Another advantage resulting from what Tyndale had done was that the Scriptures had been brought greatly more within reach of all classes than they ever were before. Wicliffe’s Bible existed only in manuscript, and its cost was so great that only noblemen or wealthy persons could buy it. Tyndale’s New Testament was not much more than a twentieth part the cost of Wicliffe’s version. A hundred years before, the price of Wicliffe’s New Testament was nearly three pounds sterling; but now the printed copies of Tyndale’s were sold for three shillings and sixpence. If we compare these prices with the value of money and the wages of labor at the two eras, we shall find that the cost of the one was nearly forty times greater than that of the other; in other words, the wages of a whole year would have done little more than buy a New Testament of Wicliffe’s, whereas the wages of a fortnight would suffice for the laborer to possess himself of a copy of Tyndale’s.

[6]Fox, vol. 5., p. 428. Strype, Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, p. 81; Lond., 1694.

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Chapter 5: The Bible and the Cellar at Oxford-Anne Boleyn

Entrance of the Scriptures—Garret carries them to Oxford—Pursuit of Garret—His Apprehension—Imprisonments at Oxford—The Cellar—Clark, Fryth, etc., do Penance—Their Sufferings—Death of Clark-Other Three Die—The Rest Released—Cambridge—Dr. Barnes Apprehended—A Penitential Procession in London—Purchase and Burning of Tyndale’s Testaments by the Bishop of London—New Edition—The Divorce Stirred—Anne Boleyn—Her Beauty and Virtues—Knight Sent to Rome on the Divorce—A Captive Pope—Two Kings at his Feet

Picture: View of Latimer Supposed Birthplace in Thurcaston.

Picture: View of Thurcaston Church

When God is to begin a work of reformation in the world, he first sends to men the Word of Life. The winds of passion-the intrigues of statesmen, the ambitions of monarchs, the wars of nations-next begin to blow to clear the path of the movement. So was it in England. The Bible had taken its place at the center of the field; and now other parties-Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry within the country; the Pope, the Emperor, and the King of France outside of it-hastened to act their important though subordinate parts in that grand transformation which the Bible was to work on England. It is on this troubled stage that we are about to set foot; but first let us follow a little farther the immediate fortunes of the newly translated Scriptures, and the efforts made to introduce them into England.

The cardinal and the Bishop of London soon learned that the English New Testament had entered London, and that the Curate of All Hallows had received the copies, and had hidden them in his house. Search was made through all the city for Garret. He could not be found, and they were now told that he had gone to Oxford “to make sale of his heretical books.”[1] They immediately dispatched officers to search for him in Oxford, and “burn all and every his aforesaid books, and him too if they could find him.”[2] On the Tuesday before Shrove-tide, Garret was warned that the avengers of heresy were on his track, and that if he remained in Oxford he was sure to fall into the hands of the cardinal, and be sent to the Tower. Changing his name, he set out for Dorsetshire, but on the road his conscience smote him; he stopped, again he went forward, again he stopped, and finally he returned to Oxford, which he reached late at night. Weary with his wanderings, he threw himself upon his bed, where, soon after midnight, he was apprehended by Wolsey’s agents, and given into the safe keeping of Dr. Cottisford, commissary of the University. A second attempt at flight was followed by arrest and imprisonment. Oxford was lost, the priests felt, unless the most summary measures were instantly adopted. All the friends of the Gospel at that university were apprehended, and thrown into prison. About a score of doctors and students were arrested, besides monks and canons, so widely had the truth spread. Of the number were Clark, one of the first to receive the truth; Dalabar, a disciple of Clark; John Fryth, and eight others of Wolsey’s College. Corpus Christi, Magdalen, and St. Mary’s Colleges also furnished their contribution to those now in bonds for the Gospel’s sake. The fact that this outbreak of heresy, as the cardinal accounted it, had occurred mainly at his own college, made him only the more resolute on the adoption of measures to stop it. In patronizing literature he had been promoting heresy, and the college which he had hoped would be the glory of Oxford, and a bulwark around the orthodoxy of England, had become the opprobrium of the one and a menace to the other.

The cardinal had now to provide a dungeon for the men whom he had sought for with so much pains, through England and the Continent, to place in his new chairs. Their prison was a damp, dark cellar below the buildings of the college, smelling rankly of the putrid articles which were sometimes stored up in it.[3] Here these young doctors and scholars were left, breathing the fetid air, and enduring great misery. On their examination, two only were dismissed without punishment: the rest were condemned to do public penance for their erroneous opinions. A great fire was kindled in the market-place: the prisoners, than whom, of all the youth at Oxford, none had a finer genius, or were more accomplished in letters, were marshaled in procession, and with fagot on shoulder they marched through the streets to where the bonfire blazed, and finished their penitential performance

[1]Fox; vol. 5.

[2]Ibid.

[3]A deep cave under the ground of the same college, where their salt fish was laid, so that through the filthy stench thereof they were all infected.” (Fox, vol. 5.)

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by throwing their heretical books into it.[4] After this, they were again sent back to their foul dungeon.

Prayers and animated conversations beguiled the first weeks of their doleful imprisonment. But by-and-by the chilly damp and the corrupted air did their terrible work upon them. Their strength ebbed away, their joints ached, their eyes grew dim, their features were haggard, their limbs shook and trembled, and scarcely were they able to crawl across the floor of their noisome prison. They hardly recognized one another as, groping their way in the partial darkness and solitariness, they encountered each other. One day, Clark lay stretched on the damp floor: his strength had utterly failed, and he was about to be released by the hand of Death. He craved to have the Communion given him before he should breathe his last. The request could not be granted. Heaving a sigh of resignation, he quoted the words of the ancient Father, “Believe, and thou hast eaten.”[5]

He received by faith the “Bread of Life,” and having eaten his last meal he died. Other three of these confessors were rapidly sinking: Death had already set his mark on their ghastly features. These were Sumner, Bayley, and Goodman. The cardinal was earnestly entreated to release them before death should put it out of his power to show them pity. Wolsey yielded to this appeal; but he had let them out only to die. The rest remained in the dungeon.

The death of these four was the means of opening the doors of the prison to the others. Even the cardinal, in the midst of his splendors, and occupied though he was at that moment with the affairs of England, and other kingdoms besides, was touched by the catastrophe that had taken place in the dungeons of his college, and sent an order for the release of the survivors. Six months had they sustained life in this dreadful place, the fever in the blood, and the poison in the air, consuming their strength day by day; and when their friends received them at the door of their living tomb, they seemed so many specters. They lived to serve the cause into which they had received this early

[4]Fox, vol. 5.

[5]Crede et manducasti.” (Fox. vol. 5.)

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baptism. Some of them shone in the schools, others in the pulpit; and others, as Fryth and Ferrar, subsequently Bishop of St. David’s, consummated at the stake, long years after, the martyrdom which they had begun in the dungeon at Oxford.

The University of Cambridge was the first to receive the light, but its sister of Oxford seemed to outstrip it by being the first to be glorified by martyrdom. Cambridge, however, was now called to drink of the same cup. On the very same day (February 5th, 1526) on which the investigation had been set on foot at Oxford, Wolsey’s chaplain, accompanied by a sergeant-at-arms, arrived at Cambridge to open there a similar inquisition. The first act of Wolsey’s agent was to arrest Barnes, the distinguished scholar, who, as we have seen, had given the use of his pulpit in the Augustine Convent to Latimer. He next began a search in the rooms of Bilney, Latimer, and Stafford, for New Testaments, which he had learned from spies were hidden in their lodgings. All the Testaments had been previously removed, and the search resulted in the discovery of not a single copy. Without proof of heresy the chaplain could arrest no heretics, and he returned to London with his one prisoner. An indiscreet sermon which Barnes had preached against the cardinal’s “jeweled shoes, poleaxes, gilt pillars, golden cushions, silver crosses, and red gloves,” or, as the cardinal himself phrased it, “bloody gloves,” was the ground of his apprehension. When brought before Wolsey he justified himself. “You must be burned,” said the cardinal, and ordered him into confinement. Before the tribunal of the bishops he repeated next day his defense of his articles, and was sentenced to be burned alive. His worldly friends came round him. “If you die,” said they, “truth will die with you; if you save your life, you will cause truth to triumph when better days come round.” They thrust a pen into his hand: “Haste, save yourself!” they reiterated. “Burned alive”-the terrible words ringing in his ears, freezing his blood, and bewildering his brain, he put forth his hand, and signed his recantation. He fell now that he might stand afterwards.

Meanwhile a great discovery had been made at London. The five merchants who had carried across from Germany the English New Testaments of Tyndale, had been tracked, apprehended, and [374] were to do public penance at St. Paul’s Cathedral on the morrow. It was resolved to consummate Barnes’ disgrace by making him take his place in the penitential procession. On a lofty throne, at the northern gate of St. Paul’s, sat the cardinal, clothed all in red, a goodly array of bishops, abbots, and priests gathered around him. The six penitents slowly passed before him, each bearing a faggot, which, after encompassing the fire three times, they cast into the flames, together with some heretical books. This solemn act of public humiliation being ended, the penitents returned to their prison, and Wolsey, descending from his throne and mounting his mule, rode off under a canopy of state to his palace at Westminster.

It was but a small matter that the disciple was burning his fagot, or rotting in a cellar, when the Word was travelling through all the kingdom. Night and day, whether the persecutor waked or slept, the messenger of the Heavenly King pursued his journey, carrying the “good tidings” to the remotest nooks of England. Depots of the Scriptures were established even in some convents. The chagrin and irritation of the bishops were extreme. An archiepiscopal mandate was issued in the end of 1526 against the Bible, or any book containing so much as one quotation[6] from it. But mandate, inquisitors, all were fruitless; as passes the cloud through the sky, depositing its blessed drops on the earth below, and clothing hill and valley with verdure, so passed the Bible over England, diffusing light, and kindling a secret joy in men’s hearts. At last Bishop Tonstall bethought him of the following expedient for entirely suppressing the book. He knew a merchant, Packington by name, who traded with Antwerp, and who he thought might be useful to him in this matter. The bishop being in Antwerp sent for Packington, and asked him to bring to him all the copies of Tyndale’s New Testament that he could find. Packington undertook to do so, provided the bishop should pay the price of them. This the bishop cheerfully agreed to do. Soon thereafter Packington had an interview with Tyndale, and told him that he had found a merchant for his New Testaments. “Who is he?” asked Tyndale. “The Bishop of London,” replied the merchant. “If the bishop wants the New Testament,” said Tyndale, “it is to burn it.” “Doubtless,” replied Packington; “but the money will enable you to print others, and moreover, the bishop will have it.” The price was paid to Tyndale, the New Testaments were sent across to London, and soon after their’ arrival were publicly burned at St. Paul’s Cross. Tyndale immediately set to work to prepare a new and more correct edition, and, says the chronicler,[7] “they came thick and threefold over into England.” The bishop, amazed, sent for Packington to inquire how it came to pass that the book which he had bought up and suppressed should be more widely circulated than ever. Packington replied that though the copies had been destroyed the types remained, and advised Tonstall to buy them also. The bishop smiled, and beginning to see how the matter stood, dismissed the merchant, without giving him more money to be expended in the production of more New Testaments.

It was not Tyndale’s edition only that was crossing the sea. A Dutch house, knowing the desire for the Bible which the public destruction of it in London had awakened, printed an edition of 5,000 of Tyndale’s translation, and sent them for distribution in England. These were soon all sold, and were followed by two other editions, which found an equally ready market.[8] Then came the new and more correct edition of Tyndale, which the purchase of the first edition by Tonstall had enabled him to prepare. This edition was issued in a more portable form. The clergy were seized with a feeling of dismay. A deluge of what they termed heresy had broken in upon the land! “It was enough to enter London,” said they, “for one to become a heretic.” They speedily found that in endeavoring to prevent the circulation of the Bibles they were attempting a work beyond their strength.

The foundations of the Reformed Church of England had been laid in the diffusion of the Scriptures, but the ground had to be cleared of those mighty encumbrances which obstructed the rising of the edifice, and this part of the work was done by the passions of the men who now again present themselves on the stage. Twice had Charles V promised the tiara to Wolsey, and twice had he broken his promise by giving it to another. A man so proud, and also so powerful as the cardinal, was not likely to pardon the affront: in fact his settled purpose was to avenge himself on the emperor, although it should be by convulsing all Europe. The cardinal knew that doubts had begun to trouble the king’s conscience touching the lawfulness of his union with Catherine, that her person had become disagreeable to him, and that while he intensely longed for an heir to his throne, issue was hopeless in the case of his present queen. Wolsey saw

[6]Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, p. 81. Wilkins, Concilia, vol. 3., p. 706. Fox, vol. 4., pp. 666, 667.

[7]Fox, vol. 4.

[8]Soames, vol. 1., p. 510.

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in these facts the means of separating England from Spain, and of humiliating the emperor: hs own fall and the fall of the Popedom in England he did not foresee. The cardinal broke his purpose, though guardedly, to Longland, the king’s confessor.[9] It was agreed that in a matter of such consequence and delicacy the cardinal himself should take the initiative. He went first of all alone to the king, and pointed out to him that the salvation of his soul, and the succession to his crown, were in peril in this matter. Three days after he appeared again in the royal presence, accompanied by Longland. “Most mighty prince,” said the confessor, “you cannot, like Herod, have your brother’s wife.[10] Submit the matter to proper judges.” The king was content. Henry set to studying Thomas Aquinas on the point, and found that his favorite doctor had decided against such marriages; he next asked the judgment of his bishops; and these, having deliberated on the question, were unanimously, with the exception of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, of opinion that the king’s marriage was of doubtful validity.[11] At this point a French bishop appears upon the scene. Granmont, Bishop of Tarbes, had been dispatched to the English court (February, 1527), by Francis I., on the subject of the marriage of the Duke of Orleans with the Princess Mary, the sole surviving child of Henry VIII. The bishop, on the part of his master, raised before the English Council the question of the legitimacy of Mary, on the ground that she was the issue of a marriage forbidden jure divino. This, in connection with the fact that the Emperor Charles V. had previously objected to an alliance with the Princess Mary on the same ground, greatly increased the scruples of the king. The two most powerful monarchs in Europe had, on the matter, accused him of living in incest. It is probable that he felt real trouble of conscience. Another influence now conspired with, his scruples, and powerfully inclined him to seek a divorce from Queen Catherine.

Anne Boleyn, so renowned for the beauty of her person, the grace of her manners, and the many endowments of her intellect, was about this time appointed one of the maids of honour to Queen Catherine. This young lady was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a gentleman of good family and estate, who, having occasion to visit France, took with him his daughter, and placed her at the French court, where she acquired all those accomplishments which add such luster to female beauty. Her last years in France were passed in the elegant, intellectual, and virtuous court of Marguerite of Valois, the sister of Francis I. Attached to the person of his queen, Henry VIII had many opportunities of seeing Anne Boleyn. He was not insensible to her charms of person, and not less was he pleased with the strength of her understanding, the sweetness of her temper, and the sprightliness of her conversation. That he then entertained the idea of making her his queen we are not prepared to affirm. Meanwhile a strong attachment sprang up between Anne and the young Lord Percy, the heir of the House of Northumberland. Wolsey divined their secret, and set himself to frustrate their hopes. Anne Boleyn received an order to quit the court, and Percy was, soon thereafter, married to a daughter of the House of Talbot. Anne again retired to France, from whence, after a short residence, she returned definitively to England in 1527, and reappeared at court as one of the maids of honour.

Anne, now twenty years of age, was even more accomplished, and not less virtuous, than before.[12] The king became enamoured of her beauty, and one day, finding her alone, he declared himself her lover. The young lady fell on her knees, and in a voice that trembled with alarm and earnestness, made answer, “I deem, most noble King, that your Grace speaks these words in mirth, to prove me; if not, I beseech your Highness to believe me that I would rather die than comply with your wishes.” Henry replied in the language of a gallant, that he would live in hope. “I understand not, mighty King, how you should entertain any such hope,” spiritedly answered Anne; “your wife I cannot be, both in respect of my own unworthiness, and also because you have a queen already. Your mistress, be assured, I never will be.”[13] From this day forward Henry was more intent than ever on the prosecution of his divorce from his queen.

[9]Burnet, vol. 1., pp. 37, 38.-“The best-informed writers of the sixteenth century, men of the most opposite parties-Pole, Polydore Virgil, Tyndale, Meteren, Pallavicini, Sanders, and Roper, More’s son-in-law-all agree in pointing to Wolsey as the instigator of that divorce which has become so famous.” (D’Aubigne, vol. 5., p. 407.)

[10]More’s Life, p. 129.

[11]Burnet, vol. 1., p. 38.

[12]No one now thinks it worth his while to rebut the calumnies of Sanders in his History of English Schism. Perhaps no falsifier ever more completely succeeded in making his slanders perfectly harmless simply by making them incredible than this writer. This lady of undoubted beauty, talent, and virtue, he paints as a monster absolutely hideous by the deformities of her body, and the yet greater deformities of her soul. We quote only the following short passage from the French translation: “On la vit apres a la cour (de France), ou elle se gouverna avec si peu de pudeur, qu’on l’appelloit ordinarement la haquenee d’Angleterre. Francios I eut part a ses bonnes graces; on la nomma depuis la mule du Roy.” (Histoire du Schisme d’Angleterre; Paris, 1678.)

[13]Sloane MSS., 2,495-apud Turner, Hist. of Eng., vol. 2., p. 196.

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In the end of the same year (1527), Knight, one of the royal secretaries, was dispatched to Rome, with a request to the Pope, in the king’s behalf, that he would revoke the bull of Julius II, and declare Henry’s marriage with Catherine void. Knight found Clement VII in the stronghold of St. Angelo, whither he had fled from the soldiers of Charles V, who had just sacked the Eternal City. Clement could not think of drawing upon himself still farther the vengeance of the emperor, by annulling his aunt’s marriage with the King of England; and, on the other hand, he trembled to refuse the divorce lest he should offend Henry VIII, whose zeal in his behalf he had recently rewarded with the title of “Defender of the Faith.” The Emperor Charles, who had just learned from a special messenger of Catherine, with surprise and indignation, what Henry VIII was meditating, found the question of the divorce not less embarrassing than the Pope did. If, on the one hand, he should thwart the King of England, he would lose Henry’s alliance, which he much needed at this hour when a league had been formed to drive him out of Italy; and if, on the other, he should consent to the divorce, he would sacrifice his aunt, and stoop to see his family disgraced.

He decided to maintain his family’s honour at every cost. He straightway dispatched to Rome the Cordelier De Angelis, an able diplomatist, with instructions to offer to the Pope his release from the Castle of St. Angelo, on condition that he would promise to refuse the English king’s suit touching his divorce. The captive of St. Angelo to his surprise saw two kings as suppliants at his feet. He felt that he was still Pontiff. The kings, said he to himself, have besieged and pillaged my capital, my cardinals they have murdered, and myself they have incarcerated, nevertheless they still need me. Which shall the Pope oblige, Henry VIII of England, or Charles V of Spain? He saw that his true policy was to decide neither for nor against either, but to keep all parties at his feet by leaving them in embarrassment and suspense, and meanwhile to make the question of the divorce the means by which he should deliver himself from his dungeon, and once more mount his throne.

Chapter 6: The Divorce-Thomas Bilney, the Martyr

The Papacy Disgraces itself—Clement gives his Promise to Both Kings—A Worthless Document sent to London—The Pope’s Doublings—The Cardinal’s Devices—Henry’s Anger—Bilney sets out on a Preaching Tour—Discussions on Saint-Worship, etc—Bilney Arrested—Recants—His Agony—His Second Arrest and Condemnation—His Burning—The “Lollards’ Pit”—Other Martyrs—Richard Bayfield—John Tewkesbury—James Bainham—Crucifixes and Images Pulled down—Dissemination of the Scriptures—Fourth Edition of the New Testament

Picture: Facsimile of Numbers 24:16-19 (Tyndale, 1531)

Picture: Facsimile of Isaiah 12 (Tyndale, 1534).

Picture: Portrait of William Tyndale

We left Clement VII in the dungeons of the Castle of St. Angelo, with two kings kneeling at his feet. The Pope, “who cannot err,” contrives to gratify both monarchs. He gives to the one a promise that he will do as he desires, and grant the divorce; he assures the other that he will act conformably to his wishes, and withhold it. It is thus that the captive Pope opens his prison doors, and goes back to his kingdom. It was not without great delay and much tortuosity, dissimulation, and suffering that Clement reached this issue, so advantageous at the moment, but so disastrous in the end. His many shifts and make-believes; his repeated interviews with the ambassadors of Charles and Henry; the many angry midnight discussions in his old palace at Orvieto; the mutual recriminations and accusations which passed between the parties; the briefs and bulls which were drafted, amended, and cancelled, to be drafted over again, and undergo the same process of emendation and extinction; or which were sent off to London,to be found, upon their arrival, worthless and fit only to be burned-to detail all this would be foreign to our propose; we can only state briefly in what all these wearisome delays and shameful doublings ended. But these most disgraceful scenes were not without their uses. The Papacy was all the while revealing its innate meanness, hollowness, hypocrisy, and incurable viciousness, in the eyes of the emperor and the King of England, and was prompting in even their minds the question whether that system had not put itself into a false position by so inextricably mixing itself up with secular affairs, and assuming to itself temporal rule, seeing it was compelled to sustain [377] itself in this office by cajolerys, deceptions, and lies, to its own infinite debasement, and loss of spiritual power and dignity. The prestige of which the Papacy then stripped itself, by its shameless tergiversations, it has never since recovered.

The envoy of the emperor, De Angelis, was the first to appear before the prisoner of St. Angelo. The result of the negotiation between them was that the Pope was to be released on the promise that he would do nothing in the divorce solicited by the King of England but what was agreeable to the emperor. Knight, the English envoy, unable to gain access to Clement in his prison of St. Angelo, contrived to send in to him the paper containing Henry’s request, and the Pope returned for answer that the dispensation asked for by the King of England would be forwarded to London.[1] “So gracious,” observes Burner, “was a Pope in captivity.” The 10th of December, 1527, was the day fixed for the Pope’s release, but feeling that he would owe less to the emperor by effecting his own escape than waiting till the imperial guards opened the door, Clement disguised himself the evening before, and made off for Orvieto, and took up his abode in one of its old and ruinous tenements. The English envoys, Knight and Cassali, followed him thither, and obtaining an interview with him in his new quarters, the entrance of which was blocked up with rubbish, and the walls of which had their nakedness concealed by rows of domestics, they insisted on two things-first, the appointment of a commission to try the divorce in England; and secondly, a dispensation empowering King Henry to marry again as soon as the divorce was pronounced. These two demands were strongly pressed on the perplexed and bewildered Pope. The king offered to the Pope “assistance, riches, armies, crown, and even life,” as the reward of compliance, while the penalty of refusal was to be the separation of England from the tiara.[2] The poor Pope was placed between the terrible Charles, whose armies were still in Italy, and the powerful Henry. After repeated attempts to dupe the agents, both the commission and the dispensation were given,[3] but with piteous tears and entreaties on the part of the Pope that they would not act upon the commission till he was rid of the Spaniards. The French army, under Leutrec, was then in Italy, engaged in the attempt to expel the Spaniards from the peninsula; and the Pope, seeing in this position of affairs a chance of escape out of his dilemma, finally refused to permit the King of England to act on the commission which he had just put into the hands of his envoy, till the French should be under the walls of Orvieto, which would furnish him with a pretext for saying to Charles that he had issued the commission to pronounce the divorce under the compulsion of the French. He promised, moreover, that as soon as the French arrived he would send another copy of the document, properly signed, to be acted upon at once.

Meanwhile, and before the bearer of the first documents had reached London, a new demand arrived from England. Henry expressed a wish to have another cardinal-legate joined with Wolsey in trying the cause. This request was also disagreeable, and Clement attempted to evade it by advising that Henry should himself pronounce the divorce, for which, the Pope said, he was as able as any doctor in all the world, and that he should marry another wife, and he promised that the Papal confirmation should afterwards be forthcoming. This course was deemed too hazardous to be taken, and the councilors were confirmed in this opinion by discovering that the commission which the Pope had sent, and which had now arrived in England, was worthless-fit only to be burned.[4] The king was chafed and angry. “Wait until the imperialists have quitted Italy!” he exclaimed; “the Pope is putting us off to the Greek Kalends.”

The remedies which suggested themselves to the cardinal for a state of things that portended the downfall of the Popedom in England, and his own not less, were of a very extraordinary kind. On the 21st of January, 1528, France and England declared war against Spain. Wolsey in this gratified two passions at the same time: he avenged himself on the emperor for passing him over in the matter of the Popedom, and he sought to open Clement’s way in decree the divorce, by ridding him of the terror of Charles. To war the cardinal proposed to add the excommunication of the emperor, who was to pay with the loss of his throne for refusing the Papal chair to Wolsey. The bull for dethroning Charles is said to have been drafted, but the success of the emperor’s arms in Italy deterred the Pope from fulminating it. Finding the dethronement of Charles hopeless, Wolsey next turned his thoughts to the deposition of the Pope. The Church must sustain damage, he argued, from the thralldom in which Clement is at present kept. A vicar, or acting head, ought to be elected to govern Christendom so long as the Pope is virtually a prisoner: the vicar-to-be was, of course, no other

[1]Burnet, vol. 1., p. 47.

[2]See copy of original letter of Cardinal Wolsey to Sir Gregory Cassali, in Burnet, vol. 1.-Records, 3.

[3]Burnet, vol. 1., p. 48.

[4]Burnet, vol. 1., pp. 49, 50.

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than himself.[5] It was a crafty scheme for entering upon the permanent occupation of the chair of Peter. Such were the intrigues, the disappointments, the perplexities and alarms into which this matter, first put in motion by Wolsey, had plunged all parties. This was but the first overcasting of the sky; the tempest was yet to come.

While the kingdoms of the Papal world are beset by these difficulties, there rises, in majestic silence, another kingdom, that cannot be shaken, of which the builders are humble evangelists, acting through the instrumentality of the Scriptures. Thomas Bilney, of Cambridge, exchanging his constitutional timidity for apostolic fervor and courage, set out on a preaching tour through the eastern parts of England. “Behold,” said he, like another preacher of the desert, addressing the crowds that gathered round him, “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.” “If Christ takes away the sins of men,” he continued, “what good will it do you to be buried in the cowl of St. Francis? This ‘Lamb’ takes away your sins now: not after years of penance, but this moment.... Good people, put away your idols of gold and silver. Why are Jews and Mohammedans not yet converted? We have to thank the Pope and the priests for this, who have preached to them no other Gospel than that of offering wax candles to stocks and stones. Good people, refrain from lighting candles to the saints, for those in heaven have no need of them, and their images on earth have no eyes to see them.”[6]

Bilney was accompanied by Arthur, another Cambridge scholar and disciple. They were often pulled from the pulpit by the friars. “What matters it to silence me?” said Arthur on one of these occasions. “Though I should be put to death, there are 7,000 better preachers than myself who will rise up to take my place.” One day (28th May, 1527) when Bilney was preaching in Christ Church, Ipswich, he said, “Our Savior Christ is our Mediator between us and the Father: what should we need then to seek to any saint for remedy?” “That,” said a certain friar, named John Brusierd, “was true in St. Paul’s time, but not in ours: Christ was then the one Mediator, for no one had yet been canonized, and there were no saints in the calendar.”[7] At another time Bilney was asked by the same friar to solve the difficulty, how the Pope, who lived in his own house, could be “the Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God as God?”

“Do you know the Table of the Ten Commandments?” asked Bilney. The friar replied that he did.

“And do you know the constitutions devised by men, and bound on men under pain of death?” The friar gave a qualified confession of his knowledge of such constitutions.

“It is written,” said Bilney, “‘The temple of the Lord is holy, which is you.’ Therefore, the conscience of man is the temple of the Holy Ghost. For him who contemneth the Table of the Commandments of God there is but a small punishment, whereas for him who contemneth the constitutions of the Pope there is the punishment of death. What is this but for the High Priest of Rome to sit and reign in the temple of God (that is, in man’s conscience) as God?”[8]

[5]See “The Cardinal’s Letter to the Ambassadors about his Promotion to the Popedom,” in Burnet, 1.-Records, 20.

[6]Fox, vol 4., pp. 621-625.

[7]Fox, vol. 4., pp. 628, 629.

[8]Ibid., p. 630.

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Bilney and Arthur were arrested, and on the 27th of November, 1527, were brought before the Bishops’ Court, in the Chapter-house of Westminster. Wolsey took his seat on the bench for a moment only to state the alternative-abjuration or death-and withdrew to attend to affairs of State. The two prisoners boldly confessed the faith they had preached. The extraordinary scene that followed between Tonstall, the presiding judge, and Bilney-the one pressing forward to the stake, the other striving to hold him back-has been graphically described by the chronicler.[9] But it was neither the exhortations of the judge nor the fear of burning that shook the steadfastness of Bilney; it was the worldly-wise and sophistical reasonings of his friends, who crowded round him, and plied him day and night with their entreaties.

The desire of saving his life for the service of truth was what caused him to fall. He would deny his Master now that he might serve him in the future.

On Sunday, the 8th of December, a penitential procession was seen moving towards St. Paul’s Cross. Bilney, his head bare, walked in front of it, carrying his fagot on his shoulder, as much as to say, “I am a heretic, and worthy of the fire.” Had he been actually going to the fire his head would not have been bowed so low; but, alas! his was not the only head which was that day bowed down in England. A standard-bearer had fainted, and many a young soldier ashamed to look up kept his eyes fixed on the ground. This was the first use served by that life which Bilney had redeemed from the stake by his recantation.[10]

[9]Fox, vol. 4., pp. 631, 632.

[10]Fox, vol. 4., pp. 631, 632.

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After his public penitence he was sent back to prison. When we think of what Bilney once was, and of what he had now become, we shall see that one of two things must happen to the fallen disciple. Either such a malignant hatred of the Gospel will take possession of his mind as that he shall be insensible to his sin, and perhaps become a persecutor of his former brethren, or a night of horror and anguish will cover him. It was the latter that was realized. He lay, says Latimer, for two years “in a burning hell of despair.”[11] When at length he was released from prison and returned to Cambridge, he was in “such anguish and agony that he could scarce eat or drink.” His friends came round him “to comfort him, but no comfort could he find.” Afraid to leave him a single hour alone, “they were fain to be with him night and day.” When they quoted the promises of the Word of God to him, “it was as if one had run him through the heart with a sword.” The Bible had become a Mount Sinai to him, it was black with wrath, and flaming with condemnation. But at last the eye that looked on Peter was turned on Bilney, and hope and strength returned into his soul. “He came again,” says Latimer, like one rising from the dead. One evening in 1531, he took leave of his friends in Cambridge at ten o’clock of the night, saying that “he was going up to Jerusalem, and should see them no more.” He set out overnight, and arriving at Norfolk, he began to preach privately in the houses of those disciples whom his fall had stumbled, and whom he felt it to be his duty first of all to confirm in the faith. Having restored them, he began to preach openly in the fields around the city. He next proceeded to Norfolk, where he continued his public ministry, publishing the faith he had abjured, and exhorting the disciples to be warned by his fall not to take counsel with worldly-minded friends. He spoke as one who had “known the terrors of the Lord.”[12]

In no long time, he was apprehended and thrown into prison. Friars of all colors came round him; but Bilney, leaning on Christ alone, was not to fall a second time. He was condemned to be burned as a heretic. The ceremony of degrading him was gone through with great formality. On the night before his execution, he supped in prison with his friends, conversing calmly on his approaching death, and repeating oft, and in joyous accents, the words in Isaiah 43:2, “When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned,” etc.[13] To test his powers of enduring the physical sufferings awaiting him, he put his forefinger into the flame of the candle, and, according to some accounts, kept it there till the first joint was burned.

Next morning, which was Saturday, the officers in their glaives, and holding their halberds, were seen at the prison door, waiting the coming forth of the martyr. Thomas Bilney appeared, accompanied by Dr. Warner, Vicar of Winterton, whom he had selected, as one of the oldest of his friends, to be with him in his last hours. Preceded by the officers, and followed by the crowd of spectators, they set out for the stake, which was planted outside the city gate, in a low and circular hollow, whose environing hills enabled the spectators to seat themselves as in an amphitheater, and witness the execution. The spot has ever since borne the name of the “Lollards’ Pit.” He was attired in a layman’s gown, with open sleeves. All along the route he distributed liberal alms by the hands of a friend. Being come to the place where he was to die, he descended into the hollow, the slopes of which were clothed with spectators. The executioners had not yet finished their preparations, and Bilney addressed a few words to the crowd. All being ready, he embraced the stake, and kissed it. Then kneeling down, he prayed with great composure, ending with the words of the psalm, “Hear my prayer, O Lord; give ear to my supplications.” He thrice repeated, in deep and solemn accents, the next verse, “And enter not into judgment with thy servant; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.” Then once more he said, “My soul thirsteth for thee.” “Are you ready?” he inquired of the executioners. “We are ready,” was the reply. He put off his coat and doublet; and, standing on the step in front of the stake, the chain was put round his body. Dr. Warner came up to him, and in the few words which his tears suffered him to utter, he bade the martyr farewell. Bilney, his face lighted with a gentle smile, bowed his head towards him, and expressed his thanks, adding, “O Master Doctor, Pasce gregem tuum; pasce gregem tuum” (Feed your flock; feed your flock). Warner departed, “sobbing and weeping.” A crowd of friars, who had given evidence against Bilney on his trial, next pressed round the stake, entreating the martyr to acquit them of his death before the people, lest they should withhold their alms from them. “Whereupon,” says the chronicler, “the said Thomas Bilney spoke with a loud voice to the

[11]Fox, vol. 4., p. 643.

[12]Latimer’s Sermons-Fox, vol. 4., pp. 641, 642.

[13]Bilney’s Bible is now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It has numerous annotations in his own hand; and the verse quoted in the text, from Isaiah 43, which consoled the martyr in his last hours, is specially marked with a pen on the margin. (Ed. of Fox, Lond. edition, 1846.)

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people, and said, ‘I pray you, good people, be never worse to these men for my sake, as though they should be the authors of my death: it was not they.’ And so he ended.”

The officers now made instant preparation for the execution. They piled up reeds and fagots about his body. The torch was applied to the reeds; the fire readily caught, and, mounting aloft with crackling noise, the flames enveloped the martyr, and blackened the skin of his face. Lifting up his hands, and striking upon his breast, he cried at times, “Jesu,” and again, “Credo.” A great tempest of wind, which had raged several days inflicting great damage on the ripened corn-fields, was blowing at the time. Its violence parted the flames, and blowing them to either side of the sufferer, left full in sight of the vast concourse the blackened and ghastly figure, of the martyr. This happened thrice. At last the fire caught such hold upon the wood that it burned steadily; and now “his body, being withered, bowed downward upon the chain.” One of the officers, with his halberd, struck out the staple in the stake behind, and the body fell along upon the ashes. Fresh fagots were heaped over it; and being again lighted, the whole was speedily consumed.[14]

So died the first disciple and evangelist in England in Reformation times. His knowledge was not perfect: some of the errors of Rome remained with him to the last; but this much had he learned from the Greek New Testament of Erasmus, that there is but one object of worship, namely, God; that there is but one Savior, namely, Christ; and that forgiveness comes freely to men through his blood. Twenty years after the tragedy in the Lollards’ Pit, Latimer, whom he had brought to the knowledge of the truth, preaching before Edward VI, called him “that blessed martyr of God, Thomas Bilney.”

The Scriptures sowed the seed in England, and the blood of martyrs watered it. Next after Bilney came Richard Bayfield. Bayfield was a monk of Bury, and was converted chiefly through Tyndale’s New Testament. He went beyond seas, and joining himself to Tyndale and Fryth, he returned to England, bringing with him many copies of the Bible, which he began to disseminate. He was apprehended in London, and carried first to the Lollards’ Tower, and thence to the Coal-house. “Here he was tied,” says the martyrologist, “by the neck, middle, and legs, standing upright by the walls, divers times, manacled.”[15] The design of this cruelty, which the greatest criminals were spared was to compel him to disclose the names of those who had bought copies of the Word of God from him; but this he refused to do. He was brought before Stokesley, Bishop of London, and accused of “being beyond the sea, and of bringing thence divers and many books, as well of Martin Luther’s own works, as of others of his damnable sect, and of Ecolampadius the great heretic, and of divers other heretics, both in Latin and English.” He was sentenced to the fire. Before execution he was degraded in the Cathedral church of St. Paul’s. At the close of the ceremonies, the Bishop of London struck him so violent a blow on the breast with his crosier, that he fell backwards, and swooning, rolled down the steps of the choir. On reviving, he thanked God that now he had been delivered from the malignant Church of Antichrist, alluding to the ceremony of “degradation” which he had just undergone. He was carried to the stake at Smithfield in the apparel in which Stokesley had arrayed him. He remained half an hour alive on the pile, the fire touching one of his sides only. When his left arm was burned, he touched it with the right, and it dropped off. He stood unmoved, praying all the while.[16]

Many others followed. Among these was John Tewkesbury, merchant in London. Tyndale’s New Testament had delivered him from the darkness. Becoming an object of suspicion to the priests, he was apprehended, and taken to the house of Sir Thomas More, now Lord Chancellor of England. He was shut up a whole week in the Porter’s lodge; his hands, feet, and head being placed in the stocks. He was then taken out and tied to a tree in Sir Thomas’s garden, termed the Tree of Truth, and whipped, and small cords were drawn so tightly round his forehead that the blood started from his eyes. Such were the means which the elegant scholar and accomplished wit took to make this disciple of the Gospel reveal his associates. He was next carried to the Tower, and stretched on the rack till his limbs were broken. He yielded to the extremity of his sufferings, and recanted. This was in 1529. The brave death of his friend Bayfield revived his courage. The fact soon came to the knowledge of his persecutors, and being arrested, the Bishop of London held an assize upon him in the house of Sir Thomas More, and having passed sentence upon him as a relapsed heretic, he was carried to Smithfield and burned.[17]

James Bainham, a gentleman of Gloucestershire, and member of the Middle Temple, delighted in the study of the Scriptures, and began to exhibit in

[14]Fox, vol. 4. pp. 654, 655.

[15]Ibid., p. 681.

[16]Fox, vol. 4., pp. 687, 688.

[17]Ibid., pp. 689-694.

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his life in eminent degree the evangelical virtues. He was arrested, and carried to the house of Sir Thomas More at Chelsea. He was passed through the same terrible ordeal to which the author of Utopia had subjected Tewkesbury. He was tied to the Tree of Truth, scourged, and then sent to the Tower to be racked. The chancellor was exceedingly anxious to discover who of the gentlemen of the Temple, his acquaintance, had embraced the Gospel, but no disclosure could these cruelties extort from Bainham. On his trial he was drawn by the arts of his enemies to abjure. He appeared a few days after at St. Paul’s Cross with his fagot; but recantation was followed by bitter repentance. He too felt that the fires which remorse kindles in the soul are sharper than those which the persecutor kindles to consume the body. The fallen disciple, receiving strength from on high, again stood up. Arrested and brought to trial a second time, he was more than a conqueror over all the arts which were again put forth against his steadfastness. On May-day, at two o’clock (1532), he appeared in Smithfield. Going forward to the stake, which was guarded by horsemen, he threw himself flat on his face and prayed. Then rising up, he embraced the stake, and taking hold of the chain, he wound it round his body, while a serjeant made it fast behind.

Standing on the pitch-barrel, he addressed the people, telling them that “it was lawful for every man and woman to have God’s Book in their mother tongue,” and walking them against the errors in which they and their fathers had lived. “Thou liest, thou heretic,” said Master Pane, town-clerk of London. “Thou deniest the blessed Sacrament of the altar.” “I do not deny the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, as it was instituted by Christ, but I deny your transubstantiation, and your idolatry of the bread, and that Christ, God and man, should dwell in a piece of bread; but that he is in heaven, sitting on the right hand of God the Father.” “Thou heretic!” said Pane-“Set fire to him and burn him.”

The train of gunpowder was now ignited. As the flame approached him, he lifted up his eyes and hands to heaven, and prayed for the forgiveness of Pane and of Sir Thomas More, and continued at intervals in supplication till the fire had reached his head. “It is to be observed,” says the chronicler, “that as he was at the stake, in the midst of the flaming fire, which fire had half consumed his arms and legs, he spoke these words: ‘O ye Papists! behold, ye look for miracles, and here now ye may see a miracle; for in this fire I feel no more pain than if I were in a bed of down; but it is to me as a bed of roses.’ These words spoke he in the midst of the flaming fire, when his legs and arms, as I said, were half consumed.”[18]

While these and many other martyrs were dying at the stake, indications were not wanting that the popular feeling was turning against the old faith in the destruction of its public symbols. Many of the crucifixes that stood by the highway were pulled down. The images of saints, whose very names are now forgotten, were destroyed. The images of “Our Lady” sometimes disappeared from chapels, and no one knew where they had gone, or by whom they had been carried off. The authors of these acts were in a few cases discovered and hanged, but in the majority of instances they remained unknown. But this outbreak of the iconoclast spirit in England was as nothing compared to the fury with which it showed itself in the Low Countries, and the havoc it inflicted on the cathedrals and shrines of Belgium, Switzerland, and the south of France.

But the one pre-eminent Reforming Power in England was that which descended on the land softly as descends the dew, and advanced noiselessly as the light of morning spreads over the earth-the Holy Scriptures. A little before the events we have just narrated, a fourth edition of the New Testament, more beautiful than the previous ones, had been printed in Antwerp, and was brought into England. A scarcity of bread which then prevailed in the country caused the corn ships from the Low Countries to be all the more readily welcomed, and the “Word of Life” was sent across concealed in them. But it happened that a priest opening his sack of corn found in the sack’s mouth the Book so much dreaded by the clergy, and hastened to give information that, along with the bread that nourisheth the body, that which destroyeth the soul was being imported into England. Nevertheless, the most part of the copies escaped, and, diffused among the people, began slowly to lift the mass out of vassalage, to awaken thought, and to prepare for liberty. The bishops would at times burn a hundred or two of copies at St. Paul’s Cross; but this policy, as might have been expected, only re-suited in whetting the desire of the people to possess the sacred volume. Anxious to discover who furnished the money for printing this endless supply of Bibles, Sir Thomas More said one day to one George Constantine, who had been apprehended on suspicion of heresy, “Constantine, I would have you be plain with me in one thing that I will ask thee, and I promise thee that I will show thee favor in all other

[18]Fox, vol. 4., pp. 697-705.

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things of which thou art accused. There is beyond the sea Tyndale, Joye, and a great many of you. There be some that help and succour them with money. I pray thee, tell me who they be?” “My lord, I will tell you truly,” said Constantine, “it is the Bishop of London that hath holpen us, for he hath bestowed upon us a great deal of money upon New Testaments to burn them, and that hath been and yet is our only succour and comfort.” “Now, by my truth,” said the chancellor, “I think even the same, for so much I told the bishop before he went about it.”[19]

[19]Fox-Soames, Hist. of Reformation, vol. 1., p. 512.

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Chapter 7: The Divorce, and Wolsey’s Fall

Bull for Dissolving the King’s Marriage—Campeggio’s Arrival—His Secret Instructions—Shows the Bull to Henry—The Commission Opened—The King and Queen Cited—Catherine’s Address to Henry—Pleadings—Campeggio Adjourns the Court—Henry’s Wrath—It First Strikes Wolsey—His Many Enemies—His Disgrace—The Cause Avoked to Rome—Henry’s Fulminations—Inhibits the Bull—His Resolution touching the Popedom—Wolsey’s Last Interview with the King—Campeggio’s Departure—Bills Filed in King’s Bench against Wolsey—Deprived of the Great Seal—Goes to Esher—Indictment against him in Parliament—Thrown out—The Cardinal Banished to York—His Life there—Arrested for High Treason—His Journey to Leicester—His Death—His Burial

Picture: Thomas Bilney on his way to the Stake.

Wolsey at last made it clear to Clement VII and his cardinals that if the divorce were not granted England was lost to the Popedom. The divorce would not have cost them a thought, nor would Henry have been put to the trouble of asking it twice, but for the terror in which they stood of the emperor, whose armies encompassed them. But at that moment the fortune of war was going against Charles V; his soldiers were retreating before the French; and Clement, persuading himself that Charles was as good as driven out of Italy, said, “I shall oblige the King of England.” On the 8th of June, 1528, the Pope issued a commission empowering Campeggio and Wolsey to declare the marriage between Henry and Catherine null and void. A few days later he signed a decretal by which he himself annulled the marriage.[1] This important document was put into the hands of Campeggio, who was dispatched to England with instructions to show the bull to no one save to Henry and Wolsey. Whether it should ever be made public would depend upon the course of events. If the emperor were finally beaten, the decretal was to be acted upon; if he recovered his good fortune, it was to be burned. Campeggio set out, and traveled by slow stages, for he had been instructed to avail himself of every pretext for interposing delay, in the hope that time would bring a solution of the matter. At last Campeggio appeared, and his arrival with the bull dissolving the marriage gave unbounded joy to the king. This troublesome business was at an end, Henry thought. His conscience was at rest, and his way opened to contract another marriage. The New Testament was separating England from the Papacy, but the decretal had come to bind the king and the realm more firmly to Rome than ever. Nevertheless, a Higher than man’s wisdom made the two-Tyndale’s New Testament and Clement’s decretal-combine in the issue to effect the same result.

Eight months passed away before Campeggio opened his commission. He had been overtaken on the road by messengers from Clement, who brought him fresh instructions. The arms of the emperor having triumphed, the whole political situation had been suddenly changed, and hence the new orders sent after Campeggio, which were to the effect that he should do his utmost to persuade Catherine to enter a nunnery; and, failing this, that he should not decide the cause, but send it to Rome. Campeggio began with the queen, but she refused to take the veil; he next sought to induce the king to abandon the prosecution of the divorce. Henry stormed, and asked the legate if it was thus that the Pope kept his word, and repaid the services done to the Popedom. To pacify and reassure the monarch, Campeggio showed him the bull annulling the marriage; but

[1]Herbert, p. 248. Strype, Eccl. Mem., vol. 1., p. 171. Burnet, vol. 1., pp. 54, 55.

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no entreaty of the king could prevail on the legate to part with it, or to permit Henry any benefit from it save the sight of it.[2]

After many delays, the Legantine Commission was opened on the 18th of June, 1529, in the great hall of the Black Friars, the same building, and possibly the same chamber, in which the Convocation had assembled that condemned the doctrines of Wicliffe. Both the king and queen had been cited to appear. Catherine, presenting herself before the court, said, “I protest against the legates as incompetent judges, and appeal to the Pope.”[3] On this the court adjourned to the 21st of June. On that day the two legates took their places with great pomp; around them was a numerous assemblage of bishops, abbots, and secretaries; on the right hung a cloth of state, where sat the king, attended by his councilors and lords; and on the left was the queen, surrounded by her ladies. The king answered to the call of the usher; but the queen, on being summoned, rose, and making the circuit of the court, fell on her knees before her husband, and addressed him with much dignity and emotion. She besought him by the love which had been between them, by the affection and fidelity she had uniformly shown him during these twenty years of their married life, by the children which had been the fruit of their union, and by her own friendless estate in a foreign land, to do her justice said right, and not to call her before a court formed as this was; yet should he refuse this favor, she would be silent, and remit her just cause to God. Her simple, but pathetic words, spoken with a foreign accent, touched all who heard them, not even excepting the king and the judges. Having ended, instead of returning to her seat, she left the court, and never again appeared in it.

The queen replied to a second citation by again disowning the tribunal and appealing to the Pope. She was pronounced contumacious, and the cause was proceeded with. The pleadings on both sides went on for about a month. It was believed by every one that sentence would be pronounced on the 23rd of July. The court, the clergy, the whole nation waited with breathless impatience for the result. On the appointed day the judgmenthall was crowded; the king himself had stolen into a gallery adjoining the hall, so that unobserved he might witness the issue. Campeggio slowly rose: the silence grew deeper: the moment was big with the fate of the Papacy in England. “As the vacation of the Rota at Rome,” said the legate, “begins to-morrow, I adjourn the court to the 1st of October.”[4]

These words struck the audience with stupefaction. The noise of a violent blow on the table, re-echoing through the hall, roused them from their astonishment. The Duke of Suffolk accompanied the stroke, for he it was who had struck the blow, with the words, “By the Mass! the old saw is verified today: never was there legate or cardinal that brought good to England.”[5] But the man on whose ears the words of Campeggio fell with the most stunning effect was the king. His first impulse was to give vent to the indignation with which they filled him. He saw that he was being deluded and befooled by the Pope; that in spite of all the services he had rendered the Popedom, Clement cared nothing for the peace of his conscience or the tranquillity of his kingdom, and was manifestly playing into the hands of the emperor. Henry’s wrath grew hotter every moment; but, restraining himself, he went back to his palace, there to ruminate over the imbroglio into which this unexpected turn of affairs had brought him, and if possible devise measures for finding his way out of it.

A King John would have sunk under the blow: it but roused the tyrant that slumbered in the breast of Henry VIII. From that hour he was changed; his pride, his truculence, his selfish, morose, bloodthirsty despotism henceforward overshadowed the gaiety, and love of letters, and fondness for pomps which had previously characterized him.

Of the two men who had incurred his deeply-rooted displeasure-Clement and Wolsey-the latter was the first to feel the effects of his anger. The cardinal was now fallen in the eyes of his master; and the courtiers, who were not slow to discover the fact, hastened to the king with additional proofs that Wolsey had sacrificed the king for the Pope, and England for the Papacy. Those who before had neither eyes to see his intrigues nor a tongue to reveal them, now found both, and accusers started up on all sides, and, as will happen, those sycophants who had bowed the lowest were now the loudest in their condemnations. Hardly was there a nobleman at court whom Wolsey’s haughtiness had not offended, and hardly was there a citizen whom his immoralities,

[2]Burnet, vol. 1., p. 58: “He could not be brought to part with the decretal bull out of his hands, or to leave it for a minute, either with the king or the cardinal.” Campeggio would not even show it to the Council.

[3]Sanders, Histoire du Schisme d’Angleterre, p. 44; Paris, 1678.

[4]Burnet, vol 1., p. 77.

[5]Jura par la sainte Messe, que jamais legat ne cardinal n’avoit bien fait en Angleterre.” (Sanders, p. 62.)

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his greed, and his exactions had not disgusted, and wherever he looked he saw only contemners and enemies. Abroad the prospect that met the eye of the cardinal was not a whir more agreeable. He had kindled the torch of war in Europe; he had used both Charles and Francis for his own interests; they knew him to be revengeful as well as selfish and false. Wherever his fame had traveled-and it had gone; to all European lands-there too had come the report of the qualities that distinguished him, and by which he had climbed to his unrivalled eminence-a craft that was consummate, an avarice that was insatiable, and an ambition that was boundless. Whichever way the divorce should go, the cardinal was undone: if it were refused he would be met by the vengeance of Henry, and if it were granted he would inevitably fall under the hostility and hatred of Anne Boleyn and her friends. Seldom has human career had so brilliant a noon, and seldom has such a noon been followed by a night so black and terrible. But the end was not yet: a little space was interposed between the withdrawal of the royal favor and the final fall of Wolsey.

On the 6th of July, the Pope avoked to Rome the cause between Henry of England and Catherine of Aragon.[6] On the 3rd of August, the king was informed that he had been cited before the Pope’s tribunal, and that, failing to appear, he was condemned in a fine of 10,000 ducats. “This ordinance of the Pope,” says Sanders, “was not only posted up at Rome, but at Bruges, at Tournay, and on all the churches of Flanders.”[7] What a humiliation to the proud and powerful monarch of England! This citation crowned the insults given him by Clement, and filled up the cup of Henry’s wrath. Gardiner, who had just returned from Rome with these most unwelcome news, witnessed the strata that now burst in the royal apartment.[8] The chafed and affronted Tudor fulminated against the Pope and all his priests. Yes, he would go to Rome, but Rome should repent his coming. He would go at the head of his army, and see if priest or Pope dare cite him to his tribunal, or look him in the face.[9] But second thoughts taught Henry that, bad as the matter was, any ebullition of temper would only make it worse by showing how deep the affront had sunk. Accordingly, he ordered Gardiner to conceal this citation from the knowledge of his subjects; and, meanwhile, in the exercise of the powers vested in him by the Act of Praemunire, he inhibited the bull and forbade it to be served upon him. The commission of the two legates was, however, at an end, and the avocation of the cause to Rome was in reality an adjudication against the king.

Two years had been lost: this was not all; the king had not now a single ally on the Continent. Charles V and Clement VII were again fast friends, and were to spend the winter together in Bologna.[10] Isolation abroad, humiliation at home, and bitter disappointment in the scheme on which his heart was so much set, were all that he had reaped from the many fair promises of Clement and the crafty handling of Wolsey. Nor did the king see how ever he could realize his hopes of a divorce, of a second marriage, and of an heir to his throne, so long as he left the matter in the hands of the Pope. He must either abandon the idea of a divorce, with all that he had built upon it, or he must withdraw it from the Papal jurisdiction. He was resolved not to take the first course—the second only remained open to him. He would withdraw his cause, and, along with it, himself and his throne, from the Roman tribunals and the jurisdiction of the Papal supremacy. In no other way could he rescue the affair from the dead-lock into which it had fallen. But the matter was weighty, and had to be gone about with great deliberation. Meanwhile events were accelerating the ruin of the cardinal.

The king, seeking in change of residence escape from the vexations that filled his mind, had gone down to Grafton in Northamptonshire. Thither Campeggio followed him, to take leave of the court before setting out for Italy. Wolsey accompanied his brother-legate to Grafton, but was coldly received. The king drew him into the embrasure of a window, and began talking with him. Suddenly Henry pulled out a letter, and, handing it to Wolsey, said sharply, “Is not this your hand?”[11] The cardinal’s reply was not heard by the lords that filled the apartment, and who intently watched the countenances of the two; but the letter was understood to be an intercepted one relating to the treaty which Wolsey had concluded with France, without the consent or knowledge of the king. The conversation lasted a few minutes longer, and Wolsey was dismissed to dinner, but not permitted to sleep under the same roof with the king. This was the last audience he ever had of his master, and Wolsey but too truly divined that the star of

[6]Burnet, Records, bk. 1., p. 81.

[7]Sanders, p. 63.

[8]Herbert, Life of Henry VIII, p. 287.

[9]State Papers, 7., p. 194.

[10]See ante, vol. 1., p. 573.

[11]Cavendish.

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his greatness had set. On the morrow the two cardinals set forth on their journey, Wolsey returning to London, and Campeggio directing his steps towards his port of debarkation. At Dover,[12] his baggage was strictly searched, by the king’s orders, for important papers, especially the decretal[13] annulling his marriage, which Henry had been permitted to see, but not to touch. The decretal was not found, for this very sufficient reason, that the cardinal, agreeably to instructions, had burned it. All other important documents were already across the Channel, the crafty Italian having taken the precaution to send them on by a special messenger. Campeggio was glad to touch French soil, leaving his fellow-churchman to face as he best could the bursting of the tempest.

It now came. At the next Michaelmas term (October 9th) Wolsey proceeded to open, with his usual pomp, his Court of Chancery. The gloom on his face, as he sat on the bench, cast its shadow on the members of court, and seemed even to darken the hall. This display of authority was the last gleam in the setting splendors of the great cardinal; for the same hour the Attorney-General, Hales, was filing against him two bills in the King’s Bench, charging him with having brought bulls into England, in virtue of which he had exercised an office that encroached upon the royal prerogative, and incurred the penalties of Praemunire. Soon after this the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk waited on him from the king, to demand delivery of the Great Seal, and to say that, vacating his palaces of Whitehall and Hampton Court, he must confine himself to his house at Esher. “My lords,” said the stricken man, with something of his old spirit, “the Great Seal of England was delivered to me by the hands of my sovereign, and I may not deliver it at the simple word of any lord.” The two noblemen returned next day with a written order from the king, and the seal was at once given up.[14] Stripped of his great office, his other possessions, though of immense value, seemed a small matter. His treasures of gold and silver, his rich robes, his costly and curious furniture

- all he would present to the king, peradventure it would soften his heart and win back his favor, or at least save the giver from the last disgrace of the block. He understood Henry’s disposition, and knew that like other spendthrifts he was fond of money. Summoning the officers of his household before him, he ordered them to place tables in the great hall, and lay out upon them the various articles entrusted to their care. His orders were immediately obeyed. Soon the tables groaned under heaps of glittering spoil. Cloths of gold, with which the walls of the great gallery were hung; Eastern silks, satins, velvets; tapestry adorned with scriptural subjects, and stories from the old romances; furred robes, gorgeous copes, and webs of a valuable stuff named baudekin, wrought in the looms of Damascus, were piled up in wonderful profusion. In another room, called the Gilt Chamber, the tables were covered with gold plate, some articles being of massive fabric, and set with precious stones; in a second apartment was arranged the silver-gilt; and so abundant were these articles of luxury, that whole basketfuls of gold and silver plate, which had fallen out of fashion, were stowed away under the tables.[15] An inventory having been taken, Sir William Gascoigne was commanded by the cardinal to see all this wealth delivered to the king.

The cardinal now set out for Esher, accompanied by his attached and sorrowing domestics. On his journey, a horseman was seen galloping towards him across country. It was Sir Henry Norris, with a ring from the king, “as a token of his confidence.” The fallen man received it with ecstatic but abject joy. It was plain there lingered yet an affection for his former minister in the heart of the monarch. He reached Esher, and took up his abode within four bare walls.[16] What a contrast to the splendid palaces he had left! Meanwhile his enemies-and these were legion-pushed on proceedings against him. Parliament had been summoned the first tune for seven years-during that period England had been governed by a Papal legate-and an impeachment, consisting of forty-four clauses, founded upon the Act of Praemunire, was preferred against Wolsey. The indictment comprehended all, from the pure Latin in which he had put himself above the king (Ego et Rex meus) to the foul breath with which he had infected the royal presence; and it placed in bold relief his Legantine function, with the many violations of law, monopolizing of church revenues, grievous exactions, and unauthorized dealings with foreign Powers of which he had been guilty under cover of it.[17] The indictment was

[12]Cavendish says Calais; the Bishop of Bayonne, Da Bellay, says Dover.

[13]Herbert, p. 288.

[14]Ibid., p. 290.

[15]Cavendish, vol. 1., pp. 183, 184. Herbert, p. 290.-One of the best inventories of Wolsey’s furniture is preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. (See Ellis, Letters, vol. 2., p. 25.)

[16]Thus continued my lord at Esher three or four weeks, without either beds, sheets, table-cloths, or dishes to eat their meat in...but afterwards my lord borrowed some plates and dishes of the Bishop of Carlisle.” (Cavendish.)

[17]Herbert, p. 295.

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thrown out by the Commons, mainly by the zeal of Thomas Cromwell, an affectionate servant of Wolsey’s, who sat for the City of London, and whose chief object in seeking election to Parliament was to help his old master, and also to raise himself.

But the process commenced against him in the King’s Bench was not likely to end so favorably. The cardinal had violated the Act of Praemunire beyond all question. He had brought Papal bulls into the country, and he had exercised powers in virtue of them, which infringed the law and usurped the prerogatives of the sovereign. True, Wolsey might plead that the king, by permitting the unchallenged exercise of these powers for so many years, had virtually, if not formally, sanctioned them; nevertheless, from his knowledge of the king, he deemed it more politic to plead guilty. Nor did he miscalculate in this. Henry accorded him an ample pardon, and thus he escaped the serious consequences with which the Act of Praemunire menaced him.[18]

At Esher the cardinal fell dangerously ill, and the king, hearing of his sickness, sent three physicians to attend upon him. On his recovery, he was permitted to remove to Richmond; but the Privy Council, alarmed at his near approach to the court, prevailed on the king to banish him to his diocese of York. The hopes Wolsey had begun to cherish of the return of the royal favor were again dashed. He set out on his northward journey in the early spring of 1530. His train, according to Cavendish, consisted of 160 persons and seventy-two wagons loaded with the relics of his furniture. “How great must have been that grandeur which, by comparison, made such wealth appear poverty!”[19] Taking up his abode at Cawood Castle, the residence of the Archbishops of York, he gave himself with great assiduity to the discharge of his ecclesiastical duties. He distributed alms to the poor he visited his numerous parish churches; he incited his clergy to preach regularly to their flocks; he reconciled differences, said mass in the village churches, was affable and courteous to all, and by these means he speedily won the esteem of every class. This he hoped was the beginning of a second upward career. Other arts he is said to have employed to regain the eminence from which he had fallen. He entered into a secret correspondence with the Pope; and it was believed at court that he was intriguing against his sovereign both at home and abroad. These suspicions were strengthened by the magnificent enthronization which he was preparing for himself at York. The day fixed for the august ceremonial was near, when the tide in the cardinal’s fortunes turned adversely, nevermore to change. Suddenly the Earl of Northumberland-the same Percy whose affection for Anne Boleyn Wolsey had thwarted-arrived at Cawood Castle with an order to arrest him for high treason. The shock well-nigh killed him; he remained for some time speechless. Instead of ascending his throne in York Cathedral, he had to mount his mule and begin his pilgrimage to the Tower; thence to pass, it might be, to the block. On beginning his journey, the peasantry of the neighborhood assembled at Cawood, and with lighted torches and hearty cheers strove to raise his spirits; but nothing could again bring the light of joy into his face. His earthly glory was ended, and all was ended with it. He halted on his way at Sheffield Park, the residence of the Earl of Shrewsbury. One morning during his stay there, George Cavendish, the most faithful of all his domestics, came running into his chamber, crying out, “Good news, my lord! Sir William Kingston is come to conduct you to the king.” The word “Kingston” went like an arrow to his heart. “Kingston!” he repeated, sighing deeply. A soothsayer had warned him that he should have his end at Kingston. He had thought that the town of that name was meant: now he saw that it was the Tower, of which Kingston was the Constable, that was to be fatal to him. The arrival of Sir William was to the poor man the messenger of death. Blow was coming after blow, nd heart and strength were rapidly failing him. It was a fortnight before he was able to set out from Sheffield Park. On the way he was once and again near falling from his mule through weakness. On the third day-Saturday, the 26th of November-he reached Leicester. The falling leaf and the setting sun-the last he was ever to see-seemed but the emblems of his own condition. By the time he had got to the abbey, where he was to lodge, the night had closed in, and the abbot and friars waited at the Portal with torches to light his entrance. “Father,” said he to the abbot, as he crossed the threshold, “I am come to lay my bones among you.” He took to his bed, from which he was to rise not again. Melancholy vaticinations and forebodings continued to haunt him. “Upon Monday, in the morning,” says Cavendish, his faithful attendant, and the chronicler of his last hours, “as I stood by his bedside about eight of the clock, the windows being close shut, having wax lights burning upon the cupboard, I beheld him, as me seemed, drawing fast to his end.

[18]Strype, Eccl. Mem., vol. 1., p, 182.

[19]Galt, Life of Cardinal Wolsey, p. 193; Lond., 1846.

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He, perceiving my shadow upon the wall by his bedside, asked.... ‘What is it of the clock?’ ‘Forsooth, sir,’ said I, ‘it is past eight o’clock in the morning.’ ‘Eight of the clock?’ quoth he, ‘that cannot be,’ rehearsing divers times, ‘Eight of the clock, eight of the clock. Nay, nay,’ quoth he at last, ‘it cannot be eight of the clock, for by eight of the clock ye shall lose your master.’”[20] He survived all that day.

At six on Tuesday morning, Kingston, Lieutenant of the Tower, entered his chamber to inquire how he did? “Sir,” said he, “I tarry but the will and pleasure of God.” His intellect remained perfectly clear. “Be of good cheer,” rejoined Kingston. “Alas! Master Kingston,” replied the dying cardinal, “if I had served God as diligently as I have served the king, He would not have given me over thus in my gray hairs. Howbeit,” he added, “this is the just reward I must receive for all my worldly diligence and pains, only to satisfy his vain pleasure, not regarding my duty to God.”[21] Such was Wolsey’s judgment upon his own life.

He had but few minutes to live, and the use he made of them was to send a last message to his former master, on a matter that lay near his heart. “Master Kingston,” he said, “attend to my last request: tell the king that I conjure him in God’s name to destroy this new pernicious sect of Lutherans.... The king should know that if he tolerates heresy, God will take away his power.” Wolsey is the same man on his death-bed as when, sitting under the canopy of state, he had sent martyrs to the fire. His last breath is expended in fanning the torch of persecution in England. But now the faltering tongue and glazing eye told those around him that the last moment was come. “Incontinent,” says Cavendish, “the clock struck eight, and then gave he up the ghost,” leaving the attendants awe-struck at the strange fulfillment of the words, “By eight of the clock ye shall lose your master.” The corpse, decked out in Pontifical robes, with mitre and cross and ring, was put into a coffin of boards and carried into “Our Lady Chapel,” where the magistrates of Leicester were permitted to view the uncovered ghastly face, and satisfy themselves that the cardinal was really dead. A grave was hastily dug within the precincts of the abbey, wax tapers were kept burning all night round the bier, orisons were duly sung, and next morning, before daybreak, the coffin containing the body of the deceased legate was carried out, amidst funeral chants and flaring torches, and deposited in the place prepared for it. Dust to dust. The man who had filled England with his glory, and Europe with his fame, was left without tomb or epitaph to say, “Here lies Wolsey.”

[20]Cavendish, vol. 1., pp. 313, 314.

[21]Ibid., pp. 319, 320.

Chapter 8: Cranmer-Cromwell-The Papal Supremacy Abolished

The King at Waltham Abbey—A Supper—Fox and Gardiner Meet Cranmer—Conversation—New Light—Ask the Universities, What says the Bible?—The King and Cranmer—Cranmer Set to Work—Thomas Cromwell—advises the King to Throw off Dependence on the Pope—Henry Likes the Advice—resolves to Act upon it—takes Cromwell into his Service—The Whole Clergy held Guilty of Praemunire—Their Possessions and Benefices to be Confiscated—Alternative, Asked to Abandon the Papal Headship—Reasonings between Convocation and the King—Convocation Declares King Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England

Picture: View at Hampton Court

Picture: Arrival of Wolsey at the Abbey at Leicester

The Great Ruler brings forth men as he does the stars, each in his appointed time. We have just seen the bitterest, and certainly the most powerful enemy of Protestantism in all England, quit the stage; two men, destined to be eminently instrumental in advancing the cause of the Reformation, are about to step upon it.

The king, on his way from Grafton to London, halted at Waltham, Essex, to enjoy the chase in the neighboring forest. The court was too numerous to be all accommodated in the abbey, and two of the king’s servants-Gardiner his secretary, and Fox his almoner-were entertained in the house of a citizen of Waltham, named Cressy. At the supper-table they unexpectedly met a former acquaintance, a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. [390] His name was Thomas Cranmer, and the plague having broken out at Cambridge, he had now come hither with his two pupils, sons of the man at whose table the secretary and almoner found him. How perfectly accidental, and how entirely without significance seemed it, that these three men should that night sit at the same supper-table! and yet this meeting forms one of the grand turning-points in the destiny of England.

Thomas Cranmer was born (1489) at Alsacton, near Nottingham, of a family whose ancestors had come into England with the Conqueror.[1] He received his first lessons from an old and inflexibly severe priest, who taught him little besides submission to chastisement. On going to Cambridge his genius opened, and his powers of application became such that he declined no labor, however great, if necessary to the right solution of a question.

[1]Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, p. 1; Lond., 1694.-The residence of the Alsactons and Cranmers may still be traced, the site being marked by enormous earth-works. (Thorston and Throsby, Hist. of Nottinghamshire.)

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At this time the fame of the Lutheran controversy reached Cambridge, and Cranmer set himself to know on which side was the truth. He studied the Hebrew and Greek languages, that he might have access to the fountains of knowledge, for he felt that this was a controversy which must be determined by the Bible, and by it alone. After three years spent in the study of the Scriptures,[2] without commentaries or human helps of any kind, the darkness of scholasticism which till now had hung around him cleared away, and the simple yet majestic plan of salvation stood forth in glory before his eyes on the sacred page. Forty years had he passed in comparative seclusion, preparing, unsuspected by himself, for the great work he was to perform on the conspicuous stage to which he was to pass from this supper-table.

His two friends, who knew his eminent attainments in theology, directed the conversation so as to draw from him an opinion upon the question then occupying all men’s minds, the royal divorce. He spoke his sentiments frankly, not imagining that his words would be heard beyond the chamber in which they were uttered. “Why go to Rome?” he asked; “why take so long a road when by a shorter you may arrive at a more certain conclusion?” “What is that shorter road?” asked Gardiner and Fox. “The Scriptures,” replied Cranmer. “If God has made this marriage sinful the Pope cannot make it lawful.” “But how shall we know what the Scriptures say on the point?” inquired his two friends. “Ask the universities,” replied the doctor, “they will return a sounder verdict than the Pope.”

Two days afterwards the words of Cranmer were reported to the king. He eagerly caught them up, thinking he saw in them a way out of his difficulties. Henry had previously consulted the two English universities, but the question he had put to them was not the same which Cranmer proposed should be put to the universities of Christendom. What Henry had asked of Oxford and Cambridge was their own opinion of his marriage,-was it lawful? But the question which Cranmer proposed should be put to the universities of Europe was, What does the Bible say of such marriages? does it approve or condemn them? and, having got the sense of Scripture through the universities, he proposed that then the cause should be held as decided. This was to appeal the case from the Pope to God, from the Church to the Scriptures. With this idea Henry at once fell in, not knowing that it was the formal fundamental principle of Protestantism that he was about to act upon. Cranmer was immediately summoned to court; he was as reluctant as most men would have been forward to obey the order. He would have preferred the calm of a country parsonage to the splendors and perils of a court. The king was pleased with his modesty not less than with his learning and good sense, and commanded him to set immediately to work, and collect the opinions of the canonists and Papal jurists on the question whether his marriage was in accordance with, or contrary to, the laws of God. It was also resolved to consult the universities. Clement VII had cited the King of England to his bar: Henry would summon the Pope to the tribunal of Scripture.

While Cranmer is beginning his work, which is to give him the primatial mitre of England in the first place, and the higher glory of a stake in the end, we must mark the advent on the stage of public affairs of one destined to contribute powerful aid towards the emancipation of England from the Popedom. This man was Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell had commenced life in the English factory at Antwerp; he afterwards accompanied the German army to Italy as a military adventurer, where he served under Bourbon, and was present at the sack of Rome. He then returned to his native country and began the study of law. It was in this capacity that he became connected with Wolsey, whom he faithfully served, and whose fall, as we have seen, he helped to break. He had seen that Wolsey’s overthrow was largely owing to his subserviency to the Pope; he would make trial of the contrary road, and lift up England and England’s king above the haughty head that wore the tiara. Full of this idea he sought and obtained an interview with Henry. With great courage and clearness he put before the king the humiliations and embarrassments into which both Henry himself and his kingdom had been brought by dependence on the Pope. Who was the Pope, he asked, that he should be monarch of England? and who were the priests, that they should be above the law?

Why should not the king be master in his own house? why should he divide his power with a foreign bisHOP3 To lower the throne of England before the Papal chair, and to permit English causes to be tried at Italian tribunals, was only to be half a king, while the people of England were only half his subjects. Why should England impoverish herself by paying taxes to Rome? England at this moment was little else than a monster with two heads. Why should not the king declare himself the head of the Church within his own realm, and put the clergy on the same level with the rest of

[2]Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, p. 2.

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the king’s subjects? They swore, indeed, allegiance to the king, but they took a second oath to the Pope, which virtually annulled the first, and made them more the Pope’s subjects than they were the king’s. The king would add to his dignity, and advance the prosperity and glory of his realm, by putting an end to this state of things. Did he not live in an age when Frederick the Wise and other sovereigns were throwing off the Papal supremacy, and did it become England to crouch to a power which even the petty kingdoms of Germany were contemning?[3] The few minutes which it required to utter these courageous words had wrought a great revolution in the king’s views. Treading in the steps of his royal ancestors, he had acquiesced blindly in a state of things which had been handed down from remote ages; but the moment these anomalies and monstrous absurdities were pointed out to him he saw at once his true position; yet the king might not have so clearly seen it but for the preparation his mind had undergone from the perplexities and embarrassments into which his dependence on the Papacy had brought him.

Fixing a keen eye on the speaker, Henry asked him whether he could prove what he had now affirmed? Cromwell had anticipated the question, and was prepared with an answer. He pulled from his pocket a copy of the oath which every bishop swears at his consecration, and read it to the king. This was enough. Henry saw that he reigned but over his lay subjects, and only partially over them, while the clergy were wholly the liegemen of a foreign prince. If the affair of the divorce thwarted him in his affections, this other sorely touched his pride; and, with the tenacity and deter-ruination characteristic of him, Henry resolved to be rid of both annoyances.

Thus, by the constraining force of external causes, the policy of England was forming itself upon the two great fundamental principles of Protestantism. Cranmer had enunciated the religious principle that the Bible is above the Pope, and now Cromwell brings forward the political one that England is wholly an independent State, and owes no subjection to the Papacy. The opposites of these-that the Church is above the Scriptures, and the Popedom above England-were the twin fountains of the vassalage, spiritual and political, in which England was sunk in pre-Reformation times. The adoption of their opposites was Protestantism, and the prosecution of them was the Reformation. This by no means implies that the Reformation came from Henry VIII. The Reformation came from the two principles we have just stated, and which, handed down from the times of Wicliffe, were revived by the confessors and martyrs of the sixteenth century. Henry laid hold on these forces because they were the only ones that could enable him to gain the personal and dynastic objects at which he aimed. At the very time that he was making war on the Pope’s jurisdiction, he was burning those who had abandoned the Pope’s religion.

Whilst listening to Cromwell, astonishment mingled with the delight of the king: a new future seemed to be rising before himself and his kingdom, and Cromwell proceeded to point out the steps by which he would realize the great objects with which he had inspired him. The clergy, he showed him, were in his power already. Cardinal Wolsey had pleaded guilty to the infraction of the law of Praemunire, but the guilt of the cardinal was the guilt of the whole body of the clergy, for all of them had submitted to the Legantine authority. All therefore had incurred the penalties of Praemunire; their persons and property were in the power of the king, and Henry must extend pardon to them only on condition of their vesting in himself the supremacy of the Church of England, now lodged in the Pope. The king saw his path clearly, and with all the impetuosity and energy of his character he addressed himself to the prosecution of it. He aimed mainly at the Pope, but he would begin at home; the foreign thralldom would fall all the more readily that the home servitude was first cast off. Taking his ring from his finger, and giving it to the bold and resolute man who stood before him, the king made Cromwell a Privy Councilor, and bade him consider himself his servant in the great and somewhat hazardous projects which had been concocted between them.

Vast changes rapidly followed in the State and Church of England. The battle was begun in Parliament. This assembly met on November 3rd, 1529, and instantly began their complaints of the exactions which the clergy imposed on the laity. The priests demanded heavy sums for the probate of wills and mortuaries; they acted as stewards to bishops; they occupied farms; abbots and friars traded in cloth and wool; many lived in noblemen’s houses instead of residing on their livings, and the consequence was that “the poor had no refreshing,” and the parishioners “lacked preaching and instruction in God’s Word.”[4] Such were

[3]Apologia Regin. Poli ad Carolum V-Poli Epistolae, vol. 1., pp. 120,121.

[4]Strype, Eccl. Mem., vol. 1., p. 204.

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the complaints of the Commons against the clerical estate, at that time the most powerful in England, since the nobility had been weakened by the wars, and the Commons were dispersed and without union. This most unwanted freedom with sacred men and things on the part of the laity exceedingly displeased Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. The prelate rebuked them in an angry speech in the Lords, saying “that the Commons would nothing now but down with the Church,” and that all this “came of want of faith.”[5]

His brethren, however, deemed it wiser policy to allay the storm that was rising in Parliament against the Church, at the cost of some concessions. On the 12th of November it was decreed by Convocation that priests should no longer keep shops or taverns, play at dice or other forbidden games, pass the night in suspected places, be present at disreputable shows, go about with sporting dogs, or with hawks, falcons, or other birds of prey on their fists. These and other acts of a yet grosser sort were subjected to heavy fines; and laws were also enacted against unnatural vices.[6]

The Commons urged forward their attack. Their next complaint was of the laws and constitutions of the clergy. The Commons affirmed that their provincial constitutions made in the present reign encroached upon the royal prerogative, and were also burdensome to the laity. In this matter the Parliament carried fully with it the sympathy of the king. He felt the great presumption of the clergy in making orders, of the nature of laws, to bind his subjects, and executing them without his assent or authority. The clergy stood stoutly to their defense in this matter, pleading long prescription, and the right lodged in them by God for the government of the Church. But, replied the Commons, this spiritual legislation is stretched over so many temporal matters, that under the pretext of ruling the Church you govern the State. Feeling both the nation and the throne against them, and dreading impending mischief, the Convocation of the Province, of Canterbury prepared an humble submission, and sent it to the king, in which they promised, for the future, to forbear to make ordinances or constitutions, or to put them in execution, unless with the king’s consent and license.[7]

The way being so far prepared by these lesser attacks, the great battle was now commenced. To lop off a few of the branches of the Pontifical supremacy did not content Henry; he would cut down that evil tree to the root; he would lay the axe to the whole system of ecclesiastical legislation under a foreign prince, and he would himself become the Head of the Church of England. On the 7th of January, 1531, Cromwell, obeying Henry’s orders, entered the Hall of Convocation, and quietly took his seat among the bishops. Rising, he struck them dumb by informing them that they had all been cast in the penalties of Praemunire. When and how, they amazedly asked, had they violated that statute? They were curtly informed that their grave offense had been done in Cardinal Wolsey, and that in him too had they acknowledged their guilt. But, they pleaded, the king had sanctioned the cardinal’s exercise of his Legantine powers. This, the bishops were told, did not in the least help them; the law was clear; their violation of it was equally clear. The king within his dominions has no earthly superior, such had from ancient times-that is, from the days of Wicliffe; for it was the spirit of Wicliffe that was about to take hold of the priests-been the law of England; that law the cardinal had transgressed, and only by obtaining the king’s pardon had he escaped the consequences of his presumption. But they had not been pardoned by the king; they were under the penalties of Praemunire, and their possessions and benefices were confiscated to the crown. This view of the matter was maintained with an astuteness that convinced the affrighted clergy that nothing they could say would make the matter be viewed in a different light in the highest quarter. They stood, they felt, on a precipice. The king had thrown down the gauntlet to the Church. The battle on which they were entering was a hard one, and its issue doubtful. To yield was to disown the Pope, the fountain of their being as a Romish Church, and to resist might be to incur the wrath of the monarch.

The king, through Cromwell, next showed them the one and only way of escape open to them from the Praemunire in the toils of which they had been so unexpectedly caught. They must acknowledge him to be the Head of the Church of England. To smooth their way and make this hard alternative the easier, Cromwell reminded them that the Convocation of Canterbury had on a recent occasion styled the king Caput Ecclesiae-Head of the Church-and that they had only to do always what they had done once, and make the title perpetual.[8] But, responded the bishops, by Ecclesiae we did not intend the Church of England, but the Church universal, spread over all Christendom. To this

[5]Herbert, p. 321.

[6]Wilkins, Concilia, vol. 3., p. 717 et seq.

[7]Strype, Eccl. Mem., vol. 1., pp. 204-206.-Act 25 Henry VIII, cap. 19.

[8]Strype, Eccl. Mem., vol. 1., p. 211.

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the ready answer was that the present controversy was touching the Church of England, and it alone, and the clergy of the same.[9] But, replied the bishops, Christ is Head of the Church, and he has divided his power into temporal and spiritual, giving the first branch to princes and the second to priests. The command, “Obey and be subject,” said the king, does not restrict the obedience it enjoins to temporal things only; it is laid on all men, lay and clerical, who together compose the Church. Proofs from Scripture were next adduced by the clergy that Christ had committed the administration of spiritual things to Priests only, as for instance preaching and the dispensation of the Sacrament.[10] No man denies that, replied the king, but it does not prove that their persons and deeds are not under the jurisdiction of the prince. Princes, said the bishops, are called filii Ecclesiae-sons of the Church. The Pope is their father, and the Head of the Church; to recognize the king as such would be to overthrow the Catholic faith. The debate lasted three days.

The Bishops of Lincoln and Exeter were deputed to beg an interview with the king, in order to entreat him to relinquish his claim. They were denied access into the royal presence. The clergy showed no signs of yielding; still less did the king. The battle was between Henry and Clement; for to give this title to the king was to dethrone the Pope. It was a momentous time for England. In no previous age could such a contest have been waged by the throne; it would not even have been raised; but the times were ripe

- although even now the issue was doubtful. The primate Warham,prudent, and now very aged, rose and proposed that they should style the king “Head of the Church” quantum per legem Christi licet-so far as the law of Christ permits. Henry, on first hearing of it, stormed at the proposed modification of his powers; but his courtiers satisfied him that the clause would offer no interference in practice, and that meanwhile it would prevent an open rupture with Rome. It was not so easy, however, to bring the other side to accept this apparent compromise. The little clause would be no effective bulwark against Henry’s aggression. His supremacy and the Pope’s supremacy could not stand together, and they clearly saw which would go to the wall. But they despaired of making better terms. The primate rose in Convocation, and put the question, “Do you acknowledge the king as your supreme head so far as the law of Christ allows?” Not a member spoke. “Speak your minds freely,” said Warham. The silence was unbroken. “ThenI shall understand that, as you do not oppose, you give consent.”[11] The silence continued; and that silence was accepted as a vote in the affirmative. Thus it passed in the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury that the king was the Supreme Head of the Church of England. A few months later the same thing was enacted in the Convocation of the Province of York. On the 22nd March, 1532, Warham signed the submission which was sent in to the king, styling him “Protector and Supreme Head of the Church of England.” A subsidy of L100,000 from the clergy of the Province of Canterbury, and L18,000 from those of York, accompanied the document, and the king was pleased to release them from the penalties of Praemunire. This great revolution brought deliverance to the State from a degrading foreign thralldom: that it conferred on the Church an equal measure of freedom we are not prepared to say.

[9]Strype, Eccl. Mem., vol. 1., p. 211.

[10]Ibid.

[11]Collier, vol. 2.

Chapter 9: The King Declared Head of the Church of England

Abolition of Appeals to Rome—Payment of Annats, etc—Bishops to be Consecrated without a License from Rome—Election to Vacant Sees—The King declared Head of the Church—Henry VIII Undoes the Work of Gregory VII—The Divorce—The Appeal to the Universities—Their Judgment—Divorce Condemned by the Reformers—Death of Warham—Cranmer made Primate—Martyrdom of Fryth—The King Marries Anne Boleyn—Her Coronation—Excommunication of Henry VIII—Birth of Elizabeth—Cambridge and Oxford on the Pope’s Power in England—New Translation of the Bible—Visitation of the Monasteries—Their Suppression—Frightful Disorders

Picture: Fisher: Bishop of Rochester

Picture: The Coronation Procession of Anne Boleyn to Westminster Abbey

The supremacy of the Pope formed the rampart that protected the ecclesiastical usurpations which flourished so rankly in England, to the oppression of the people, and the weakening of the royal prerogative. [396] Now that a breach had been made in that bulwark, the abuses that had grown up behind it were attacked and abolished one after the other. Causes were no longer carried to Rome.[1] The king, as Head of the Church, had become the fountain of both civil and spiritual justice to his subjects. No one could be cited before any ecclesiastical court out of his own diocese. Twenty years was fixed as the term during which estates might be left to priests for praying souls out of purgatory. The lower orders of priests were made answerable before the civil tribunals for murder, felony, and other crimes of which they might be accused.[2] The payment of annats and first-fruits to the Pope, by which an enormous amount of money had been carried out of England, was abolished.[3] The religious orders were forbidden to receive foreign visitors, on the ground that these functionaries came, not to reform the houses of the clergy, but to discover the secrets of the king, and to rob the country of its wealth. The purchase of faculties from Rome was declared unlawful, and no one was permitted to go abroad to any Synod or Council without the royal permission. The law of Henry IV was repealed, by which heretics might be burned on the sentence and by the authority of the bishop, and without a writ from the king. The stake was not yet abolished as the punishment of heresy, but the power of adjudging to it was restricted to a less arbitrary and, it might be, more merciful tribunal. As we have stated in a former chapter, the power exercised by the clergy of making canons was taken from them. This privilege had been greatly abused. These canons, being enforced upon the people by the clergy, had really the force of law; and as they were often infringements of the constitution, and expressed mostly the will of the Pope, they were the substitution of a foreign and usurped authority for the legitimate rule of the king and the Parliament. A commission of thirty-two persons, sixteen of whom were ecclesiastics, and the other sixteen laymen, was appointed by the crown to examine the old canons and constitutions, and to abrogate those that were contrary to the statutes of the realm or prejudicial to the prerogative-royal.[4] A new body of ecclesiastical laws was framed, composed of such of the old canons as being unexceptionable were retained, and the new constitutions which the commission was empowered to enact. This was a favorite project of Cranmer’s, which he afterwards renewed in the reign of Edward VI.

It was foreseen that this policy, which was daily widening the breach between England and Rome, might probably in the end bring upon the nation excommunication and interdict. These fulminations had lost the terrors that once in vested them; nevertheless, their infliction might, even yet, occasion no little inconvenience. Arrangements were accordingly made to permit the whole religious services of the country to proceed without let or hindrance, even should the Pope pronounce sentence of interdict. It was enacted (March, 1534) that no longer should the consecration of bishop, or the administration of rite, or the performance of any religious act wait upon the pleasure of the Bishop of Rome. The English bishops were to have power to consecrate without a license from the Pope. It was enacted that when a bishopric became vacant, the king should send to the chapter a conge d’elire, that is, leave to elect a new bishop, accompanied by a letter indicating the person on whom the choice of the chapter was to fall. If no election was made within twelve days, the king was to nominate to

[1]Act 24 Henry VIII, cap. 12.

[2]Act 23 Henry VIII, cap. 9, 10, 11.

[3]Ibid., cap. 20, Burnet, vol. 1., bk. 2., p. 117.

[4]Act 25 Henry VIII, cap. 19.

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the see by letters-patent. After the bishop-elect had taken an oath of fealty to the king, his Majesty, by letters to the archbishop, might order the consecration; and if the persons whose duty it was to elect and to consecrate delayed the performance of these functions above twenty days, they incurred the penalty of a Praemunire.[5] It was forbidden henceforward for archbishop or bishop to be nominated or confirmed in his see by the Pope.

This legislation was completed by the Act passed in next session of Parliament (November-December, 1534).[6] Convocation, as we have seen, declared Henry Head of the Church. “For corroboration and confirmation thereof,” be it enacted, said the Parliament, “that the king, his heirs, etc., shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesiae, and shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm, as well the title and style thereof, as all honors, dignities, immunities, etc., pertaining to the said dignity of Supreme Head of the said Church.” A later[7] Act set forth the large measure of ecclesiastical jurisdiction lodged in the king. “Whereas his Majesty,” said Parliament, “is justly Supreme Head, etc., and hath full authority to correct and punish all manner of heresies, schisms, errors, vices, and to exercise all other manner of jurisdictions, commonly called ecclesiastical jurisdiction” it is added, “That the archbishops and bishops have no manner of jurisdiction ecclesiastical but by, under, and from the Royal Majesty.”[8]

Thus did Henry VIII undo the work of Gregory VII. Hildebrand had gone to war that he might have the power of appointing to all the sees of Christendom. Not a mitre would he permit to be worn unless he himself had placed it on the head of its possessor; nor would he give consecration to any one till first he had sworn him to “defend the regalities of St. Peter.” From his chair at Rome, Gregory was thus able to govern Europe, for not a bishop was there in all Christendom whom he had not by this oath chained to his throne, and through the bishops, the kings and their nations. It was this terrible serfdom which Henry VIII rose up against and broke in pieces, so far as his own Kingdom of England was concerned. The appointment of English bishops he wrested from the Pope, and took into his own hands, and the oath which he administered to those whom he placed in these sees bound them to fealty, not to the chair of Peter, but to the throne of England. As against the usurped foreign authority which the King of England now scornfully trod into the dust, surely Henry did well in being master in his own house. The dignity of his crown and the interests of his subjects alike demanded it. It is in this light that we look at the act; and taking it per se, there can be no doubt that Henry, in thus securing perfect freedom for the exercise of the prerogatives and jurisdictions of his kingly office, did a wise, a just, and a proper thing.

While this battle was waging in Parliament, the matter of the divorce had been progressing towards a final settlement. In the end of 1529, as we have already mentioned, it was resolved to put to the universities of Christendom the question, “What says the Bible on the marriage of the king with Catherine, his brother’s widow?” Henry would let the voice of the universal Church, rather than the Pope, decide the question. The universities of Cambridge and Oxford, by majorities, declared the marriage unlawful, and approved the divorce. The Sorbonne at Paris declared, by a large majority, in favor of the divorce. The four other universities of France voted on the same side. England and France were with Henry VIII. The king’s agents, crossing the Alps, set foot on the doubtful soil of Italy. After the Sorbonne, the most renowned university of the Roman Catholic world was that of Bologna. To the delight of Henry, Bologna declared in his favor. So too did the universities of Padua and Ferrara. Italy was added to the list of countries favorable to the King of England. The envoys of Henry next entered the territories of the Reformation, Switzerland and Germany. If Romanism was with Henry, much more will Protestantism be so. To the king’s amazement, it is here that he first encounters opposition.[9] All the reforming doctors, including Luther, Calvin, and Oecolampadius, were against the divorce. The king has sinned in the past by contracting this marriage, said they, but he will sin in the future if he shall dissolve it. The less cannot be expiated by the greater sin: it is repentance, not divorce, to which the king ought to have recourse. Meanwhile, Cranmer had been sent to Rome to win over the Pope. A large number of the Roman Catholic nobles also wrote to Clement, beseeching him to grant the wishes of Henry; but the utmost length to which the Pope would go was to permit the King of England to have two wives.[10]

[5]Act 25 Henry VIII, cap. 20. Burnet, vol. 1, bk. 2, p. 148.

[6]Act 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1.

[7]Act 37 Henry VIII, cap. 17.

[8]Burnet, vol. 1., bk. 2., p. 157.

[9]Burnet, vol. 1., bk. 2.; Records, p. 88.

[10]“Pontifex secreto, veluti rem quam magni faceret, mihi proposuit conditionem hujusmodi Concedi posse vestrae Majestati ut duas uxores habeat.” (Original Despatch of De Cassali-Herbert, p. 330.)

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In the midst of these negotiations, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all England, died. The king resolved to place Dr. Thomas Cranmer in the vacant see. The royal summons found Cranmer in Nuremberg, whither he had been sent after his return from Rome on the business of the divorce. Cranmer, learning through his friends that this urgent recall was in order to his elevation to the primacy, was in no haste to return. The prospect of filling such a post under so imperious a monarch as Henry, and in times big with the most portentous changes, filled him with alarm. But the king had resolved that Cranmer should be primate, and sent a second and more urgent message to hasten his return. On his appearance before the king, Cranmer stated the difficulties in his path, namely, the double oath which all bishops were accustomed to take at consecration-the one to the Pope, the other to the king. The doctor did not see how he could swear fidelity to both. It was ultimately arranged that he should take the oath to the Pope under a protest “that he did not bind himself to do anything contrary to the laws of God, the rights of the King of England, and the laws of the realm,” and that he should not be hindered in executing such reformation as might be needed in the Church of England. This protest he repeated three times[11]-first, in the Chapter-house of Westminster; next, on the steps of the high altar of the cathedral, in presence of the assembled clergy and people; thirdly, when about to put on the pall and receive consecration. After this he took the oath to the Pope. It was love of the Gospel which impelled Cranmer to advance: it was the divorce that urged onward Henry VIII. The imperious monarch was carrying on two wars at the same time. He was striving to clear his kingdom of the noxious growth of Papal bulls and prerogatives that so covered and deformed it, and he was fighting to prevent the entrance of Lutheranism. Hardly had the mitre been placed on his brow when Cranmer had to thrust himself between a disciple and the stake. Leaving Tyndale in the Low Countries, John Fryth came across, and began to preach from house to house in England. He was tracked by Sir Thomas More, who had received the Great Seal when it was taken from Wolsey, and thrown into the Tower, heavily loaded with irons. His main crime, in the eyes of his enemies, was the denial of transubstantiation. The king nominated six of the temporal and spiritual peers, of whom Cranmer was one, to examine him. The power of the stake had just been taken from the bishops, and Fryth was destined to be the first martyr under the king. Cranmer, who still believed in consubstantiation, loved Fryth, and wished to save his life, that his great erudition and rare eloquence might profit the realm in days to come; but all his efforts were ineffectual. Fryth mounted the stake (4th July, 1533), and his heroic death did much to advance the progress of the Reformation in England.

About the time that the martyr was expiring at the stake, the Pope was excommunicating the King of England. Fortified with the opinion of the universities, and the all but unanimous approval of the more eminent of the Roman Catholic doctors, Henry married Anne Boleyn on the 25th of January, 1533.[12] On the 10th of May, the Archbishop of Canterbury, having received the royal license to that effect, constituted his court to judge the cause. Queen Catherine was summoned to it, but her only response to the citation was, “I am the king’s lawful wife, I will accept no judge but the Pope.” On the 23rd of May, the primate, attended by all the archiepiscopal court, gave sentence, declaring “the marriage between our sovereign lord King Henry, and the most serene lady Catherine, widow of his brother, having been contracted contrary to the law of God, null and void.”[13] On the 28th of May, the same court declared that Henry and Anne had been lawfully wedded. The union, ratified by the ecclesiastical court, was on Whitsunday sealed by the pomp of a splendid coronation. On the previous day, Anne passed from the Tower to Westminster, through streets gay with banners and hung with cloth of gold, seated in a beautifully white gold-bespangled litter, her head encircled with a wreath of precious stones, while the blare of trumpets and the thunder of cannon mingled their roar with the acclamations of the enthusiastic citizens. Next day, in the presence of the rank and beauty of England, and the ambassadors of foreign States, the crown was put upon her head by the hand of Archbishop Cranmer.

Hardly had the acclamations that hailed Anne’s coronation died away, when the distant murmurs of a coming tempest were heard. The affronted emperor, Charles V, called on the Pope to unsheathe

[11]Wilkins, Concilia, vol. 3., p. 757.

[12]Such is the date of the marriage given in Cranmer’s letter of 17th June, 1533. Hall, Holinshed, and Burner give the 15th of November, 1532.

[13]Wilkins, Concilia, vol. 3., p. 759.

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the spiritual sword, and smite the monarch who had added the sin of an adulterous union to the crime of rebellion against the Papal chair. The weak Clement dared not refuse. The conclave met, and after a month’s deliberation, on the 12th of July, the Pope pronounced excommunication upon the King of England, but suspended the effect of the sentence till the end of September. He hoped that the king’s repentance would avert execution. Henry had crossed the Rubicon. He could not put away Anne Boleyn, he could not take back Catherine, he could not blot from the statute-book the laws against Papal usurpations recently placed upon it, and restore in former glory the Pontifical dominion in his realm, so he appealed to a General Council, and posted up the document on the doors of all the parish churches of England.

While the days of grace allotted to the king were running out, a princess was born in the royal palace of Greenwich. The infant was named Elizabeth. The king was disappointed that a son had not been born to him; but the nation rejoiced, and Henry would have more heartily shared his people’s joy, could he have foreseen the glory that was to surround the throne and name of the child that had just seen the light.

On the 7th of April, news reached England that the Pope had pronounced the final sentence of interdict. Clement VII, “having invoked the name of Christ, and sitting on the throne of justice,” declared the dispensation of Julius II valid, the marriage with Anne Boleyn null, the king excommunicate, his subjects released from their allegiance, and the Emperor Charles V was empowered, failing the submission of Henry, to invade England and depose the king.

Nothing could have been better; if Henry was disposed to halt, this compelled him to go on. “What authority,” asked the king of his doctors and wise councilors, “has the Pope to do all this? Who made a foreign priest lord of my realm, and master of my crown, so that he may give or take them away as it pleases him? Inquire, and tell me.” In obedience to the royal mandate, they studied the laws of Scripture, they searched the records of antiquity, and the statutes of the realm, and came again to the king. “The Pontiff of Rome, sire, has no authority at all in England.”[14] It was on the 3rd of November of the same year that the crowning statute was passed, as we have already narrated, which declared the king to be on earth the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

As the Pontifical authority departs, that of the Word of God enters England. We have just seen the Church and realm emancipated from the dominion of Rome; the first act of the liberated Church was to enfranchise the people. Cranmer moved in Convocation that an address be presented to the king for an English translation of the Bible. The Popish party, headed by Dr. Gardiner, opposed the motion, on the ground that the use of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue promoted the spread of heresy. But in spite of their opposition, the proposal was adopted by Convocation. The king-influenced, there is little doubt, by his new queen, who was friendly to the Reformed opinions, and had in her possession a copy of Tyndale’s interdicted translation-acceded to the request of Convocation. The great principle had been conceded of the right of the people to possess the Bible in their mother tongue, and the duty of the Church to give it to them. Nevertheless, the bishops refused to aid in translating it.[15] Miles Coverdale was called to the task, and going to the Low Countries, the whole Bible was rendered into English, with the aid of Tyndale, and published in London in 1536, dedicated to Henry VIII.

The next step in the path on which the king and nation had entered was the visitation of the monasteries. Cromwell was authorized by the king to appoint commissioners to visit the abbeys, monasteries, nunneries, and universities of the kingdom, and to report as to the measures necessary to reform these establishments.[16] Henry had powerful political motives urging him to this measure. He had been excommunicated: Charles V might invade his kingdom; and should that happen, there was not a confraternity of monks in all England who would not take advantage of their release from allegiance by the Pope, to join the standard of the invader. It was only prudent to disarm them before the danger arose, and divert part of the treasures, spent profitlessly now, in fortifying his kingdom. Neither Henry nor any one else, when the commission of inquiry was issued, foresaw the astounding disclosures that were to follow, and which left the Parliament no alternative but to abolish what could not be cured.

The Report of the Commissioners was presented to the Commons at their meeting on the 4th of February, 1536. It is not our intention to dwell

[14]Romanus Pontifex non habet a Deo in sacra scriptura concessam sibi majorem auctoritatem ac jurisdictionem in hoc regno Angliae quam quivis alius episcopus externus.” (Decision of University of Cambridge, 2nd May, 1534.) A precisely similar answer came from Oxford.

[15]See Supplication of the Poor Commons to the King-Strype, Eccles. Mem., vol 1, bk. 1., chap. 53.

[16]Strype, Eccles. Mem., vol. 1., p. 329 18

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on the horrors that shocked the nation when the veil was lifted. The three foundations, or cardinal virtues, which these institutions had been established to exemplify, were obedience, poverty, and chastity. They illustrated their obedience by raising themselves above the laws of the realm; their poverty by filling their houses with gold and silver and precious raiment; and their chastity by practices which we leave other historians to describe. Nowhere was holiness so conspicuously absent as in these holy houses. “There were found in them,” says one, “not seven, but more than 700,000 deadly sins. Alack! my heart maketh all my members to tremble, when I remember the abominations that were there tryed out. O Lord God! what canst thou answer to the five cities, confounded with celestial fire, when they shall allege before thee the iniquities of those religious, whom thou hast so long supported? In the dark and sharp prisons there were found dead so many of their brethren that it is a wonder: some crucified with more torments than ever were heard of, and some famished to death only for breaking their superstitious silences, or some like trifles. No, truly, the monstrous lives of monks, friars, and nuns have destroyed their monasteries and churches, and not we.”[17]

The king and Parliament had started with the idea of reformation: they now saw that abolition only could meet the case. It was resolved to suppress all the religious houses the income of which did not exceed 200 pounds a year, and to confiscate their lands to the king, to be devoted to other and better uses.[18] The number of smaller houses thus dissolved was 376, and their annual revenue 32,000 pounds, besides 100,000 pounds in plate and money. Four years later all the larger abbeys and priories were either surrendered to the king or suppressed. The preamble of the Act set forth that “the churches, farms, and lands had been made a spoil of,” and that though now for 200 years it had been sought to cure “this unthrifty, carnal, abominable living,” no amendment appeared, “but their vicious living shamefully increaseth.” Indeed, many of these houses did not wait till sentence of dissolution had been pronounced upon them: they sought by a voluntary surrender to anticipate that sentence, and avert the revelation of the deeds that had been enacted in them. It is worthy of remark that twenty-six mitred abbots sat as barons in the Parliament in which this Act was passed; and the number of spiritual peers was in excess of the lay members in the Upper Houses.[19] In Yorkshire, where the monks had many sympathizers, who regarded the dissolution of their houses as at once an impiety and a robbery, this much-needed reformation provoked an insurrection which at first threatened to be formidable, but was eventually suppressed without much difficulty.

Some few of the monasteries continued to the close to fulfil the ends of their institution. They cultivated a little learning, they practiced a little medicine, and they exercised a little charity. The orphan and the outcast found asylum within their walls, and the destitute and the decayed tradesman participated in the alms which were distributed at their threshold. The traveller, when he heard the vesper bell, turned aside to sleep in safety under their roof, and again set forth when the morning star appeared. But the majority of these places had scandalously perverted their ways, and were simply nurseries of superstition and indolence, and of all the evils that are born of these two. Nevertheless, the immediate consequence of their dissolution was a frightful confusion in England. Society was disjointed by the shock. The monks and nuns were turned adrift without any sufficient provision. Those who had been beggars before were now plunged into deeper poverty. Thefts, murders, treasons abounded, and executions were multiplied in the same proportion. “Seventy-two thousand persons are said to have perished by the hand of the executioner in the reign of King Henry.”[20] The enormous amount of wealth in the form of lands, houses, and money, that now changed hands, added to the convulsion. Cranmer and Latimer pleaded that the confiscated property should be devoted to such purposes as were consonant with its original sacred character, such as lectureships in theology, hospitals for the sick and poor, and institutions for the cultivation of learning and the training of scholars; but they pleaded in vain. The courtiers of the king ran off with nearly the whole of this wealth; and the uses to which they put it profited neither the welfare of their families, nor the good order of the kingdom. The consequences of tolerating an evil system fall heaviest on the generation that puts an end to it. So was it now; but by-and-by, when order had emerged out of the chaos, it was found that the cause of industry of virtue, and of good government had greatly benefited by the dissolution of the monasteries.

[17]Strype, Eccles. Mem., vol. 1., book 1., chapter 34.

[18]Act 27 Henry VIII, chapter 28.

[19]The Report of the Commission has gone a-missing. Its substance, however, may be gathered from the preamble of the Act, from which our quotations in the text are taken, and also from the copious extracts in Strype’s Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. i., p. 399 et seq.; from the Cotton MSS., Cleopatra E 4, etc.

[20]Blunt, p. 142.

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Chapter 10: Scaffolds-Death of Henry VIII

Executions for Denying the King’s Supremacy—Bishop Fisher—Sir Thomas More—Execution of Queen Anne Boleyn—Henry’s Policy becomes more Popish—The Act of the Six Articles—Persecution under it—The Martyr Lambert—Act Permitting the Reading of the Bible—A Bible in Every Church—The Institution of a Christian Man—The Necessary Erudition of a Christian Man—The Primer—Trial and Martyrdom of Anne Askew—Henry VIII Dies

Picture: Reduced Facsimile of the Titlepage of the Great Bible

We come now within the shadow of very tragic events. Numerous scaffolds been to deform this part of the history of England, the guilt of which must be shared between Clement VII, who threatened the kingdom with invasion, and Henry VIII, who rigorously pressed the oath of supremacy upon every man of importance among his subjects. The heads of the religious houses were summoned with the rest to take the oath. These persons had hitherto been exempt from secular obedience, and they refused to acknowledge any authority that put itself, as the royal supremacy did, above the Pope. The Prior of Charterhouse and some of his monks were tried and convicted for refusing the oath, and on the 4th of May, 1535, they were executed as traitors at Tyburn. Certain friars who had taken part in the northern rebellion were hung in chains at York. The Pope having released all his Majesty’s subjects from their allegiance, to refuse the oath of supremacy was regarded as a disowning of the king, and punished as treason.

But amid the crowd of scaffolds now rising in England-some for refusing the oath of supremacy, and others for denying transubstantiation-there are three that specially attract our notice, and move our sorrow, though not in equal degree. The first is that of Dr. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. He was a man of seventy-seven, and refusing to take the oath of supremacy, he was committed to the Tower. He had been there a year when the Pope, by an unseasonable honour, hastened his fate. Paul III sent him a red hat, which when the king learned, he swore that if he should wear it, it would be on his shoulders, for he should leave him never a head. He was convicted of treason, and executed on the 22nd June, 1535. This prelate had illustrated his exalted station by a lowly deportment, and he attested the sincerity of his belief by his dignified behavior on the scaffold. The next was a yet nobler victim, Sir Thomas More, the flower of English scholars. His early detestation of monks had given place to a yet greater detestation of heretics, and this man of beautiful genius and naturally tender sensibilities had sunk into the inquisitor. He had already been stripped of the seals as chancellor, and in the private station into which he had retired he tried to avoid offense on the matter of the supremacy. But all his circumspection could not shield him from the suspicions of his former master. More was asked to take the oath of supremacy, but declined, and after languishing a year in prison, on the 6th of July, 1535, he was led to Tower Hill, and beheaded.

And now comes the noblest victim of all, she whom, but three short years before, the king took by the hand, and leading her up the steps of his throne, placed beside himself as queen. The same gates and the same chamber in the Tower which had sent forth the beautiful and virtuous Anne Boleyn to be crowned, now open to receive her as a prisoner. Among her maids of honour was one “who had all the charms both of youth and beauty in her person; and her humor was tempered between the severe gravity of Queen Catherine, and the gay pleasantness of Queen Anne.”[1] Jane Seymour, for such was her name, had excited a strong but guilty passion in the heart of Henry. He resolved to clear his way to a new marriage by the axe. The upright Cranmer was at this time banished the court, and there was not another man in the nation who had influence or courage to stop the king in his headlong course. All befit to a tyranny that had now learned to tread into the dust whatever opposed it, and which deemed the slightest resistance a crime so great that no virtue, no learning, no former service could atone for it. The king, feigning to believe that his bed had been dishonored, threw his queen into the Tower. At her trial on the 15th of May, 1536, she was left entirely unbefriended, and was denied even the help of counsel. Her corrupt judges found her guilty on evidence which was discredited then, and which no one believes now.[2] On the 19th of May, a little

[1]Herbert, book 3., p. 196.

[2]Her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, her bitterest enemy, pronounced the sentence, on hearing which she raised her eyes to heaven, and exclaimed, “Oh, Father and Creator! oh, Thou who art the way, and the truth, and the life! Thou knowest that I have not deserved this death.” (Meteren, History des Pays Bas, p. 21.)

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before noon, she was brought on the scaffold and beheaded. “Her body was thrown into a common chest of elm tree that was made to put arrows in, and was buried in the chapel within the Tower before twelve o’clock.”[3] The alleged accomplices of Anne quickly followed her to the scaffold, and though some of them had received a promise of life on condition of tendering criminatory evidence, it was thought more prudent to put all of them to death. Dead men can make no recantations. Henry passed a day in mourning, and on the morrow married Jane Seymour.

We have reached a turning-point in the life and measures of Henry VIII. He had vindicated his prerogative by abolishing the Pope’s supremacy, and he had partially replenished his exchequer by suppressing the monasteries, and he resolved to pause at the line he had now reached. He had fallen into “a place where two seas met:” the Papacy buffeted him on the one side, Lutheranism on the other; and the more he strove to stem the current of the old, the more he favored the advancing tide of the new. He would place himself in equilibrium, he would be at rest; but this he found impossible. The Popish party regained their ascendency. Cromwell, who had been Henry’s adviser in the assault on the supremacy and the despoiling of the monasteries, was sent (28th July, 1540) to die on a scaffold.[4] Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, an ambitious and intriguing man, devoted to the old religion, took the place of the fallen minister in the royal councils. The powerful family of the Howards, with whom the king was about to form an alliance-Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves being already both out of the way-threw their influence on the same side, and the tyranny of the king became henceforth more truculent, and his victims more numerous. If Henry had quarreled with the Pope, he would show Christendom that he had not apostatized from the Roman Catholic faith, that he cherished no inclination towards Lutheranism, and that he was not less deserving now of the proud title of “Defender of the Faith” than he had been on the day when the conclave voted it to him. What perhaps helped to make the king veer round, and appear to be desirous of buttressing the cause which he had seemed so lately desirous only to destroy, was the fact that Paul III had confirmed and re-fulminated against him the bull of excommunication which Clement VII had pronounced, and the state of isolation in which he found himself on the Continent made it prudent not further to provoke the Popish Powers till the storm should be over.

Accordingly there was now passed the Act of the Six Articles, “the lash with the six strings,” as it was termed. The first enacted the doctrine of transubstantiation; the second withheld the Cup from the laity; the third prohibited priests from marrying; the fourth made obligatory the vow of celibacy; the fifth upheld private masses for souls in purgatory; and the sixth declared auricular confession expedient and necessary. This creed, framed by the “Head of the Church” for the people of England, was a very compendious one, and was thoroughly Roman. The penalties annexed were sufficiently severe. He who should deny the first article, transubstantiation namely, was to be burned at the stake, and they who should impugn the others were to be hanged as felons; and lands and goods were to be forfeited alike by the man who died by the rope as by him who died by the fire.[5] These articles were first proposed in Convocation, where Cranmer used all his influence and eloquence to prevent their passing. He was out-voted by the lower clergy. When they came before Parliament, again Cranmer argued three days together against them, but all in vain. The king requested the archbishop to retire from the House before the vote was taken, but Cranmer chose rather to disoblige the monarch than desert the cause of truth. It was to the credit of the king that, instead of displeasure, he notified his approval of the fidelity and constancy of Cranmer-the one courageous man in a pusillanimous Parliament. It was soon seen that this Act was to draw after it very tragic consequences. Latimer, now Bishop of Worcester, and Shaxton, Bishop of Salisbury, were both thrown into prison, and they were soon followed by 500 others. Commissioners were appointed to carry out the Act, and they entered upon their work with such zeal that the prisons of London were crowded with men suspected of heresy. The Act was applied to offenses that seemed to lie beyond its scope, and which certainly were not violations of its letter. Absence from church, the neglect of the use of the rosary, the refusal to creep on one’s knees to the cross on Good Friday, the eating of meat on interdicted days, and

[3]Herbert, book 3., p. 205.-The judgment pronounced in court by Cranmer, two days after her execution, and which was to the effect that her marriage with the king was not valid, on the grounds of precontract, is a melancholy proof of the tyranny of the king and the weakness of the archbishop. (See Herbert, pp. 203-213.)

[4]Herbert, p. 284.

[5]Act 31 Henry VIII., chapter 14.

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similar acts were construed by the commissioners as violations of the articles, and were punished accordingly.

It was now that stakes began to be multiplied, and that the martyrs, Barnes, Garret, and Jerome, suffered in the fire. To show his impartiality, the king burned two Papists for denying the supremacy. It was now too that Henry, who, as the historian Tytler says, “had already written his title of Supreme Head of the Church in letters, of blood,” found an opportunity of exhibiting in a public debate his zeal for orthodoxy. Lambert, a clergyman in priest’s orders, who taught a school in London, had been accused before the archiepiscopal court of denying the doctrine of transubstantiation, and had appealed from the primate to the king. The court was held in Westminster Hall. The king took his place on the judgment-seat in robes of white satin, having on his right hand the prelates, the judges, and the most eminent lawyers, and on his left the temporal lords and the great officers of the court. Scaffolds had been erected for the accommodation of the public, before whom Henry took pride in showing his skill in ecclesiastical lore. The disputation between the king and the prisoner, in which Cranmer and nine other prelates took part, lasted five hours. The day wore away in the discussion; torches were brought in. “What sayest thou now,” exclaimed Henry, anxious to close the strange ren-contre, “after these solid reasons brought forward by these learned men: art thou satisfied? Wilt thou live or die?” The prisoner declared himself still unconvinced. He was then condemned, as “an obstinate opponent of the truth,” to the stake. He was executed two days afterwards. “As touching the terrible manner and fashion,” says Fox, “of the burning of this blessed martyr, here it is to be noted, of all others that have been burned and offered up at Smithfield, there were yet none so cruelly and piteously handled as he.” The fire was lighted, and then withdrawn, and lighted again, so as to consume him piecemeal. His scorched and half-burned body was raised on the pikes of the halberdiers, and tossed from one to the other to all the extent his chain would allow; the martyr, says the martyrologist, “lifting up such hands as he had, and his finger-ends flaming with fire, cried unto the People in these words, ‘none but Christ, none but Christ!’ and so being let down again from their halberds, fell into the fire, and gave up his life.”[6]

Cranmer had better success with the king in another matter to which we now turn. The whole Bible, as we have already seen, had been translated into English by Tyndale and Miles Coverdale, with the view of being spread through England. The work was completed in October, 1535. Another edition was printed before the 4th of August, 1537, for on that day we find Archbishop Cranmer sending Grafton, the printer, with his Bible to Cromwell, with a request that he would show it to the king, and obtain, if possible, the royal “license that the same may be sold, and read of every person, without danger of any Act, proclamation, or ordinance, heretofore granted to the contrary.”[7] In 1538 a royal order was issued, appointing a copy of the Bible to be placed in every parish church, and raised upon a desk, so that all might come and read. The Act set forth “that the king was desirous to have his subjects attain to the knowledge of God’s Word, which could not be effected by means so well as by granting them the free and liberal use of the Bible in the English tongue.”[8] It was wonderful,” says Strype, “to see with what joy this Book of God was received, not only among the learned sort, and those who were lovers of the Reformation, but generally all England over, among all the vulgar and common people; and with what greediness God’s Word was read, and what resort to places where the reading of it was. Everybody that could bought the book, or busily read it, or got others to read it to them, if they could not themselves and divers elderly people learned to read on purpose. And even little boys flocked among the rest to hear portions of the Holy Scriptures read.”[9] The first edition was sold in two years, and another immediately brought out. How different now from the state of things a few years ago! Then, if any one possessed a copy of the Scriptures he was obliged to conceal it; and if he wished to read it, he must go out into the woods or the fields, where no eye saw him, or choose the midnight hour; now, it lay openly in the peasant’s home, to be read at the noon-day rest, or at the eventide, without dread of informer or peril of prison. “I rejoice,” wrote Cranmer to Cromwell, “to see this day of reformation now risen in England, since the light of God’s Word doth shine over it without a cloud.”

In the same year other injunctions were issued in the king’s name, to the effect, among other directions, that once a quarter every curate should

[6]Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, pp. 65, 66 (see also Appendix).

[7]Biography of Tyndale-Doctrinal Treatises, Parker Soc., pp. 74-76.

[8]Burnet, vol. 1., book 3., p. 270

[9]Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, p. 64.

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preach a sermon specially directed against the superstitious usages of the times. The preacher was enjoined to warn his hearers against the folly of going on pilgrimage, of offering candles and tapers to relics, of kissing them, and the like. If the preacher had extolled these practices formerly, he was now publicly to recant his teaching, and to confess that he had been misled by common opinion and custom, and had had no authority from the Word of God.[10]

The publication of the Bible was followed by other books, also set forth by authority, and of a kind fitted to promote reformation. The first of these was The Institution of a Christian Man, or “The Bishops’ Book,” as it was termed, from having been drawn up by the prelates. It was issued with the approval of the king, and was intended to be a standard of orthodoxy to the nation. Its gold was far indeed from being without alloy; the new and the old, a few evangelical doctrines and a great many Popish errors, being strangely blended and bound up together in it.

The Institution of a Christian Man was succeeded, after some time, by The Necessary Erudition of a Christian Man. This was called “The King’s Book.” Published after the Six Articles, it maintained the doctrine of transubstantiation. In other respects, The Erudition was an improvement upon The Institution. Revised by Cranmer, it omits all mention of what the other had recommended, namely, the veneration of images, the invocation of the saints, and masses for the dead, and places moral duties above ceremonial observances, as, for instance, the practice of charity above abstinence from flesh on Friday. It contained, moreover, an exposition of the Apostle’s Creed, the Seven Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Pater Noster, and the Ave Maria, to which were appended two articles on justification, in which an approximation was made to sounder doctrine on the subject of the fall of man, and the corruption of nature thereby inherited. The redemption accomplished by Christ was so exhibited as to discourage the idea of merit.[11]

The king published, besides, a Primer. It was intended for the initiation of the young into the elements of the Christian religion, and consisted of confessions, prayers, and hymns, with the seven Penitential psalms, and selections from the Passion of our Lord as recorded in the Gospel of St. John. But the Primer was not intended exclusively for youth; it was meant also as a manual of devotion for adults, to be used both in the closet and in the church, to which the people were then in the habit of resorting for private as well as public prayer.

Henry VIII was now drawing to his latter end. His life, deformed by many crimes, was to be darkened by one more tragedy before closing. Anne Askew was the second daughter of Sir William Askew, of Kelsey, in Lincolnshire. Having been converted to the Protestant faith by reading the Scriptures, she was taken before “the Quest,” or commissioners appointed to work the “drag-net” of the Six Articles, charged with denying transubstantiation. She was thrown into prison, and lay there nearly a year. The Council, with Gardiner and Bonner at its head, was then plotting the destruction of Queen Catherine; and Anne Askew, by command of the king, was brought before the Council and examined, in the hope that something might be elicited from her to incriminate the ladies of the queen’s court. Her firmness baffled her persecutors, and she was thrown into the Tower. In their rage they carried her to a dungeon, and though she was delicate and sickly, they placed her on the rack, and stretched her limbs till the bones were almost broken. Despite the torture, she uttered no groan, she disclosed no secret, and she steadfastly refused to renounce her faith. Chancellor Wriothesly, in his robes, was standing by, and, stung to fury by her silence, he stripped off his gown, grasped the handle of the rack, and swore that he would make the prisoner reveal her accomplices. He worked the torture with his own hands, till his victim was on the point of expiring. Anne swooned on being taken off the rack. On recovering, she found herself on the stony floor, with Wriothesly by her side, trying, by words of feigned kindness, to overcome the resolution which his horrible barbarities had not been able to subdue. She was condemned to the fire.

When the day of execution arrived, she was carried to Smithfield in a chair, for the torture had deprived her of the use of her limbs. Three others were to die with her. She was fastened to the stake with a chain. The Lord Mayor, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Bedford, the Lord Chancellor Wriothesly, and other persons of rank occupied a bench in front of St. Bartholomew’s Church, in order to witness the execution. A strong railing served to keep off the dense crowd of hardened ruffians and fanatical scoffers that occupied the area; but here and there were persons whose looks testified their sympathy with the sufferers and their cause, and were refreshing to them, doubtless,

[10]Strype, Eccles. Mem., vol. 1. p. 514.

[11]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, pp. 95-97.

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in their hour of agony. Presently the Lord Mayor commanded the torch to be applied. At the lighting of the train the sky suddenly blackened; a few drops of rain fell, and a low peel of thunder was heard. “They are damned,” said some of the spectators. “God knows whether I may truly call it thunder,” said one who was present; “methought it seemed that the angels in heaven rejoiced to receive their souls into bliss.[12] Their heroic death, which formed the last of the horrors of Henry VIII’s reign, was long remembered.

A few months after these tragic events, the king was laid down on the bed from which he was to rise no more. On the 27th of January, 1547, it became evident that his end was drawing near. Those around him inquired whether he wished to have the consolations of a clergyman. “Yes,” he replied, “but first let me repose a little.” The king slept an hour, and on awakening desired his attendants to send immediately for Cranmer. Before the archbishop could arrive Henry was speechless; but he retained his consciousness, and listened to the exhortations of the primate. Cranmer then asked of him a sign that he rested on Christ alone. Henry pressed his hand and expired. It was early on the morning of the 28th when the king breathed his last. He had lived fifty-five years and seven months, and had reigned thirty-seven years, nine months, and six days.[13]

It has been the lot of Henry VIII to be severely blamed by both Protestants and Papists. To this circumstance it is owing that his vices have been put prominently in the foreground, and that his good qualities and great services have been thrown into the shade. There are far worse characters in history, who have been made to figure in colors not nearly so black; and there are men who have received much more applause, who have done less to merit it. We should like to judge Henry VIII by his work, and by his times. He contrasts favorably with his two great contemporaries, Francis I and Charles V. He was selfish and sensual, but he was less so than the French king; he was cruel inexorably and relentlessly cruel but he did not spill nearly so much blood as the emperor. True, his scaffolds strike and startle our imagination more than do the thousands of victims whom Charles V put to death, but that is because they stand out in greater relief. The one victim affects us more than does the crowd; and the relationship of the sufferer to the royal murderer touches deeply our pity. It is the wife or the minister whom we see Henry dragging to the scaffold: we are therefore more shudderingly alive to his guilt; whereas those whom the kings of France and Spain delivered up to the executioner, and whom they caused to expire with barbarities which Henry VIII never practiced, were more remotely connected with the authors of their death. As regards the two most revolting crimes of the English king, the execution of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell, the Popish faction must divide with Henry the guilt of their murder. The now morose and suspicious temper of the monarch made it easy for conspirators to lead him into crime. The darkest periods of his life, and in particular the executions that followed the enactment of the Six Articles, correspond with the ascendency at court of Gardiner and his party, who never ceased during Henry’s reign to plot for the restoration of the Papal supremacy.

Henry VIII was a great sovereign-in some respects the greatest of the three sovereigns who then governed Christendom. He had the wisdom to choose able ministers, and he brought a strong understanding and a resolute will to the execution of grand designs. These have left their mark on the world for good. Neither Charles nor Francis so deeply or so beneficially affected the current of human affairs. The policy of Charles V ruined the great country at the head of which he stood, The same may be said of the policy of Francis I: it began the decline of the most civilized of the European nations. The policy of Henry VIII inspired, we grant, by very mixed motives, and carried through at the cost of great crimes on his part, and great suffering on the part of others-has resulted in placing Great Britain at the head of the world. His policy comprised three great measures. He restored the Bible to that moral supremacy which is the bulwark of conscience; he shook off from England the chains of a foreign tyranny, and made her mistress of herself; and he tore out the gangrene of the monastic system, which was eating out the industry and the allegiance of the nation. This was rough work, but it had to be done before England could advance a step in the path of Reform. It was only a man like Henry VIII who could do it. With a less resolute monarch on the throne, the nation would have been broken by the shock of these great changes; with a less firm hand on the

[12]Strype, Eccl. Mem., vol. 1., pp. 599, 600. Fox says their martyrdom took place in June. Bishop Bale says it was on the 16th of July, 1546. Southey, in his Book of the Church (vol. ii., p. 92), says that the execution was delayed till darkness closed. We are disposed to think that this is a mistake, arising from misunderstanding an expression of Fox about the “hour of darkness.”

[13]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, p. 189. Herbert, p. 630.

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helm, the vessel of the State would have foundered amid the tempests which this policy awakened both with and without the country.

The friendship that existed to the close between Henry VIII and Cranmer is one of the marvels of history. The man who could appreciate the upright and pious archbishop, and esteem him above all his servants, and who was affectionately regarded and faithfully served by the archbishop in return, must have had some sterling qualities in him. These two men were very unlike, but it was their dissimilarity, we are disposed to think, that kept them together. It was the simplicity and transparency of the archbishop that enabled the heart of the king fully to confide in him; and it was the strength, or shall we say it, the tyranny of Henry that led the somewhat timid and weak Reformer to lean upon and work along with the monarch. Doubtless, Cranmer’s insight taught him that the first necessity of England was a strong throne; and that, seeing both Church and State had been demoralized by the setting up of the Pope’s authority in the country, neither order nor liberty was possible in England till that foreign usurpation was put down, and the king made supreme over all persons and causes. This consideration, doubtless, made him accept the “Headship” of Henry as an interim arrangement, although he might not approve of it as a final settlement. Certain it is that the cooperation maintained between the pure and single-minded primate, and the headstrong and blood-stained monarch, resulted in great blessings to England.

When Henry died, he left to Cranmer little but a ruin. The foundations of a new edifice had indeed been laid in the diffusion of the Word of God; but while the substructions lay hid underground, the surface was strewn over by the debris of that old edifice which the terrible blows of the king had shivered in pieces. Cranmer had to set to work, with such assistants as he could gather round him, and essay in patience and toil the rearing of a new edifice. It is in this labor that we are now to follow him.

Chapter 11: The Church of England as Reformed by Cranmer

Edward VI-His Training and Character-Somerset Protector- Wriothesly Deposed-Edward’s Coronation-The Bible-State of England-Cranmer Resumes the Work of Reformation-Royal Visitation-Erasmus’ Paraphrase-Book of Homilies-Superstitious Usages Forbidden-Communion in Both Kinds-Cranmer’s Catechism-Laity and Public Worship-Communion Service-Book of Common Prayer-Pentecost of 1549-Public Psalmody Authorized- Articles of Religion-The Bible the Only Infallible Authority

Picture: Coronation of Edward VI. -Procession Passing Cheapside Cross, 1547.

Picture: Archbishop Cranmer

Picture: Views of Westminster Abbey: the Western Towers-Henry VII.’s Chapel-the Cloisters

Edward VI was in his tenth year when the scepter of England was committed to his hand. If his years were few, his attainments were far beyond what is usual at his early age; he already discovered a rare maturity of judgment, and a soul ennobled by the love of virtue. His father had taken care to provide him with able and pious preceptors, chief of whom were Sir Anthony Cooke, a friend of the Gospel, and Dr. Richard Cox, afterwards Bishop of Ely; and the precocity of the youthful prince, and his rapid progress in classical studies, rewarded the diligence and exceeded the expectations of his instructors. Numerous letters in Latin and French, written in his ninth year, are still extant, attesting the skill he had acquired in these languages at that tender age. Catherine Parr, the last and noblest of the wives of Henry VIII, assiduously aided the development of his moral character. Herself a lady of eminent virtue and great intelligence, she was at pains to instill into his mind those principles which should make his life pure, his reign prosperous, and his subjects happy. Nor would the watchful eye of Cranmer be unobservant of the heir to the crown, nor would his timely cooperation and wise counsel be wanting in the work of fitting him for swaying the scepter of England at one of its greatest crises. The archbishop is said to have wept for joy when he marked the rapid and graceful intellectual development, and deep piety, of the young prince.

The king’s maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, afterwards Duke of Somerset, was made head of the council of regency, under the title of Protector of the Realm. He was an able statesman, and a friend of the Reformed opinions. Cranmer, in virtue of his primacy, as well as by [409] appointment of the late king, was a member of the Council. Wriothesly, the chancellor, a man versed in intrigue, and so bigoted an adherent of the old faith that, as we have seen, he sometimes tortured with his own hands those under examination before him, had also a seat in that body. But one of the first acts of the Council was to depose him from office, and deprive him of the seals. This was no faint indication that the party which had so long clogged the wheels of the Reformation must now descend from power. Other signs of a like nature soon followed. The coronation of the young monarch took place on the 28th of February, in the Abbey of Westminster.[1] There followed a general pardon: the Statute of the Six Articles was abolished, and the prosecutions commenced under it were terminated; the friends of the Gospel were released from prison; many learned and pious men returned from exile, and thus the ranks of the Reformers were recruited, and their spirits reanimated. Nor was it less pleasing to mark the token of respect which was paid to the Scriptures by the youthful king on receiving his crown. If his father had brought forth the Bible to carry his divorce, the son would exalt it to yet a higher place by making it the rule of his government, and the light of his realm. Bale relates that, when Cranmer had placed the crown on Edward’s head, and the procession was about to set out from the abbey to the palace, three swords were brought to be carried before him,

[1]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, pp. 142, 143.

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emblematic of his three kingdoms. On this the king observed, “There lacks yet one.” On his nobles inquiring what it was, he answered, “The Bible,” adding, “that book is the sword of the spirit, and is to be preferred before these. It ought in all right to govern us: without it we are nothing, and can do nothing. He that rules without it is not to be called God’s minister, or a king.” The Bible was brought, and carried reverently in the procession.

With Edward on the throne, the English Josiah, as he has been styled, with Protector Somerset in the Cabinet, with many tried disciples and former fellow laborers returned from prison or from beyond seas, Cranmer at last breathed freely. How different the gracious air that filled the palace of Edward from the gloomy and tyrannical atmosphere around the throne of Henry! Till now Cranmer knew not what a day might bring forth; it might hurl him from power, and send him to a scaffold. But now he could recommend measures of reform without hesitancy, and go boldly forward in the prosecution of them. And yet the prospect was still such as might well dismay even a bold man. Many things had been uprooted, but very little had been planted: England at that hour was a chaos. There had come an outburst of lawless thought and libertine morals such as is incident to all periods of transition and revolution. The Popish faction, with the crafty Gardiner at its head, though ruling no longer in the councils of the sovereign, was yet powerful in the Church, and was restlessly intriguing to obstruct the path of the primate, and bring back the dominion of Rome. Many of the young nobles had traveled in Italy, and brought home with them a Machiavellian system of politics, and an easy code of morals, and they sought to introduce into the court of Edward the principles and fashions they had learned abroad. The clergy were without knowledge, the people were without instruction; few men in the nation had clear and well-established views, and every day that passed without a remedy only made matters worse. To repel the Popish faction on the one hand and encourage the Reforming party on the other; to combat with ignorance, to set bounds to avarice and old and envenomed prejudice; to plan wisely, to wait patiently, and to advance at only such speed as circumstances made possible; to be ever on the watch against secret foes, and ever armed against their violence; to toil day after day and hour after hour, to be oftentimes disappointed in the issue,and have to begin anew: here were the faith, the patience, and the courage of the Reformers. This was the task that now presented itself to Cranmer, and which he must pursue through all its difficulties till he had established a moral male in England, and reared an edifice in which to place the lamp of a Scriptural faith. This was the one work of the reign of Edward VI. England had then rest from war; the sound of battle was forbidden to disturb the silence in which the temple rose.[2] Let us describe the work, as stage by stage the edifice is seen to advance under the hands of its builders.

The first step was a “Royal Visitation for Reformation of Religion.” This Commission was appointed within a month after the coronation of Edward VI, and was sent forth with instructions to visit all the dioceses and parishes of England, and report respecting the knowledge and morals of the clergy, and the spiritual condition of the flocks.[3] The Commission executed its task, and its report laid open to the eye of Cranmer the real state of the nation, and enabled him to judge of the remedies required for evils which were the growth of ages. The first thing adopted in the shape of a cure was the placing of a companion volume by the side of the Bible in all the churches. The book chosen was Erasmus’ Paraphrase on the New Testament, in English.[4] It was placed there by way of interpreter, and was specially designed for the instruction of the priests in the sense of Scripture. It would have been easy to have found a better guide, but Erasmus would be read by many who would have turned away from the commentaries of Luther.

There quickly followed a volume of homilies, twelve in number. The Bishop of Winchester, Gardiner, the uncompromising enemy of Cranmer and the Reformation, objected to this as unnecessary, seeing the nation already possessed King Henry’s Erudition of a Christian Man.[5] The homilies were prepared nevertheless, Cranmer himself writing three of them, those on Salvation, Faith, and Works. The doctrine taught in the homily on Salvation, otherwise termed Justification, was that of Luther, namely, that we are justified by faith without works. Gardiner and his party strongly objected to this, arguing that such a justification excluded “charity,” and besides was superfluous, seeing we receive justification in baptism, and if after this we sin, we are restored by penance. Cranmer defended the homily on the ground that

[2]There is one exception to the peace, viz., the battle of Pinkey, near Edinburgh, fought in September, 1547 in which the English defeated the Scotch, slaughtering 10,000, and taking 2,000 prisoners.

[3]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, book 2., chapter 2.

[4]Ibid., p. 148.

[5]Burnet, vol, 3., part 3., book 4; London ed., 1820.

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his object was “only to set out the freedom of God’s mercy.”[6] The hand of Latimer, now restored to liberty, and of Thomas Becon, one of Cranmer’s chaplains, may be traced in others of the homilies: the authors of the rest are entirely unknown, or can only be doubtfully guessed at. The homilies are plain expositions of the great doctrines of the Bible, which may be read with profit in any age, and were eminently needed in that one. They were appointed to be read from the pulpit in every church. The Ithuriel which Cranmer sent abroad, the touch of whose spear dissolved the shackles of his countrymen, was Light.

The royal visitation, mentioned above, now began to bear yet more important fruits. In November, 1547, Parliament sat, and a Convocation being held at the same time, the ecclesiastical reforms recommended by the royal visitors were discussed, embodied in orders, and promulgated by the Council. The clergy were enjoined to preach four times every year against the usurped authority of the Bishop of Rome; they were forbidden to extol images and relics; they were not to allow lights before images, although still permitted to have two lighted candles on the high altar, in veneration of the body of Christ, which even Cranmer still believed was present in the elements. The clergy were to admit none to the “Sacrament of the altar” who had not first undergone an examination on the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. A chapter of the New Testament, in English, was to be read at matins, or morning worship, and a chapter of the Old Testament at evensong. The portions of Scripture read at mass were enjoined to be also in English. Chantry priests, or those who sang masses at the private oratories in cathedral churches for the souls of the founders, were to spend more profitably their time in teaching the young to read and write. All clergymen with an income of 100 pounds a year-equal at least to 1,000 pounds now-were to maintain a poor scholar at one of the universities. Candles were forbidden to be carried on Candlemas Day, ashes, on Ash Wednesday, palms on Palm Sunday. “So that this year” (1547), says Strype, “on Candlemas Day, the old custom of bearing candles in the church, and on Ash Wednesday following giving ashes in the church, was left off through the whole of the city of London.”[7] In order was also issued by the Council for the removal of all images from the churches-a change implying so great an alteration in the worship of the people as to be a reformation in itself.[8] Another most important change was now adopted. After being discussed in Convocation, it was enacted by Parliament that henceforth the communion should be dispensed in both kinds. The same Parliament abolished the law of clerical celibacy, and permitted priests to marry.

In 1548 came Cranmer’s Catechism. It was not written by the archbishop, although it bore his name. Originally compiled, in German for the instruction of the youth of Nuremberg, it was translated into Latin by the son of Justus Jonas, the friend of Luther, and brought to England by him when driven from his native land by the Interim of Charles V. This catechism was rendered into English by the orders of Cranmer, who deemed it fitted to be useful in the instruction of youth. This catechism may be regarded as a reflection of Cranmer’s own mind, and the mind of England at that hour. Both were but groping their way out of the old darkness. In it the first and second commandments are made to form but one, thus obliterating, or at least darkening, the prohibition of the worshipping of God by images. Of the seven Sacraments of the Roman Church, four are discarded and three retained: baptism is spoken of as “the bath of regeneration, or the instrument of the second birth.” The doctrine taught under the head of the Eucharist is that of the bodily presence, as we should expect it to be from the German origin of the book, and the known sentiments of Cranmer at this stage of his career. He was still a believer in the dogma of consubstantiation; and only by painful effort and laborious investigations did he reach the ground on which Zwingle and Calvin stood, and from which he could never afterwards be dislodged.[9]

There followed the same year two important steps of reformation. Cranmer conceived the great idea of calling the people to take their part in the worship of the sanctuary. Under the Papacy the people had been excluded from the public worship of God: first, by restricting its performance to the priests; and, secondly, by the offering of it in a dead language. The position of the laity was that of spectators-not even of listeners, but spectators of grand but meaningless ceremonies. Cranmer resolved to bring back these exiles. “Ye are a priesthood,” he said, “and must worship with your own hearts and voices.” In prosecution of this idea, he procured that the mass should be changed into a communion, and that the service should be in English instead of Latin. To enable a people

[6]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, book 2., chapter 3.

[7]Ibid., book 2., chapter 5.

[8]Burnet, vol. 2., p. 60. Collier, vol. 2., p. 241.

[9]Strype, Mem. Cranmer, p. 160. Cranmer’s Catechism, p. 182 et seq.; Oxford, 1829.

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long unused to worship to take part in it with decency and with the understanding, he prepared a Liturgy in order that all might offer their adoration to the Supreme, and that that adoration should be expressed in the grandest and most august forms of speech. For the magnificent shows of Rome, Cranmer substituted the sublime emotions of the human soul. How great an advance intellectually as well as spiritually!

In furtherance of this great end, two committees were appointed by the king, one to prepare a Communion Service, and the other a Book of Common Prayer, or Liturgy. The committees met in the royal palace of Windsor, and spent the most of the summer of 1548 in deliberations on this important matter. The notes prepared by Cranmer, evidently with the view of being submitted to the committee as aids to inquiry and guides in discussion, show us the gradual advance of Cranmer and his fellow Reformers to the conclusions they ultimately reached.

“What or wherein,” so runs the first query, “John receiving the Sacrament of the altar in England, doth it profit and avail Thomas dwelling in Italy, and not knowing what John in England doth?”

“Whether it [the mass] profit them that be in heaven, and wherein?”

“What thing is the presentation of the Body and Blood of Christ in the mass, which you call the oblation and sacrifice of Christ? and wherein standeth it in act, gesture, or word? and in what act, gesture or word?”

“Whether in the primitive Church there were any priests that lived by saying of mass, matins, or evensong, or by praying for souls only?”

“For what cause were it not convenient or expedient to have the whole mass in the English tongue?”

“Whether it be convenient that masses satisfactory [expiatory] should be continued, that is to say, priests hired to say masses for souls departed?”[10]

The part of the labours of the commissioners charged with the reformation of the public worship which was the first to be finished was the Communion Service. It was published by itself. In its compilation the ancient missal had been drawn upon; but the words of consecration were omitted; and the import or sense which the service was now made to bear appears from the words of Cranmer in the discussions on the query he had proposed, “What are the oblation and sacrifice of Christ in the mass,” “The oblation and sacrifice of Christ in the mass said Cranmer, “are not so called because Christ is indeed there offered and sacrificed by the priest and the people, for that was done but once by himself upon the cross; but are so called because they are a memory or representation of that very true sacrifice and immolation which were before made upon the cross.” The mass was now changed, not into a mere commemoration, but into a communion, in which the partaker received spiritually the body and blood of Christ, or, to express more plainly the Protestant sense, in which he participated in the benefits of Christ’s death. The notoriously ungodly were not to be admitted to the Sacrament. A confession of sin was to be made, followed by absolution, and the elements were then to be delivered with the words, “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body unto everlasting life;” “The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy soul unto everlasting life.” When all had partaken, the congregation was dismissed with the Benediction. This form of the service was not meant to be final, for a promise was given by the king, “further to travail for the Reformation, and setting forth such godly orders as might be to God’s glory, and the edifying of his subjects, and the advancement of true religion,”[11] and meanwhile all preachers were forbidden to agitate the question of the Eucharist in the pulpit till such time as its service should be completed. The anticipated alteration did take place, and in the corrected Prayer Book of Edward VI the words given above were changed into the following: “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith;” “Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s blood was shed for thee, and be thankful.” A rubric was also added, through the influence of Knox, to the effect that though the posture of kneeling was retained at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, no adoration of the elements was thereby intended.[12]

The Communion Service was followed by the Book of Common Prayer. It was compiled by substantially the same men who had drawn up the Communion Service, and the principal of whom were Cranmer, Ridley, and Goodrich. The Breviary and the ancient Liturgies were laid under contribution in the formation of the Book of Common Prayer. The Bible is the revelation of God’s mind to the Church, worship is the evolution of the

[10]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, book 2., chapter 5. This writing of the archbishop, Strype says, is without date, but obviously composed with an eye to the change of the mass into a communion.

[11]Strype, vol. 2., p. 135.

[12]Collier, vol. 2., p. 310. Records, No. 70.

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Church’s mind God-wards; and on this principle was the Liturgy of the Church of England compiled. The voice of all preceding ages of the Church was heard in it: the voice of the first age; as also that of the age of Augustine and of all succeeding ages, including whatever was pure and lofty in the Church of the Middle Ages; all were there, inasmuch as the greatest thoughts and the sublimest expressions of all the noblest minds and grandest eras of the Church were repeated and reechoed in it. The Book of Common Prayer was presented to Convocation in November, 1548, and having been approved of by that body, was brought into Parliament, and a law was passed on the 21st of January, 1549, since known as the Act of Uniformity,[13] which declared that the bishops had now concluded upon one uniform order of Divine worship, and enacted that from the Feast of Whit Sunday next all Divine offices should be performed according to it. On the passing of the Act all clergymen were ordered to bring to their bishop “antiphoners, missals, and all other books of service, in order to their being defaced and abolished, that they might be no hindrance to that godly and uniform order set forth.”[14] On the 10th of June, being Whit Sunday, the Liturgy was first solemnly performed in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and in most of the parish churches of England. “The Day of Pentecost was fitly chosen,” says one, “as that on which a National Church should first return after so many centuries to the celebration of Divine service in the native tongue, and it is a day to be much observed in this Church of England among all our generations for ever.”[15]

The Act ratifying the Book of Common Prayer contained also an authorization for the singing of psalms in public worship. The absence of singing was a marked characteristic of the Papal worship. The only approach to it were chants, dirges, and wails, in a dead language, in which the people as a rule took no part. Singing revived with Protestantism; as we should expect it would, seeing all deep and lofty emotions seek to vent themselves in song. The Lollards were famous for their singing, hence their name. They were followed in their love of sacred song by certain congregations of the Reformed Church of England, who began the practice of their own accord; but now the psalms were sung in virtue of the loyal order in all churches and private dwellings. Certain of the psalms were trained into meter by Sternhold, a member of the Privy Chamber, and were set to music, and dedicated to Edward VI, who was greatly delighted with them. Others were versified by Dr. Cox, W. Whittingham, and Robert Wisdom. And when the whole Book of Psalms, with other hymns, were finished by Hopkins and certain other exiles in Queen Mary’s reign, this clause in the Act gave authority for their being used in public worship. They were sung at the commencement and at the close of the morning service, and also before and after sermon.[16]

The last part of the work, which Cranmer was now doing with so much moderation, wisdom, and courage, was the compilation of Articles of Religion. All worship is founded on knowledge that knowledge or truth is not the evolution of the human mind, it is a direct revelation from heaven; and the response awakened by it from earth is worship. The archbishop, in arranging the worship of the Church of England, had assumed the existence of previously communicated truth. Now he goes to its Divine fountains, that he might give dogmatic expression to that to which he had just given emotional utterance. He puts into doctrine what he had already put into a prayer, or into a song. This was, perhaps, the most difficult part of his task-it was certainly the most delicate-and a feeling of this would seem to have made him defer it till the last. The facts relating to the preparation of the Articles are obscure; but putting all things together, it would appear that the Articles were not debated and passed in Convocation; but that they were drawn up by Cranmer himself, and presented to the king in 1552.[17] They were revised, at the king’s instance, by Grindal, Knox, and others, previous to being ratified by Parliament, and subscription to them made obligatory on all preachers and ministers in the realm.[18] Having received Cranmer’s last revise, they were published in 1553 by the king’s authority, both in Latin and English, “to be publicly owned as the sum of the doctrine of the Church of England.”[19] As regards the doctrine of the Articles, all those divines who have been the more thoroughly versed in theology, both in its history and in its substance, from Bishop Burner downwards, have acknowledged that, in the main, the Articles follow in the path of the great

[13]“2nd and 3rd Edward VI., c. i. Previously to the passing of the Act a great variety of forms of prayer and communion had been in use. Some used the form of Sarum, some that of York, others that of Bangor, and others that of Lincoln, while others used forms entirely of their own devising.” (Styrpe, Eccles. Mem., vol. ii., p. 138.)

[14]Styrpe, Mem. of Cranmer, p. 194.

[15]Massingberd, The Eng. Reform., p. 356; London, 1847.

[16]Strype, Eccles. Mem., vol. 2., pp. 189, 140.

[17]Burnet, vol. 3., part 3., book 4.

[18]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, pp. 272, 273.

[19]Ibid., pp. 272, 301.

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doctor of the West, Augustine. The archbishop in framing them had fondly hoped that they would be a means of “union and quietness in religion.” To these forty-two Articles, reduced in 1562 to thirty-nine, he gave only a subordinate authority. After dethroning the Pope to put the Bible in his room, it would have ill become the Reformers to dethrone the Bible, in order to install a mere human authority in supremacy over the conscience. Creeds are the handmaids only, not the mistress; they are the interpreters only, not the judge; the authority they possess is in exact proportion to the accuracy with which they interpret the Divine voice. Their authority can never be plenary, because their interpretation can never be more than an approximation to all truth as contained in the Scriptures. The Bible alone must remain the one infallible authority on earth, seeing the prerogative of imposing laws on the consciences of men belongs only to God. [415] [416]

Chapter 12: Deaths of Protector Somerset and Edward VI

Cranmer’s Moderation-Its Advantages-His Great Difficulties- Proposed General Protestant Convention-The Scheme Fails- Disturbing Events in the Reign of Edward VI-Plot against Protector Somerset-His Execution-Rise of the Disputes about Vestments- Bishop Hooper-Joan of Kent-Her Opinions-Her Burning- Question of Changing the Succession-Cranmer Opposes it-He Yields-Edward VI Dies-Reflections on the Reformation under Edward VI-England Comes Late into the Field-Her Appearance Decides the Issue of the Movement

We have followed step by step the work of Cranmer. It would be easy to criticize, and to say where a deeper and broader foundation might have been laid, and would have been, doubtless, by an intellect of the order of Calvin. Cranmer, even in the opinion of Burner, was cautious and moderate to a fault; but perhaps that moderation fitted him for his place. He had to work during many years along with one of the most imperious monarchs that ever occupied a throne. Had Henry, when he quarreled with the Pope, quarreled also with Popery, the primate’s task would have been easy; but Henry felt it all the more incumbent upon him to show his loyalty to the faith of the Church, that he had rebelled against her head. There were times in Cranmer’s life when he was the one Reformer at a Roman Catholic court and in a Popish council; and had he retired from his position, the work must have stopped, so far as man can judge. After Henry went to the grave, and the young and reforming Edward succeeded him on the throne, the Popish faction was still powerful, and Cranmer had to pilot the movement through a host of enemies, through numberless intrigues, and through all the hindrances arising from the ignorance and godlessness which the old system had left behind it, and the storms of new and strange opinions which its overthrow had evoked. That he effected so much is truly wonderful, nor can England ever be sufficiently thankful for the work he accomplished for her; but Cranmer himself did not regard his work as finished, and had Edward VI lived, it is probable that many things in the worship of the Church, borrowed from the ancient superstition, would have been removed, and that some things in her government would have undergone a remodeling in accordance with what Cranmer and the men associated with him in the work of reformation believed to be the primitive institution. “As far as can be judged from Cranmer’s proceedings,” says Burnet, he intended to put the government of the Church in another method, different from the common way of Convocation.”[1] Foreign divines, and Calvin in particular, to whose judgment Cranmer much deferred, were exhorting him to prosecute the Reformation of the Church of England “by purging it of the relics of Popery,”[2] and not to delay in doing so, lest “after so many autumns spent in procrastinating, there should come at last the cold of a perpetual winter.” The same great duty did Calvin press upon the Duke of Somerset, the Protector, whose steadfast zeal and undoubted patriotism he thankfully acknowledges, and even upon the king, Edward VI, to whose sincere piety he pays a noble tribute.

Nay, a project was at that hour in agitation among the great Protestant theologians of all countries, to hold a general conference for a free exchange of their views on all subjects and the adoption of one system of doctrine, and one form of government, or as near an approximation to this as might be desirable and possible, for all the Reformed Churches, in order to the more protect consolidation of the Reformation, and the more entire union of Christendom. The project had the full approval of Edward VI, who offered his capital as the place in which to hold this congress. Cranmer hailed the assembling of so many men of influence and power on an errand like this. Not less warmly had Melancthon entered into the idea, and corresponded with Cranmer in prosecution of it. It had the high sanction of Calvin, than whom there was no one in all Christendom who more earnestly longed to see the breaches in the Reformed ranks closed, or who was less disposed to view with an approving eye, or lend a helping hand to schemes merely visionary. His letters to Cranmer on the subject still remain, in which he pleads that, though he might well be excused a personal attendance on the ground of his “insignificance,” he was nevertheless

[1]Burnet, vol. 3., part 3., book 4.

[2]See Calvin’s letter to Cranmer of July, 1552-Jules Bonnet, vol. 2., p. 341; Edinburgh, 1857.

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willing to undergo any amount of “toil and trouble,” if thereby he might further the object.[3]

This Protestant convention never assembled. The difficulties in the way of its meeting were then immense; nor was the prospect of arriving at the desired concord so certain as to encourage men to great efforts to overcome them. Moreover the Council of Trent, which had met a little before, hearing with alarm that the Reformers were about to combine under one discipline, took immediate steps to keep them disunited. They sent forth emissaries, who, feigning themselves zealous Protestants, began to preach the more violent doctrines of the Anabaptists. England was threatened with an outbreak of the same anti-social and fanatical spirit which had brought so many calamities on Germany and Switzerland; apples of discord were scattered among the friends of the Gospel, and the projected conference never assembled.[4]

The reign of Edward VI, and with it the era of Reformation under Cranmer, was drawing to a close. The sky, which had been so clear at its beginning, began now to be darkened. The troubles that distracted the Church and the State at this time arose from various causes, of which the principal were the execution of the Duke of Somerset, the disputes respecting vestments, the burning of Joan of Kent, and the question of the succession to the crown. These occurrences, which influenced the course of future events, it is unnecessary to detail at much length.

The Duke of Somerset, pious, upright, and able, had faithfully served the crown and the Reformation; but his inflexible loyalty to the cause of the Reformed religion, and the hopelessness of a restoration of the old faith while he stood by the side of the throne, stirred up his enemies to plot his overthrow. The conspirators were able to persuade the king that his uncle, the Protector, had abused his office, and was an enemy to the crown. He was stripped of his office, and removed from court. He returned after awhile, but the intrigue was renewed, and this time with a deadlier intent. The articles of indictment drawn up against him, and which Strype affirms were in Gardiner’s hand, who, although then in the Tower, added the plot which the Papists were carrying on, charge the duke with such things as “the great spoil of the churches and chapels, defacing ancient tombs and monuments, and pulling down the bells in parish churches, and ordering only one bell in a steeple as sufficient to call the people together.[5] Warwick, Duke of Northumberland, an ambitious and hypocritical man, resolved on his death. He accused Somerset of a design to raise a rebellion and assassinate himself and the other privy councilors. He was tried and condemned; the king, now entirely in the power of Warwick, signed his uncle’s death-warrant with tears in his eyes; and he was executed (January, 1552) amidst the lamentations of the people, by whom he was greatly beloved, and who rushed on the scaffold to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. Cranmer remained his friend to the last, but could not save him.

The next cloud that rose over the Reformed Church of England was the dispute respecting vestments. This contention first arose amongst a Protestant congregation of English exiles at Frankfort, some of whom objected to the use of the surplice by the minister, the Litany, the audible responses, and kneeling at the communion, and on these grounds they separated from their brethren. The strife was imported into England, and broke out there with great fierceness in the reign of Elizabeth, but it had its beginning in the period of which we write, and dates from the reign of Edward VI Hooper, who returned in July, 1550, from Germany and Switzerland, where he had contracted a love for the simple forms followed in these churches, was nominated Bishop of Gloucester. He refused to be consecrated in the vestments usually worn on these occasions. This led to a warm dispute between him and Cranmer, Ridley, Bucer, and Peter Martyr. The first issue was that Hooper was committed to the Fleet by the Council; and the second was that he complied, and was consecrated after the usual form.[6] In this way began that strife which divided the friends of Reformation in England in after-days, and which continued to rage even amid the fires of persecution.

The next occurrence was one in itself yet more sad. It is remarkable that England should have had its Servetus case as well as Geneva, although the former has not attained the notoriety of the latter. But if there be any difference between them, it is in this, that the earlier, which is the English one, is the less defensible of the two executions. Joan Bocher, or, as she is commonly styled, Joan of Kent, held, in the words of Latimer, “that our Savior was not very man, nor had received flesh of his mother Mary.” Persisting in her error,

[3]See his letter to Cranmer, April, 1552-Jules Bonnet, vol. 2., p. 331. See also Cranmer’s letters in his works, published by the Parker Society; and the Zurich Letters, First Series.

[4]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, pp. 107, 108.

[5]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, p. 266.

[6]Ibid., pp. 216, 217.

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she was judicially excommunicated by Cranmer, the sentence being read by him in St. Mary’s Chapel, within the Cathedral Church of St. Paul’s, in April, 1549; the king’s commissioners, of the number of whom was Hugh Latimer, assisting. She was then delivered to the secular arm, and sentenced to be burned. After her condemnation she was kept a week in the house of the chancellor, and every day visited by the archbishop and Bishop Ridley, who reasoned with her in the hope of saving her from the fire. Refusing to change her opinion, she was burned.[7] The relations of Cranmer to Joan of Kent are precisely those of Calvin to Servetus, with this exception, that Cranmer had more influence with the king and the Privy Council than Calvin had with the magistrates and Town Council of Geneva, and that whereas Calvin earnestly interceded that the sword might be substituted for the stake in the case of Servetus, we know of no interference on the part of Cranmer to have the punishment of Joan of Kent mitigated. Nor did the error of this poor woman tend in the same degree to destroy the foundations of civil order, as did the opinions so zealously propagated by Servetus. The doctrine of toleration had not made greater progress at London than at Geneva. It was the error of that age that it held the judicial law of the Jews, according to which heresy was punishable with death, to be still binding upon States. We find the Pilgrim Fathers acting upon the same belief, and led by it into the same deplorable acts, a century after the time when Calvin had publicly taught that opinions ought not to be punished by the sword unless promulgated to the disturbance of civil society.

The last matter in which we find the archbishop concerned under Edward VI was the change of the succession to the throne from the Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, to Lady Jane, daughter of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk. This scheme took its rise with the domineering Northumberland, who, having married one of his sons to Lady Jane, hoped thus to bring the crown into his own family. The argument, however, that the duke urged on the king, was that Mary, being a bigoted adherent of the Romish faith, would overthrow the Reformation in England should she succeed to the throne. The king, therefore, in his will set aside his sister, and nominated Lady Jane Grey in her room. The archbishop strongly withstood the proposed alteration, but, persuaded by the king, who ceased not to entreat him, he put his name, the last of all the privy councilors, to the king’s will.[8] This was not forgotten by Mary, as we shall see, when she came to reign. The zeal of Edward for the Reformation continued unabated: his piety was not only unfeigned, but deep; but many of the noblemen of his court led lives shamefully immoral and vicious, and there was, alas, no Calvin to smite the evil-doers with the lightnings of his wrath. With the death of Edward VI, in his sixteenth year (July 6, 1553), the night again closes around the Reformation in England.

It is a mighty work, truly, which we have seen accomplished in England. Great in itself, that work appears yet more marvelous when we consider in how short a time it was effected. It was begun and ended in six brief years. When Henry VIII descended into the tomb in 1547, England was little better than a field of ruins: the colossal fragments of that ancient fabric, which the terrible blows of the king had shivered in pieces, lay all about, and before these obstructions could be removed time-honoured maxims exploded, inveterate prejudices rooted up, the dense ignorance of all classes dispelled and the building of the new edifice begun, a generation, it would have been said, must pass away. The fathers have been brought out of the house of bondage, it is the sons who will enter into the land of evangelical liberty. England emancipates her throne, reforms her Church, restores the Lord’s Supper to its primitive simplicity and significance, and enters into the heritage of a Scriptural faith, and a Protestant liberty in the course of a single generation. Such sudden and manifest interposition in the life of nations, is one of the ways by which the great Ruler attests his existence. He puts forth his hand-mighty intellects arise, there is a happy conjunction of favoring circumstances, courage and foresight are even, and nations with a leap reach the goal. So was it in the sixteenth century with the nations that embraced Protestantism; so was it especially with England. This country was among the last to enroll itself in the reforming army, but having started in the race, it rushes to the goal: it crowns itself with the new liberties.

There was an advantage in England coming late into the battle. Not infrequently does a general, when great issues are at stake, and the contest is prolonged and arduous, keep a body of troops in reserve, to appear on the field at the decisive moment, and strike the crowning blow. It was the appearance of England on the great battle-field of the sixteenth century that effectually turned the

[7]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, p. 181.

[8]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, pp. 295, 296. Burnet, vol. 3., part 3., pp. 315, 316.

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tide, and gave victory to the movement of the Reformation. The Huguenots had been beaten down; Flanders had sunk under Spain; strength had departed from the once powerful Germany; prisons and scaffolds had thinned the ranks and wasted the strength of the Reformed host in other countries. Spain, under Philip II, had summoned up all her energies to crush, in one mighty blow, Protestantism for ever, when lo! England, which had remained off the field and out of action, as it were, till then, came forward in the fresh youth, and full, unimpaired strength, which the Reform of Cranmer had given her, and under Elizabeth she arrested the advancing tide of an armed Papacy, and kept her soil inviolate to be the head-quarters of Protestantism, and of all those moral, political, and literary forces which are born of it alone, and a new point of departure in ages to come, whence the Reformation might go forth to carry its triumphs round the globe.

Chapter 13: Restoration of the Pope’s Authority in England

Execution of Lady Jane Grey, etc—Accession of Mary—Her Character—Conceals her projected Policy—Her Message to the Pope—Unhappiness of the Times—Gardiner and Bonner—Cardinal Pole made Legate—The Pope’s Letter to Mary—The Queen begins to Persecute—Cranmer Committed to the Tower—Protestant Ministers Imprisoned—Protestant Bishops and Clergy Deprived—Exodus—Coronation of the Queen—Cranmer Condemned for Treason—The Laws in favor of the Reformation Repealed—A Parliament—The Queen’s Marriage with Philip of Spain—Disputation on the Mass at Oxford—Appearance of Latimer, etc—Restoration of Popish Laws, Customs, etc—Arrival of Cardinal Pole—Terms of England’s Reconciliation to Rome? The Legate solemnly Absolves the Parliament and Convocation—England Reconciled to the Pope

Picture: Nicholas Ridley John Rogers John Hooper-Hugh Latimer.

Picture: Facsimile of the Medal struck to celebrate the Return of England to Roman Catholicism

The project of Northumberland, devised professedly for the protection of the Protestant religion, but in reality for the aggrandizement of his own family, involved in calamity all who took part in it. Lady Jane Grey, after a reign of ten days, was committed to the Tower, thence to pass, after a brief interval, to the block. The duke expiated his ambition on the scaffold, returning in his last hours to the communion of the Church of Rome, after many years passed in the profession of a zealous Protestantism. The Princess Mary was proclaimed queen on the 17th of July, 1553, and her accession was hailed by the great body of the nation with satisfaction, if not with enthusiasm. There was a prevalent conviction that the crown was rightfully hers; for although one Parliament had annulled her right of succession, as well as that of her sister Elizabeth, on the ground of the unlawfulness of the marriage of Henry VIII with Catherine of Aragon, another Parliament had restored it to her; and in the last will of her father she had been ranked next after Edward, Prince of Wales, heir of the crown. The vast unpopularity of the Duke of Northumberland, whose tyrannical character had caused him to be detested, acted as a foil to the new sovereign; and although the people were not without fears of a change of policy in the matter of religion, they were far indeed from anticipating the vast revolution that was near, and the terrible calamities that were to overspread the kingdom as soon as Mary had seated herself on the throne.

Mary was in her thirty-seventh year when she began to reign. Her person was homely, her temper morose, her understanding narrow, and her disposition gloomy and suspicious. She displayed the Spanish gravity of her mother, in union with the obstinacy of her father, but these evil qualities were not relieved by the graces of Catherine and the talents of Henry. Her training, instead of refining her character and widening her views, tended only to strengthen the unhappy conditions with which nature had endowed her. Her education had been conducted mainly by her mother, who had taught her little besides a strong attachment to the Roman Catholic faith. Thus, though living in England, she had breathed from her youth the air of Spain; and not only was the creed of that country congenial to a disposition naturally melancholy, and rendered still more so by the adverse circumstances of her early years, but her pride engaged her to uphold a religion for which her mother had lived a martyr. No sooner had she mounted the throne than she dispatched a messenger to announce her accession to the Pope. This was on the matter to say, “I am your faithful [420] daughter, and England has returned to the Roman obedience.” Knowing how welcome these tidings would be in the Eternal City, the messenger was bid not to loiter on the road, and he used such expedition that he accomplished in nine days a journey on which an ordinary traveller then usually spent thrice that length of time, and in which Campeggio, when he came to pronounce the divorce, had consumed three months.

But Mary, knowing that the tiding which caused joy in Rome would awaken just the opposite feelings in England, kept her subjects as yet in the dark touching the policy she had determined on pursuing. The Reformers of Suffolk, before espousing her cause, begged to know whether she was willing to permit the religious settlement under Edward VI to continue. She bade them put their minds at ease; that no man would be molested on the ground of religion; and that she would be perfectly content if allowed to practice in peace her own form of worship. When she entered London, she sent for the Lord Mayor, and assured him that she “meant graciously not to compel or strain other people’s consciences, otherwise than God shall, as she trusted, put in their hearts a persuasion of the truth.”[1] These soft words opened her way to the throne. No sooner was she seated upon it than she changed her speech; and throwing off all disguise, she left no one in doubt that her settled purpose was the suppression of the Protestant faith.

Without losing a day, she proceeded to undo all that had been effected during the reigns of her father and brother. What Cranmer had found to be hindrances in the work of constructing, Mary found to be helps in the business of overthrowing the Protestant edifice. Vast numbers of the population were still attached to the ancient beliefs; there had been no sufficient time for the light to penetrate the darkness; a full half of the clergy, although conforming outwardly to the Reformed worship, remained Popish at heart. They had been monks and friars: their work, as such, was to chant the Litany and to say mass; and, ignorant of all besides, they made but sorry instructors of the people; and they would have been pensioned off, but for the wretched avarice of the present possessors of the abbey lands, who grudged the stipends they should have to pay to better men. The times were frightfully disordered—the grossest immoralities were common, the wildest opinions were afloat, and a spirit of skepticism has ever been found to favor rather than retard the return of superstition. Thus Mary found her work as easy as Cranmer had found his to be difficult, and she pursued it with an ardour that seemed to grudge every hour that passed and left it incomplete.

Her first care was to gather round her fitting instruments to aid her. Gardiner and Bonner were liberated from prison. They had been kept in the Tower during the former reign, not because they were inimical to Protestantism, but because their intrigues made it dangerous to the public peace to leave them at large. These two men were not less intent on the destruction of the Reformed Church, and the restoration of the ancient glories of the Popedom in England, than Mary, but their greater patience and deeper craft taught them to moderate the dangerous precipitancy of the queen. Gardiner was made Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England; and Bonner, Bishop of London, in the room of Ridley. A third assistant did Mary summon to her aid, a man of lofty intellect, pure character, and great learning, infinitely superior to the other two with whom he was to be mated. Reginald Pole, a scion of the House of York, had attained the Roman purple, and was at this hour living on the shores of Lake Garda, in Italy, the favorite retreat of the poet Lucullus. The queen requested the Pope to send Cardinal Pole to England, with full powers to receive the kingdom into the Roman pale. Julius III at once named Pole his legate, and dispatched him to England on the august errand of receiving back the repentant nation.[2] The legate was the bearer of a letter from the Pope to the queen, in which he said, “That since she carried the name of the Blessed Virgin, he called on her to say the Magnificat, applying it to the late providence of God toward herself.”

The impatience of Pole to complete the task which had been put into his hands was as great as that of Mary herself. But Gardiner and Bonner, more cautious though not less in earnest, and fearing that the great project was being pushed on too rapidly, wrote to Charles V to delay Pole on his way through the Low Countries, till they had prepared the way for his arrival. Pole, much against his will, and not a little to his surprise and chagrin, was detained in Belgium. Meanwhile his coadjutors in England were taking such steps as they thought necessary to accomplish the great end they had in view.

All men throughout England, who held any post of influence and were known to be favorable to the Reformation, were now displaced. The last

[1]Burnet, vol. 3., book 5., p. 322.

[2]Burnet, vol. 3., book 5., pp. 335, 336.

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time that Archbishop Cranmer officiated publicly was on the 8th of August, when he read the Protestant burial service at the obsequies of his late master, Edward VI. After this he was ordered to confine himself to his house at Lambeth. A report was spread abroad that he had recanted and said mass in his cathedral. This drew from him what probably his enemies wished, a written declaration of his continued adherence to the Protestant faith, and on this he was summoned before the Council and committed to the Tower.[3] The archbishop was charged with treason in having subscribed the deed of Edward VI transferring the succession to Lady Jane Grey, and also with heresy, as contained in the paper given in to the Council. But his great offense, and that which his enemies could not pardon, was the divorce of Henry VIII, of which forgetful of the proud cardinal lying without epitaph in the Abbey of Leicester-they held Cranmer to be the chief promoter. Ridley, Bishop of London, deprived of his see, had preceded the archbishop to prison, as had also Rogers, for preaching the Protestant sermon at St. Paul’s. Latimer, the most eloquent preacher in all England; Hooper of Gloucester, who preached three or four times every day to his parishioners; Coverdale, Bradford, Saunders, and others were deprived of their liberty during the months of August and September.

A commission was issued to the new Bishops of Winchester, London, Chichester, and Durham-who, in addition to their detestation of Protestantism, were soured in their tempers by what had befallen them in the past reign-empowering them to deprive the Protestant bishops and ministers of their offices, on pretense either of treason, or of heresy, or of marriage. They did their work with zeal and expedition. All the Protestant bishops were deprived, as also numbers of the clergy, and in particular those who were married. Some were deprived who were never cited before the commission; others were cited who were locked up in prison, and deprived because they did not appear; others were extruded on promise of a pension that was never paid; and others were refused their stipend because they were dismissed a day or two before the expiry of the term at which it was payable-“so speedy, so hasty, so without warning,” says one, “were the deprivations.” “Yea, some noblemen and gentlemen were deprived of those lands which the king had given them, without tarrying for any law. Many churches were changed, many altars set up, many masses said, many dirges sung, before the law was repealed. All was done in post-haste.”[4]

The members of the foreign Protestant congregations established in various parts of England had passports given them, with orders to leave the country. About 1,000 Englishmen, in various disguises, accompanied them in their flight. Cranmer, who had foreseen the bursting of the storm, counseled those whom he deemed in danger to provide for their safety by seeking a foreign asylum. Many acted on his advice, and some 800 exiles were distributed among the cities of Germany and Switzerland. Providence, as the historian Burner remarks, made the storm abate on the Continent when it began to rage in England, and as England had offered sanctuary to the exiles of Germany in their day of trouble, so now the persecuted of England found refuge in Strasburg and Antwerp, in Zurich and Geneva. But the archbishop himself refused to flee, though urged to do so by his friends. He had been too deeply concerned, he said, in the changes of religion under the last reign not to remain and own them. As things stood, this was a voluntary surrender of himself on the altar.[5]

On the 1st of October the queen was crowned at the Abbey of Westminster. The usual pardon was proclaimed, but while the ordinary criminals were set free, the prisoners in the Tower and Fleet-that is, the professors of the Gospel, including Grafton and Whitchurch, the printers of the Bible-were exempt from the deed of grace. A few days thereafter, the queen issued a proclamation, saying that she meant to live and die in the religion of her youth, and willed that all her loving subjectors should embrace the same.[6] All who were in favor of the old religion deemed this a sufficient warrant publicly to restore the mass, even before the law had made it legal. Nor had they long to wait for a formal authorization. This same month, a Parliament was assembled, the elections being so managed that only those should sit in it who would subserviently do the work for which they had been summoned. The first Act of this Parliament was to declare Henry VIII’s marriage with Queen Catherine lawful, and to lay the blame of the divorce at the door of Cranmer, oblivious of the fact that Gardiner, the chief inspirer of these measures, had been active in promoting the divorce before Cranmer’s name was even known to the

[3]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, pp. 305, 306.

[4]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, p. 310. Burnet, vol. 3., book 5., pp. 329, 330.

[5]Ibid., pp. 313, 314. Burnet, vol. 3., book 4., p. 321.

[6]Ibid. p. 312.

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king. This was followed in November by the indictment at Guildhall of the archbishop for high treason. He was found guilty, and condemned. The queen, whose life he had saved in her youth, pardoned him his treason—a kindness which snatched him from the axe, but reserved him for the fire. By another Act of the Parliament all the laws made respecting religion in the reign of Edward VI were repealed. A Convocation was at the same time held; but so careful had been the selection of those who were to compose it, that only six had courage to own themselves the friends of the Reformation accomplished in the previous reign.

The opening sermon was preached by Bonner’s chaplain from the text, “Feed the flock.” Among other travesties of Scripture that diversified the oration was the application to the queen of the words of Deborah, “Religion ceased in England until Mary arose—a virgin arose in England.”

Meanwhile it was whispered that another serious step was contemplated by the queen. This was a marriage with the emperor’s son, Philip of Spain.

The news startled the nation, for they saw a foreign despotism coming along with a foreign faith. Even the Parliament begged the queen “not to marry a stranger,” and the queen, not liking to be crossed in her matrimonial projects, deemed the request impertinent, and dismissed the members to their homes. Gardiner, however, hit on means for facilitating the match between Mary and Philip. Having learned that a galleon, freighted with gold from South America, had just arrived in Spain, he wrote to the emperor, saying that he knew not how he could so well bestow a few millions of this wealth as in securing the votes of influential men in England in favor of the match, and thus rescue a nation from heresy, and at the same time add another to the many kingdoms already under the scepter of Spain. The counsel of the Bishop of Winchester was followed, and the match went prosperously forward.

To give an air of seriousness and deliberation to the changes which were being hurried on with so much determination and levity, it was thought good to have a disputation on the mass at Oxford. The three venerable confessors now in the Tower-Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer-were brought out, and carried down to Oxford, there to be “baited,” as one has said, by the members of both universities, for Cambridge was also summoned to bear its part in defense of the “the Sacrament of the altar.” The opening services-which were of more than usual splendor-being ended, the commissioners, to the number of thirty-three, took their seats before the altar, and then in a little while Cranmer was brought in, guarded by bill-men. “He gave them,” says Strype, “great reverence, and stood with his staff in his hand. They offered him a stool to sit, but he refused.” Weston, the prolocutor, said that the commission had no desire save that of reclaiming the archbishop from his heresy, and handing him a copy of the articles to be debated, requested his opinion upon them. The archbishop, having read them, briefly characterized them as opposed to the truth of Scripture, but promised to give his opinion in writing next day. “His behavior all this while,” says Strype, “was so grave and modest that many Masters of Art who were not of his mind could not forbear weeping.” The archbishop having been removed, Ridley was brought in. The same articles having been presented to him, he condemned them as false, but desired a copy of them, that he might answer them in writing. Last of all, Latimer was brought in. Having looked at the articles, he said that in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper there was a certain presence, but not such a presence as they affirmed. He could not publicly dispute, he said, by reason of his age and the weakness of his memory; but [424] he would give his opinion on the questions in writing, and begged a copy of them for that purpose. “I cannot here omit,” says Strype, “old Father Latimer’s habit at his first appearance before the commissioners, which was also his habit while he remained a prisoner in Oxford. He held his hat in his hand; he had a kerchief on his head, and upon it a night-cap or two, and a great cap such as townsmen used, with two broad flaps to button under his chin, an old thread-bare Bristow frieze gown, girded to his body with a penny leather girdle, at which hanged, by a long string of leather, his Testament, and his spectacles without case hanging about his neck upon his breast.”[7] Latimer was then in his eighty-fourth year.

It were useless to narrate the disputation that followed. It was a mock debate, and was intended only as a blind to the nation; and we notice it here for this reason-that it shows us the Fathers of the English Reformation bearing their dying testimony against the doctrine of the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist, a tenet around which all the other doctrines of Rome cluster and on which so many of them are built.

The face of England was every day becoming more Popish. All the Protestant preachers had been silenced, and a crowd of ignorant priests rushed in to fill their places. These men abstained from marriage which God has ordained, but not from the uncleanness which God has forbidden. Mass was restored in every parish. Holidays were ordered to be kept. Auricular confession, in Bonners’s diocese, was made obligatory on all above twelve years of age. Worship was performed in an unknown tongue. The Popish symbols were restored in the churches, the streets, and the highways. The higher clergy dazzled the spectators by magnificent processions; the lower clergy quarreled with their parishioners for candles, eggs on Good Friday, dirge-groats, and fees for saying mass for souls in purgatory. The youth were compelled to attend school, where they were carefully instructed in the Popish faith.

In April, 1554, a new Parliament assembled, and the Spanish gold having done its work, the measures necessary for completing the nation’s subjection to the Pope’s authority were rapidly proceeded with. On the 20th of July, the queen was married to Philip, who henceforward became her chief adviser; and thus the sword of Spain was added to the yoke of Rome. On the 21st of November, Cardinal Pole arrived in England, and immediately entered on his work of reconciling the nation to Rome. He came with powers to give absolution to all heretics who sought it penitently; to pardon all repentant clergymen their irregularities; to soften, by a wise use of the dispensing power, the yoke of ceremonies and fasts to those who had now been for some time unaccustomed to it; and as regarded the abbey lands, which it had been foreseen would be the great difficulty, the legate was instructed to arrange this matter on wonderfully liberal terms. Where he saw fit, he was empowered to permit these lands to be detained by their present holders, that “the recovery of the nation and the salvation of souls” might not be obstructed by worldly interests.

These terms being deemed satisfactory on the whole by the Parliament, it proceeded to restore in full dominancy the Papal power. An Act was passed, repealing all the laws made against the supremacy of the Pope in the reign of Henry VIII; the power of punishing heretics with death was given back to the bishops; and the work of reconciling the realm to Rome was consummated by the legate’s summoning before him the Parliament and the two Houses of Convocation, to receive on their bended knees his solemn absolution of their heresy and schism.[8] The civil and ecclesiastical estates bowed themselves down at the feet of the Pope’s representative. Their own infamy and their country’s disgrace being now complete, they ordered bonfires to be lighted, and a Te Deum to be sung, in token of their joy at beholding the Pontificial tiara rising in proud supremacy above the crown of England.

[7]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, pp. 335, 336. 9 Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, p. 345.

[8]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, p. 345.

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Chapter 14: The Burnings under Mary

English Protestantism Purified in the Fire-Glory from Suffering- Spies-The First Victims-Transubstantiation the Burning Article- Martyrdom of Rogers-Distribution of Stakes over England-Saunders Burned at Coventry-Hooper at Gloucester-His Protracted Sufferings-Burning of Taylor at Hadleigh-Burning of Ferrar at Carmarthen-England begins to be Roused-Alarm of Gardiner- “Bloody” Bonner?Extent of the Burnings-Martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer at Oxford-A Candle Lighted in England-Cranmer-His Recantation-Revokes his Recantation-His Martyrdom-Number of Victims under Mary-Death of the Queen

Picture: Latimer Exhorting Ridley at the Stake.

Mournful and melancholy, not without shame, is England’s recantation of her Protestantism. Escaped from her bondage, and fairly on her march to liberty, she suddenly faints on the way, and returns into her old fetters. The Pope’s authority again flourishes in the realm, and the sword has been replaced in the hands of the bishops, to compel all to fall down and do obeisance to the Roman divinity. How sad a relapse, and how greatly to be deplored! And yet it was the tyranny of this cruel time that helped above most things to purify English Protestantism, and to insure its triumph in the end. This fierce tempest drove away from it a cloud of adherents who had weakened it by their flatteries, and disgraced it by their immoral lives. Relieved of this crushing weight, the tree instantly shot up and flourished amid the tempest’s rage. The steadfast faith of a single martyr brings more real strength to a cause like Protestantism than any number of lukewarm adherents. And what a galaxy of glorious names did this era gather round the English Reformation! If the skies were darkened, one bright star came forth after, another, till the night seemed fairer than the day, and men blessed that darkness that revealed so many glories to them. Would the names of Cranmer, of Ridley, of Latimer, and of Hooper have been what they are but for their stakes? Would they have stilted the hearts of all the generations of their countrymen since, had they died in their palaces? Blot these names from the annals of English Protestantism, and how prosaic would its history be!

With the year 1555 came the reign of the stake. Instructions were sent from court to the justices in all the counties of England, to appoint in each district a certain number of secret informers to watch the population, and report such as did not go to mass, or who failed otherwise to conduct themselves as became good Catholics. The diligence of the spies soon bore fruit in the crowded prisons of the kingdom. Protestant preachers, absentees from church, condemners of the mass, were speedily tracked out and transferred to gaol. The triumvirate which governed England- Gardiner, Bonner, and Poles, might select from the crowd what victims they pleased. Among the first to suffer were Rogers, Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s; Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester; Rowland Taylor, Vicar of Hadleigh in Suffolk; Saunders, Vicar of All Hallows, Bread Street; and Bradford, one of the Prebendaries of St. Paul’s. They were brought before Gardiner on the 28th of January, 1555. Their indictment bore reference mainly to transubstantiation and the Pope’s supremacy. These two articles had suddenly become, in the eyes of the queen and her bishops, the sum of Christianity, and if one doubted either of them he was not fit to live on English soil. The pretext of treason was not needed now. The men who perished in the fire under Mary were burned simply because they did not, and could not, believe in the corporeal presence in the Lord’s Supper. Their examination was short: their judges had neither humanity nor ability to reason with them. “What sayest thou?” was the question put to all of them. “Is it Christ’s flesh and blood that is in the Sacrament, or what?” And according to the answer was the sentence; if the accused said “flesh,” he was acquitted; if he answered “bread,” he was blamed. The five theologians at the bar of Gardiner denied both the mass and the Pope’s supremacy; and, as a matter of course, they were condemned to be burned.

Rogers, who had been the associate of Tyndale and Coverdale in the translation of the Scriptures, was suddenly awakened on Monday morning, the 4th of February, and bidden to prepare for the fire. As he was being led to Smithfield he saw his wife in the crowd, waiting for him, with one infant at the breast and ten at her feet. By a look only could he bid her farewell. His persecutors thought, perhaps, to vanquish the father if they had failed to subdue the disciple; but they found themselves [426] mistaken.

Leaving his wife and children to Him who is the husband of the widow and the father of the orphan, he went on heroically to the stake. The fagots were ready to be lighted, when a pardon was offered him if he would recant. “That which I have preached,” said Rogers, “will I seal with my blood.” “Thou art a heretic,” said the sheriff. “That shall be known at the last day,” responded the confessor. The pardon was removed, and in its room the torch was brought. Soon the flames rose around him. He bore the torment with invincible courage, bathing his hands as it were in the fire while he was burning, and then raising them towards heaven, and keeping them in that posture till they dropped into the fire. So died John Rogers, the proto-martyr of the Marian persecution.

After this beginning there was no delay in the terrible work. In order to strike a wider terror into the nation, it was deemed expedient to distribute these stakes over all England. If the flocks in the provincial towns and rural parts saw their pastors chained to posts and blazing in the fires, they would be filled with horror of their heresy-so the persecutor thought. It did not occur to him that the people might be moved to pity their sufferings, to admire their heroism, and to detest the tyranny which had doomed them to this awful death. To witness these dreadful spectacles was a different thing from merely hearing of them, and a thrill of horror ran through the nation-not at the heresy of the martyrs, but at the ferocious and blood-thirsty cruelty of the bigots who were putting them to death. On the 8th of February, Laurence Saunders was sent down to Coventry- where his labours had been discharged-to be burned. The stake was set up outside the town, in a park already consecrated by the sufferings of the Lollards. He walked to it bare-footed, attired in an old gown, and on his way he threw himself twice or thrice on the ground and prayed. Being come to the stake, he folded it in his arms, and kissing it, said, “Welcome the cross of Christ; welcome the life everlasting!” “The fire being put to him,” says the martyrologist, “full sweetly he slept in the Lord.”[1]

Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, had been the companion of Rogers at the tribunal, and he expected to have been his companion at the stake; but when Rogers went his way to the fire, Hooper was remanded to his cell. On the evening of that day he was told that he was to undergo his sentence at Gloucester. His enemies had done unwittingly the greatest kindness. To die for Christ anywhere was sweet to him; but to give his blood in the presence of those to whom he had preached Him, and whose faith he would thereby confirm, made him leap for joy. Now would he crown his ministry by this the greatest of all the sermons he had ever preached. Next morning, attended by six of the queen’s guards, he began his journey before it was light. On the third day he arrived at Gloucester, where he was met at the gates by a crowd of people bathed in tears. A day’s respite being allowed him, he passed it in fasting and prayer, and in bidding adieu to friends. He retired early to rest, slept soundly for some time, and then rose to prepare for death. At eight o’clock on the 9th of February he was led out. The stake had been planted close to the end of the cathedral, in which he had so often preached to the very persons who were now gathered to see him die. It was market day, and a crowd of not less than 7,000 had assembled to witness the last moments of the martyr, many climbing up into the boughs of an elm that overshadowed the spot. Hooper did not address the assemblage, for his persecutors had extorted a promise of silence by the barbarous threat of cutting out his tongue, should he attempt to speak at the stake; but his meekness, the more than usual serenity of his countenance, and the courage with which he bore his prolonged and awful sufferings, bore nobler testimony to his cause than any words he could have uttered.

He kneeled down, and a few words of his prayer were heard by those of the crowd who were nearest to the stake. “Lord, thou art a gracious God, and a merciful Redeemer. Have mercy upon me, most miserable and wretched offender, after the multitude of thy mercies and the greatness of thy compassion. Thou art ascended into heaven: receive me to be partaker of thy joys, where thou sittest in equal glory with the Father.” The prayers of Bishop Hooper were ended. A box was then brought and laid at his feet. He had but to stoop and lift it up and walk away from the stake, for it held his pardon. He bade them take it away. The hoop having been put round his middle, the torch was now brought, amid the sobbings and lamentations of the crowd. But the fagots were green, and burned slowly, and the wind being boisterous, the flame was blown away from him, and only the lower parts of his body were burned. “For God’s sake, good people,” said the martyr, “let me have more fire!” A few dry fagots were brought; still the pile did not kindle. Wiping his eyes with his hands, he ejaculated,

[1]Fox, vol. 6., p. 628.

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“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me, and receive my soul!” A third supply of fuel was brought, and after some time a stronger flame arose. He continued praying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” till his tone was swollen and his lips had shrunk from the gums. He smote upon his breast with both his hands, and when one of his arms dropped off, he kept beating on his breast with the other, “the fat, water, and blood oozing out at the finger-ends.” The fire had now gathered strength; the struggle, which had lasted nearly three-quarters of an hour, was drawing to a close; “his hand did cleave fast to the iron upon his breast;” and now, bowing forwards, he yielded up the ghost.[2]

In the same day on which Laurence Saunders was burned at Coventry, a similar tragedy was being enacted at Hadleigh in Suffolk. Dr. Rowland Taylor, one of Cranmer’s chaplains, had discharged the duties of that cure with a zeal, an ability, and a kindliness of disposition which had endeared him to all his parishioners. One day, in the summer of 1554, he heard the bells of his church suddenly begin to ring. Hastily entering the edifice, he saw to his astonishment a man with shaven crown, dressed in canonicals, at the altar, preparing to say mass, while a number of armed men stood round him with drawn swords to defend him. Dr. Taylor, on remonstrating against this intrusion, was forcibly thrust out of the church. He was summoned before Gardiner, who railed on him, calling him a knave, a traitor, and a heretic, and ended by throwing him into prison. The old laws against heresy not having as yet been restored, Taylor, with many others, was kept in gaol until matters should be ripe for setting up the stake. Meanwhile the prisoners were allowed free intercourse among themselves. Emptied of their usual occupants, and filled with the god-fearing people of England, “the prisons,” as Fox states, “were become Christian schools and churches;” so that if one wished to hear good, he crept stealthily to the grated window of the confessor’s dungeon, and listened to his prayers and praises. At last, in the beginning of 1555, the stake was restored, and now Taylor and his companions, as we have already said, were brought before Gardiner. Sentence of death was passed upon the faithful pastor. On the way down to Suffolk, where that sentence was to be executed, his face was the brightest, and his conversation the most cheerful, of all in the company. A most touching parting had he with his wife and children by the way; but now the bitterness of death was past. When he arrived in his parish, he found a vast crowd, composed of the poor whom he had fed, the orphans to whom he had been a father, and the villagers whom he had instructed in the Scriptures, waiting for him on the common where he was to die. “When they saw his reverend and ancient face, with a long white beard, they burst out with weeping tears, and cried, ‘Jesus Christ strengthen thee and help thee, good Dr. Taylor; the Holy Ghost comfort thee!’” He essayed to speak to the people, but one of the guard thrust a tipstaff into his mouth. Having undressed for the fire, he mounted the pile, and kneeled down to pray. While so engaged, a poor woman stepped out from the crowd, and kneeling by his side, prayed with him. The horsemen threatened to ride her down, but nothing could drive her away. The martyr, standing unmoved, with hands folded and eyes raised to heaven, endured the fire.[3]

Ferrar, Bishop of St. David’s, had been examined before Gardiner at the same time with those whose deaths we have just recorded, but his condemnation was deferred. He was sent down to Wales, and on the 26th of March he was brought before the Romish bishop who had been appointed to his see, and condemned. On the 30th he was burned on the south side of the cross at the market-place of Carmarthen. Fox records a touching proof of the steadfastness with which he suffered. A young man came to Ferrar to express his sympathy with him at the painful death he was about to undergo. Relying on the extraordinary support vouchsafed to those who are called to seal their testimony with their blood, Ferrar gave him this sign, that he would stand unmoved amidst the flames. “And as he said, so he right well performed,” says Fox; “he never moved.”

Men contrasted the leniency with which the Romanists had been treated under Edward VI, with the ferocious cruelty of Mary towards the adherents of the Reformed faith. When Protestantism was in the ascendant, not one Papist had been put to death for his religion. A few priests had been deprived of their benefices; the rest had saved their livings by conforming. But now the Popery had risen to power, no one could be a Protestant but at the peril of his life. The highest and most venerated dignitaries of the Church, the men of greatest learning and most exemplary virtue in the nation, were dragged to prison and burned at stakes. The nation at first was stupefied, but now amazement was giving place to indignation; and Gardiner, who had expected

[2]Fox, vol. 6., pp. 656-659.

[3]Fox, vol. 6., pp. 690-699.

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to see all men cowering in terror, and ready to fall in with his measures, began to be alarmed when he saw a tempest of wrath springing up, and about to sweep over the land. Did he therefore desist from his work of burning men or did he counsel his royal mistress to abandon a project which could be carried through only at the cost of the destruction of the best of her subjects? By no means. The device to which he had recourse was to put forward a colleague, a man yet more brutal than himself-Bonner, surnamed the Bloody-to do the chief part of the work, while he fell a little into the background. Edmund Bonner was the natural son of a richly beneficed priest in Cheshire, named Savage; and the son ought never to have borne another name than that which he inherited from his father. Educated at Oxford, he was appointed archdeacon at Leicester under Henry VIII, by whom he was employed in several embassies. In 1539 he was advanced to be Bishop of London by Cromwell and Cranmer, who believed him to be, as he pretended, a friend to the Reformation.

Upon the enactment of the law of the Six Articles, he immediately “erected his crest and displayed his fangs and talons.” He had the thirst of a leech for blood. Fox, who is blamed for “persecuting persecutors with ugly pictures”-though certainly Fox is not to blame if ferocity and sensuality print their uncomely lineaments on their rotaries-describes him as the possessor of a great, overgrown, and bloated body. Both Gardiner and Bonner, the two most conspicuous agents in the awful tragedies of the time, had been supporters of the royal supremacy, which formed a chief count in the indictment of the men whom they were now ruthlessly destroying.

The devoted, painstaking, and scrupulously faithful Fox has recorded the names and deaths of the noble army of sufferers with a detail that renders any lengthy narrative superfluous; and next to the service rendered to England by the martyrs themselves, is that which has been rendered by their martyrologist. Over all England, from the eastern counties to Wales on the west, and from the midland shires to the shores of the English Channel, blazed these baleful fires. Both sexes, and all ages and conditions, the boy of eight and the man of eighty, the halt and the blind, were dragged to the stake and burned, sometimes singly, at other times in dozens. England till now had put but small price upon the Reformation-it knew not from what it had been delivered; but these fires gave it some juster idea of the value of what Edward VI and Cranmer had done for it. Popery was now revealing itself-writing its true character in eternal traces on the hearts of the English people.

Before dropping the curtain on what is at once the most melancholy and the most glorious page of our history, there are three martyrs before whose stakes we must pause. We have briefly noticed the disputation which Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were compelled to hold with the commission at Oxford, in September, 1554. The commission pronounced all three obstinate heretics, and sentenced them to be burned, herein the commission was guilty of the almost unexampled atrocity of sentencing men to suffer under a law which had yet to be enacted; and till the old penal statutes should be restored, the condemned were remanded to prison.[4] October of the following year, an order was issued for the execution of Ridley and Cranmer. The night before his death Ridley supped with the family of the mayor. At table no shade of the stake darkened his face or saddened his talk. He invited the hostess to his marriage; her reply was a burst of tears, for which he chid her as if she were unwilling to be present on so joyous an occasion, saying at the same time, “My breakfast may be sharp, but I am sure my supper will be most sweet.” When he rose from table his brother offered to watch with him all night. “No, no,” replied he, “I shall go to bed and, God willing, shall sleep as quietly tonight as ever I did in my life.”

The place of execution was a ditch by the north wall of the town, over against Baliol College.[5] Ridley came first, dressed in his black furred gown and velvet, cap, walking between the mayor and an alderman. As he passed Bocardo, where Cranmer was confined, he looked up, expecting to see the archbishop at the window, and exchange final adieus with him. Cranmer, as Fox informs us, was then engaged in debate with a Spanish friar, but learning soon after that his fellow prisoners had passed to the stake, the archbishop hurried to the roof of his prison, whence he beheld their martyrdom, and on his knees begged God to strengthen them in their agony, and to prepare him for his own. On his way to the stake, Ridley saw Latimer following him-the old man making what haste he could. Ridley ran and, folding him in his arms, kissed him, saying, “Be of good health, brother; for God will either assuage

[4]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, pp. 340, 341.

[5]Now converted into a street; the exact spot is believed to be near the corner of Broad Street, where ashes and burned sticks have been dug up.

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the fury of the flames, or else strengthen us to abide it.” They kneeled down and prayed, each by himself, afterwards they talked together a little while, “but what they said,” says Fox, “I can learn of no man.” After the sermon usual on such occasions, they both undressed for the fire. Latimer, stripped by his keeper, stood in a shroud. With his garments he seemed to have put off the burden of his many years. His bent figure instantly straightened; withered age was transformed into what seemed vigorous manhood; and standing bolt upright, he looked “as comely a father as one might lightly behold.”[6]

All was now ready. An iron chain had been put round the martyrs, and a staple driven in to make it firm. The two were fastened to one stake. A lighted fagot was brought, and laid at Ridley’s feet. Then Latimer addressed his companion in words still fresh-after three centuries-as on the day on which they were uttered: “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

The flames blazed up rapidly and fiercely. Latimer bent towards them, as if eager to embrace those ministers, terrible only in appearance, which were to give him exit from a world of sorrow into the bliss eternal. Stroking his face with his hands, he speedily, and with little pain, departed. Not so Ridley. His sufferings were protracted and severe. The fagots, piled high and solidly around him, stifled the flames, and his lower extremities were burned, while the upper part of his body was untouched, and his garments on one side were hardly scorched. “I cannot burn,” he said; “let the fire come to me.” At last he was understood; the upper fagots were pulled away; the flames rose; Ridley leaned towards them; and crying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” his body turned over the iron chain, the leg being already consumed, and he fell at Latimer’s feet.

Cranmer still lived, but he was a too conspicuous member of the Protestant host, and had acted a too prominent part under two monarchs, not to be marked out for the stake. But before receiving the crown of martyrdom, that lofty head was first to be bowed low in humiliation. His enemies had plotted to disgrace him before leading him to the stake, lest the glory of such a victim should exalt the cause for which he was about to be offered in sacrifice. The archbishop was removed from the prison to the house of the Dean of Christ Church. Crafty men came about him; they treated him with respect, professed great kindness, were desirous of prolonging his life for future service, hinted at a quiet retirement in the country. The Pope’s supremacy was again the law of the land, they said, and it was no great matter to promise submission to the law in this respect, and “to take the Pope for chief head of this Church of England, so far as the laws of God, and the laws and customs of this realm, will permit.” He might himself dictate the words of this submission. The man who had stood erect amid the storms of Henry VIII’s time, and had oftener than once ignored the wishes and threatenings of that wayward monarch and followed the path of duty, fell by the arts of these seducers. He signed the submission demanded of him. The queen and Cardinal Pole were overjoyed at the fall of the archbishop. His recantation would do more than all the stakes to suppress the Reformation in England. None the less did they adhere steadfastly to their purpose of burning him, though they carefully concealed their intentions from himself. On the morning of the 21st of March, 1556, they led him out of prison and preceded by the mayor and alderman, and a Spanish friar on either side of him, chanting penitential psalms, they conducted him to St. Mary’s Church, there to make his recantation in public. The archbishop, having already felt the fires that consume the soul, dreaded the less those that consume the body, and suspecting what his enemies meditated had made his resolve. He walked onward, the noblest of all the victims, his conductors thought, whom they had yet immolated. The procession entered the church, the friars hymning the prayer of Simeon. They placed Cranmer on a stage before the pulpit. There, in the “garments and ornaments” of an archbishop, “only in mockery everything was of canvas and old clouts,”[7] sat the man who had lately been the first subject of the realm, “an image of sorrow, the dolour of his heart bursting out at his eyes in tears.” Dr. Cole preached the usual sermon, and when it was ended, he exhorted the archbishop to clear himself of all suspicion of heresy by making a public confession. “I will do it,” said Cranmer, “and that with a good will.” On this he rose up, and addressed the vast concourse, declaring his abhorrence of the Romish doctrines, and expressing his steadfast adherence to the Protestant faith. “And now,” said he, “I come to the great thing that so much troubleth

[6]Fox.

[7]Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, p. 375.

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my conscience, more than anything that ever I did or said in my whole life.” He then solemnly revoked his recantation, adding, “Forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therefore for may I come to the fire, it shall be first burned.”

Hardly had he uttered the words when the Romanists, filled with fury, plucked him violently from the scaffold, and hurried him off to the stake. It was already set up on the spot where Ridley and Latimer had suffered. He quickly put off his garments, and stood in his shroud, his feet bare, his head bald, his beard long and thick for he had not shaved since the death of Edward VI-a spectacle to move the heart of friend and foe, “at once the martyr and the penitent.” As soon as the fire approached him, he stretched out his right arm, and thrust his hand in the flames, saying, “That unworthy right hand!” He kept it in the fire, excepting that he once wiped with it the drops from his brow, till it was consumed, repeatedly exclaiming, “That unworthy right hand!” The fierce flame now surrounded him, but he stood as unmoved as the stake to which he was bound. Raising his eyes to heaven, and breathing out the prayer of Stephen, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” he expired.[8] No marble tomb contains his ashes, no cathedral tablet records his virtues, no epitaph preserves his memory, nor are such needed. As Strype has well said, “His martyrdom is his monument.”

Between the 4th of February, 1555, when Rogers, Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s, was burned at Smithfield, and the 15th of November, 1558, when five martyrs were burned in one fire at Canterbury, just two days before the death of the queen, not fewer than 288 persons, according to the estimate of Lord Burleigh, were burned alive at the stake. Besides these, numbers perished by imprisonment, by torture, and by famine. Mary did all this with the full approval and sanction of her conscience. Not a doubt had she that in burning her Protestant subjects she was doing God service. Her conscience did indeed reproach her before her death, but for what? Not for the blood she had shed, but because she had not done her work more thoroughly, and in particular for not having made full restitution of the abbey lands and other property of the Church which had been appropriated by the crown. Her morose temper, and the estrangement of her husband, were now hastening her to the grave; but the nearer she drew to it, she but the more hastened to multiply her victims, and her last days were cheered by watching the baleful fires that lit up her realm, and made her reign notorious in English history.

[8]Fox. Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, p. 371 et seq.

Chapter 15: Elizabeth; Restoration of the Protestant Church

Joy at Mary’s Death-A Dark Year-The Accession of Elizabeth-Instant Arrest of Persecution-Protestant Policy-Difficulties-The Litany and Gospels in English-Preaching Forbidden-Cecil and Bacon- Parliament-Restoration of the Royal Supremacy-Act of Uniformity- Alterations in the Prayer Book-The Sacrament-Disputation between Romish and Protestant Theologians-Excommunication Delayed-The Papists Frequent the Parish Churches-The Pulpit-Stone Pulpit at Paul’s Cross-The Sermons-Visitation Articles-Additional Homilies-Cranmer, etc., Dead, yet Speaking-Return of the Marian Exiles-Jewell-New Bishops-Preachers sent through the Kingdom- Progress of England-The Royal Supremacy

Picture: Views in the Tower of London:

Picture: Queen Elizabeth.

Picture: View of the West Porch of Rochester Cathedral.

Queen Mary breathed her last on the morning of the 17th November, 1558. On the same day, a few hours later, died Cardinal Pole, who with Carranza, her Spanish confessor, had been Mary’s chief counsellor in those misdeeds which have given eternal infamy to her reign. The Parliament was then in session, and Heath, Archbishop of York, and Chancellor of England, notified to the House the death of the Queen. The members started to their feet, and shouted out, “God save Queen Elizabeth!” The news of Mary’s decease speedily circulated through London; in the afternoon every steeple sent forth its peal of joy; in the evening bonfires were lighted, and the citizens, setting tables in the street, and brining forth bread and wine, “did eat, drink, and rejoice.” Everywhere, as the intelligence traveled down to the towns and counties of England, the bells were set a-ringing, and men, as they met on the highways, clasped each other by the hand, and exchanged mutual congratulations. [432]

The nation awoke as from a horrible nightmare; it saw the troop of dismal specters which had filled the darkness taking flight, and a future approaching in which there would no more be spies prowling from house to house, officers dragging men and women to loathsome gaols, executioners torturing them on racks, and tying them with iron chains to stakes and burning them; no more Latin Litanies, muttered masses, and shaven priests; it saw a future in which the Bible would be permitted to be read, in which the Gospel would again be preached in the mother tongue of old England, and quiet and prosperity would again bless the afflicted land.

There is no gloomier year in the history of England than the closing one in the reign of Mary. A concurrence of diverse calamities, which mostly had their root in the furious bigotry of the queen, afflicted the country. Intelligence was decaying, morals were being corrupted, through the introduction of Spanish maxims and manners, commerce languished, for the nation’s energy was relaxed, and confidence was destroyed. Drought and tempests had induced scarcity, and famine brought plague in its rear; strange maladies attacked the population, a full half of the inhabitants fell sick, many towns and villages were almost depopulated, and a sufficient number of laborers could not be found to reap the harvest. In many places the grain, instead of being carried to the barnyard, stood and rotted in the field. To domestic calamities were added foreign humiliations. Calais was lost in this reign, after having been two centuries in the possession of the English crown. The kingdom was becoming a satrapy of Spain, and its prestige was year by year sinking in the eyes of foreign Powers. “It was visible,” says Burnet, “that the providence of God made a very remarkable difference, in all respects, between this poor, short, and despised reign, and the glory, the length, and the prosperity of the succeeding reign.”[1]

When Elizabeth ascended the throne, the gloom instantly passed from the realm of Great Britain. The prisons were opened, the men whom Mary had left to be burned were released, the fires which were blazing all over England were extinguished; and the machinery of persecution which up to that moment had been vigorously worked, inspiring fear and terror in the heart of every friend of religious liberty, was arrested and stood still. The yoke of the tyrant and the bigot now rent from off the nation’s neck, England rose from the dust, and rekindling the lamp of truth, started on a career of political freedom and commercial prosperity, in which, with a few exceptional periods, there has been no pause from that day to this.

When Elizabeth received the intelligence of her sister’s death and her own accession she repaired to the Tower, as was the ancient custom of the sovereigns of England before being crowned. On crossing its threshold, remembering that but a few years before she had entered it as a prisoner, with little hope of ever leaving it save for the scaffold, she fell on her knees, and gave thanks to God for preserving her life in the midst of so many enemies and intrigues as had surrounded her during her sister’s lifetime. As she passed through the streets of London on her coronation day, a copy of the Bible was presented to her, which she graciously received. The people, whom the atrocities of the past reign had taught to value the Reformation more highly than before, hailed this as a token that with the new sovereign was returning the religion of the Bible.

Elizabeth ascended the throne with the sincere purpose of restoring the Protestant religion; but the work was one of immense difficulty, and it was only in the exercise of most consummate caution and prudence that she could hope to conduct it to a successful issue. On all sides she was surrounded by great dangers. The clergy of her realm were mostly Papists. In the eyes of the Marian bishops her title was more than doubtful, as the daughter of one whose claim to be the wife of Henry VIII they disputed. The learned divines and eloquent preachers who had been the strength of Protestantism in the reign of her brother Edward, had perished at the stake or had been driven into exile. Abroad the dangers were not less great. A Protestant policy would expose her to the hostility of the Popish Powers, as she very soon felt. The Duke of Feria, the Spanish ambassador, let her understand that his master was the Catholic king, and was not disposed to permit, if his power could prevent, the establishment of heresy in England.[2] But, her chief difficulty was with the court of Rome When her accession was intimated to Paul IV, he declared “that she could not succeed, being illegitimate; and that the crown of England being a fief of the Popedom, she had been guilty of great presumption in assuming it without his consent.”

Elizabeth labored under this further disadvantage, that if on the one hand her enemies were numerous, on the other her friends were few. There was scarcely to be found a Protestant of tried statesmanship and patriotism whom she could summon to her aid. The queen was alone, in a

[1]Burnet, vol. 3., book 5., p. 394; London, 1820.

[2]Burnet, vol. 3., book 6., p. 396.

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sort. Her exchequer was poorly replenished; she had no adequate force to defend her throne should it be assailed by rebellion within, or by war abroad. Nevertheless, in spite of all these hazards the young queen resolved to proceed in the restoration of the Protestant worship. That her advance was slow, that her acts were sometimes inconsistent, and even retrogressive, that she excited the hopes and alarmed the fears of both parties by turns, is not much to be wondered at when the innumerable perils through which she had to thread her path are taken into account.

The first alteration which she ventured upon was to enjoin the Litany and the Epistle and Gospel to be read in English, and to forbid the elevation of the Host. This was little, yet it was a turning of the face away from Rome. Presuming on the queen’s reforming disposition, some of the more zealous began to pull down the images. Elizabeth bade them hold their hand; there were to be no more changes in worship till the Parliament should assemble. It was summoned for the 27th of January, 1559. Meanwhile all preaching was forbidden, and all preachers were silenced, except such as might obtain a special license from the bishop or the Council. This prohibition has been severely censured, and some have seen in it an assumption of power “to open and shut heaven, so that the heavenly rain of the evangelical doctrine should not fall but according to her word;”[3] but this is to forget the altogether exceptional condition of England at that time. The pulpits were in the possession of the Papists, and the use they would have made of them would have been to defend the doctrine of transubstantiation, and to excite popular odium against the queen and the measures of her Government. Instead of sermons, which would have been only apologies for Popery, or incitements to sedition, it was better surely to restrict the preachers to the reading of the homilies, by which a certain amount of much-needed Scriptural knowledge would be diffused amongst the people.

The same cautious policy governed Elizabeth in her choice of councilors. She did not dismiss the men who had served under her sister, but she neutralized their influence by joining others with them, favorable to the Reformation, and the superiority of whose talents would secure their ascendency at the council board. Especially she called to her side William Cecil and Nicholas Bacon, two men of special aptitude. The first she made Secretary of State, and the second Lord Keeper, in the room of Archbishop Heath, who resigned the post of Chancellor. The choice was a happy one, and gave early proof of that rare insight which enabled Elizabeth to select with unerring judgment, from the statesmen around her, those who were best able to serve the country, and most worthy of her confidence. Cecil and Bacon had lived in times that taught them to be wary, and, it may be, to dissemble. Both were sincerely attached to the Reformed faith; but both feared, equally with the queen, the danger of a too rapid advance. Of large comprehension and keen foresight, both efficiently and faithfully served the mistress who had done them the honour of this early choice.

The Parliament met on the day appointed-the 27th of January, 1559. The session was commenced with a unanimous declaration that Queen Elizabeth was “the lawful, undoubted, and true heir to the crown.” The laws in favor of the Protestant religion which had been passed under Henry VIII and Edward VI, but which Mary had abolished, were re-enacted. Convocation, according to its usual practice, assembled at the same time with Parliament. Foreseeing the reforming policy which the Commons were likely to adopt, the members of Convocation lost no time in passing resolutions declaring their belief in transubstantiation, and maintaining the exclusive right of the clergy to determine points of faith. This was on the matter to tell Parliament that the Pope’s authority in England, as re-established by Mary, was not to be touched, and that the ancient religion must dominate in England. The Commons, however, took their own course. The Parliament abolished the authority of the Pope. The royal supremacy was restored; it being enacted that all in authority, civil and ecclesiastical, should swear that they acknowledged the queen to be “the supreme governor in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, within her dominions; that they renounced all foreign power and jurisdiction, and should bear the queen faith and true allegiance.”[4] The same Parliament passed (April 28th, 1559) the Act of Uniformity of the Book of Common Prayer, enjoining all ministers “to say and use the matins, evensong, celebration of the Lord’s Supper, etc., as authorized by Parliament in the 5th and 6th year of Edward VI.” A few alterations and additions were made in the Prayer Book as finally enacted under Elizabeth, the most important of which was the introduction into it of the two modes of dispensing

[3]Professor Bruce, The Ecclesiastical Supremacy Annexed to the English Crown, p. 34; Edinburgh, 1802.

[4]Act 1 Elizabeth, chapter 1.

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the Sacrament which had been used under Edward VI, the one at the beginning and the other at the close of his reign. The words to be used at the delivery of the elements-as prescribed in the first Prayer Book of Edward-were these:-“The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” The words prescribed in the second Prayer Book were as follow:-” Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heal by faith with thanksgiving.” The communicant might interpret the first form, if he chose, in the sense of a corporeal presence; the second excluded that idea, and conveyed no meaning save that of a spiritual presence, to be apprehended by faith. Both formulas were henceforth conjoined in the Communion Service.

The tide of Reformation, though flowing slowly, was yet proceeding too fast for the clergy, and they strove to stem it-or rather to turn it back- by insisting on a reply to their resolutions approving of transubstantiation, sent to the House of Lords, and also presented to the queen. They at last succeeded in obtaining an answer, but one they neither expected nor desired. A public debate on the points at issue was ordered to be held on the last day of March, in the Abbey of Westminster. Four bishops, and four other divines of the Roman school, were to dispute with an equal number of theologians on the Protestant side. Cole, Dean of St. Paul’s, figured prominently in the debate. “He delivered himself,” says Jewell, “with great emotion, stamping with his feet, and putting himself as in convulsions.” The dean justified the practice of performing worship in a dead language, by affirming that the apostles divided their field of labor into two great provinces-the Eastern and the Western. The Western, in which Latin only was spoken, had fallen to the lot of Peter and Paul; the Eastern, in which Greek only was to be used, had been assigned to the rest of the apostles. But, inasmuch as the West had descended to themselves through Peter and Paul, it became them to worship in the ancient and only legitimate language of that province. It was not the least necessary, Cole argued, that the people should understand the worship in which they joined, it was even to their advantage that they did not, for the mystery of an unknown tongue would make the worship venerable in their eyes and greatly heighten their devotion. Fecknam, Abbot of Westminster, defended the cause of the monastic orders by reference to the sons of the prophets and the Nazarites among the Jews, and the yet weightier example of Christ and his apostles, who, he maintained, were monks. The Lord Keeper, who presided, had frequent occasion to reprove the bishops for transgressing the rules of the debate. The Bishops of Winchester and Lincoln angrily retorted by threatening to excommunicate the queen, and were committed to the Tower. The Popish cause lost by the disputation, and the Parliament gathered courage to return, with bolder steps to that order of things which had existed under Edward VI.[5]

Elizabeth, having determined upon a Protestant policy, saw every day the difficulties vanishing from her path, and new and unexpected aids coming to her assistance. The task was not so overwhelmingly difficult after all! Two sagacious statesmen had placed their genius and their experience at her service. This was her first encouragement. Her way had been smoothed, moreover, by another and a very different ally. Death had been busy in the nation of late; and, as of proceeding on system, the destroyer had leveled his shafts against the more influential and zealous upholders of Popery. While the enemies of the queen were thus being thinned at home, abroad the aspect of the horizon was less threatening than when she ascended the throne. The death of Francis II, and the distractions that broke out during the minority of Charles IX, weakened the Popish combination on the Continent. Paul IV, loath to think that England was finally lost, and cherishing the hope of reclaiming Elizabeth from her perverse course by mild measures, forbore to pronounce sentence of excommunication-which he held her liable for the offense of intruding into a fief of the Papal See without his consent. His successor in the Pontifical chair, Pius IV, pursued the same moderate course. This greatly facilitated Elizabeth’s government with her Popish subjects. Her right to her crown had not been formally annulled. The Romanists of her realm had not been discharged of their allegiance, and they continued to frequent the parish churches and join in the Protestant worship. Thus for eleven years after Elizabeth’s accession the land had rest, and, in the words of Fuller, England “was of one language and one speech.” The delay in the excommunication never yielded the fruits which the Popes expected to gather from it: England and its queen, instead of returning to the Roman obedience, went on their way, and when at last Pins V fulminated the sentence which had so long hung above the head of the English monarch it was little heeded; the sway of Elizabeth had by this time been in

[5]Burnet, vol. 3., book 6., pp. 402-405.

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some degree consolidated, and many who eleven years before had been Papists, were now converts to the Protestant faith.

Amid runny injunctions and ordinances that halted between the two faiths, and which tended to conserve the old superstition, several most important practical steps were taken to diffuse a knowledge of Protestant truth amongst the people. There was a scarcity of both books and preachers, and the efforts of the queen and her wise ministers were directed to the object of remedying that deficiency. The preacher was even more necessary than the book, for in those days few people could read, and the pulpit was the one great vehicle for the diffusion of intelligence. At St. Paul’s Cross stood a stone pulpit, which was a center of attraction in Popish times, being occupied every Sunday by a priest who descanted on the virtue of relics and the legends of the saints. After the Reformation this powerful engine was seized and worked in the interests of Protestantism. The weekly assemblies around it continued, and increased, but now the crowd gathered to listen to the exposition of the Scriptures, or the exposure of Popish error, by some of the most eminent of the Protestant ministers. The court was often present, and generally the sermon was attended by the Lord Mayor and aldermen. This venerable pulpit had served the cause of truth in the days of Edward VI: it was not less useful in the times of Elizabeth. Many of the sermons preached from it were published, and may be read at this day with scarcely less delight than was experienced by those who heard them; for it is the prerogative of deep emotion-as it is of high genius-to express thought in a form so beautiful that it will live for ever.

The next step of Elizabeth, with her statesmen and clergy, was to issue injunctions and visitation articles. These injunctions sanctioned the demolition of images and the removal of altars, and the setting up of tables in their room. The clergy were required-at least four times in the year- to declare that the Pope’s supremacy was abolished, to preach against the use of images and relics, against beads in prayer, and lighted candles at the altar or Communion table, and faithfully to declare the Word of God. Every minister was enjoined to catechize on every second Sunday for half an hour at least, before evening prayer-in the Ten Commandments, the Articles of the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. Curates were “to read distinctly,” and such as were but “mean readers” were to peruse “once or twice beforehand the chapters and homilies to be read in public, to the intent they may read to the better understanding of the people.” Low indeed must both teachers and taught have sunk when such injunctions were necessary! Elizabeth and her Government found that the ignorance which Popery creates is one of its strongest defenses, and the greatest of all the impediments which have to be surmounted by those who labor for the emancipation of nations fallen under the dominion of Rome.

It was against that ignorance that Elizabeth and her councilors continued to direct their assaults. The next step, accordingly, was the publication of the Book of Homilies. We have already said that in the reign of Edward VI twelve homilies were published, and appointed to be read in those churches in which the ministers were disqualified to preach. The clergy, the majority of whom were secretly friendly to the Romish creed, contrived to evade the Act at the same time that they professed to obey it. They indeed read the homily, but in such a way as to frustrate its object. The minister “would,” says Latimer, “so hawk and chop it, that it were as good for them to be without it, for any word that could be understood.” Edward’s Book of Homilies, which contained only twelve short sermons, was to be followed by a second book, which had also been prepared by the same men-Cranmer, Latimer, and others; but before it could be published Edward died. But now the project was revived. Soon after Elizabeth ascended the throne, the first Book of Homilies was re-published, and along with it came the second series, which had been prepared but never printed. This last book contained twenty sermons, and both sets of homilies were appointed to be read from the pulpit. No more effectual plan could have been adopted for the diffusion of Scriptural knowledge, and this measure was as necessary now as in the days of Edward. A great retrogression in popular intelligence had taken place under Mary; the priests of Elizabeth’s time were as grossly ignorant as those of Edward’s; the majority were Papists at heart, and if allowed to preach they would have fed their flocks with fable and Romish error. Those only who were known to possess a competent knowledge of the Word of God were permitted to address congregations in their own words; the rest were commanded to make use of the sermons which had been prepared for the instruction of the nation. These homilies were golden cups, filled with living waters, and when the people of England pressed them to their parched lips, it well became them to remember whose were the hands that had replenished these vessels from the Divine fountains. The authors of the homilies-Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer-though dead, were yet speaking. They [437] had perished at the stake, but now they were preaching by a thousand tongues to the people of England. Tyrants had done to them as they listed; but, risen from the dead, these martyrs were marching before the nation in its glorious exit from its house of bondage.

The mere reading of the Homilies Sunday after Sunday was much, but it was not all. The queen’s Injunctions required that a copy of the Homilies, provided at the expense of the parish, should be set up in all the churches, so that the people might come and read them. By their side, “one book of the whole Bible, of the largest volume in English,” was ordered to be placed in every church, that those who could not purchase the Scriptures might nevertheless have access to them, and be able to compare with them the doctrine taught in the Homilies. To the Bible and the Homilies were added Erasmus’s Paraphrase on the New Testament, also in English. And when the famous Apology of Jewell, one of the noblest expositions of Protestantism which that or any age has produced, was written, a copy of it was ordered to be placed in all the churches, that all might see the sum of doctrine held by the Reformed Church of England. These measures show how sincerely the queen and her councilors were bent on the emancipation of the nation from the yoke of Rome; and the instrumentalities they made use of for the diffusion of Protestantism form a sharp contrast to the means employed under Mary to convert men to the Roman worship. The Reformers set up the Bible, the Romanists planted the stake.

During the first year of Elizabeth’s reign, though there lacked not thousands of clergy in England, the laborers qualified to reap the fields now white unto harvest were few indeed. But their numbers were speedily recruited from a quarter where the storms of prosecution had for some time been assembling them. When the great army of Protestant preachers at Zurich, at Geneva, at Strasburg, and at other foreign towns heard that Elizabeth was on the throne, they instantly prepared to return and aid in the Reformation of their native land. These men were rich in many gifts- some in genius, others in learning, others were masters of popular eloquence, and all were men of chastened spirit, ripe Christians and scholars, while their views had been enlarged by contact with foreign Protestants. Their arrival in England greatly strengthened the hands of those who were laboring in rebuilding the Protestant edifice. Among these exiles was Jewell, a man of matchless learning, which his powerful intellect enabled him to wield with ease and grace, and who by his incomparable work, the Apology, followed as it was by the Defence, did more than any other man of that age to demonstrate the falsehood of the Popish system, and the impregnable foundations in reason and truth on which the Protestant Church reposed. Its publication invested the Reformed cause in England with a prestige it had lacked till then. The arrival of these men was signally opportune. The Marian bishops, with one exception, had vacated their sees-not, as in the case of the Protestants under Mary, to go to prison or to martyrdom, but to retire on pensions, and live till the end of their days in security and affluence. But the embarrassment into which they expected the Government would be thrown by their resignation was obviated by the appointment to the vacant posts of men who, even they were compelled to acknowledge, were their superiors in learning, and whom all men felt to be immensely their superiors in character. Of these exiles some were made bishops, others of them declined the labours and responsibilities of such an office, but all of them brought to the service of the Reformation in England an undivided heart, an ardent piety, and great and varied learning. The queen selected Matthew Parker, who had been chaplain to her mother, Anne Boleyn, to fill the See of Canterbury, vacant since the death of Cardinal Pole. He was consecrated by three bishops who had been formerly in possession of sees, which they had been compelled to vacate during the reign of Mary-Coverdale, Scorey, and Barlowe. Soon after his consecration, the primate proceeded to fill up the other sees, appointing thereto some of the more distinguished of the Reformers who had returned from exile. Grindal was made Bishop of London, Cox of Ely, Sandys of Worcester, and Jewell of Salisbury. An unusual number of mitres were at this moment vacant through death; only fourteen men who had held sees under Mary survived, and all of these, one excepted, had, as we have already said, resigned; although they could hardly plead that conscience had compelled them to this step, seeing all or nearly all of them had supported Henry VIII in his assumption of the royal supremacy, which they now refused to acknowledge. Of the 9,400 parochial clergy then computed in England, only some eighty resigned their livings. The retirement of the whole body would have been attended with inconvenience, and yet their slender qualifications, and their languid zeal, rendered their presence in the Reformed Church a weakness to the body to which they continued to cling. It was sought to counteract their apathy, not to say opposition, by permitting them only [438] the humble task of reading the homilies, and by sending better qualified men, so far as they could be found, throughout England, on preaching tours. “In the beginning of August, 1559,” says Burnet, “preachers were sent to many different parts; many northern counties were assigned to Sandys; Jewell had a large province—he was to make a circuit of many hundred miles, through Berkshire, Gloucestrshire, Dorsetshire, and Wiltshire.”[6]

The first eleven years of Elizabeth’s reign were those in which the Protestantism of England took root, and the way was prepared for those splendid results that were to follow. These eleven years were likewise those of Elizabeth’s greatest successes, though not those of the greatest brilliancy, because wanting the dramatic incidents that gave such glory to the latter half of her reign. In these years the great queen is seen at her best. With infinite tact and sagacity, aided by her sage adviser Cecil, she is beheld threading her way through innumerable labyrinths and pitfalls. When she ascended the throne England was a chaos; whichever way she turned, she beheld only tremendous difficulties; but now order has emerged from the confusion; her throne is powerful, her arsenals are stored with arms, her dockyards with ships, the Protestant faith is established in her realm, genius and learning flourish under her scepter, and the name of England has again become a terror to her foes. So long as Elizabeth pursues her reforming path, obstacle after obstacle vanishes

[6]Burnet, vol. 3., book 6., p. 406.

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before her, and herself and her kingdom wax ever the stronger.

But the point at which Protestantism finally halted under Elizabeth was somewhat below that which it had reached under Edward VI. For this various reasons may be assigned. The queen, as was this her object in the restoration into the administration of the Lord’s Supper of both forms of words prescribed in the two Prayer Books of Edward. The union of the two forms, the one appearing to favor the corporeal presence, the other conveying the spiritual sense, obscured the Heylin hints, loved a gorgeous worship as well as a magnificent state ceremonial-hence the images and lighted tapers which the queen retained in her own chapel. But the prevailing motive with Elizabeth was doubtless the desire to disarm the Pope and the Popish Powers of the Continent by conciliating the Papists of England, and drawing them to worship in the parish churches. This was the end she had in view in the changes which she introduced into the Prayer Book; and especially doctrine of the Eucharist, and enabled the Papist to say that in receiving the Eucharist he had partaken in the ancient Roman mass. But the great defect, we are disposed to think, in the English Reformation was the want of a body of canons for the government of the Church and the regulation of spiritual affairs. A code of laws, as is well known, was drawn up by Cranmer,[7] and was ready

[7]Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum.

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for the signature of Edward VI when he died. It was revived under Elizabeth, with a view to its legal enactment; but the queen, thinking that it trenched upon her supremacy, would not hear of it. Thus left without a discipline, the Church of England has, to a large extent, been dependent on the will of the sovereign as regards its government. Touching the nature and extent of the power embodied in the royal supremacy, the divines of the Church of England have all along held different opinions. The first Reformers regarded the headship of the sovereign mainly in the light of a protest against the usurped authority of the Pope, and a declaration that the king was supreme over all classes of his subjects, and head of the nation as a mixed civil and ecclesiastical colaboration. The “headship” of the Kings of England did not vest in them one important branch of the Papal headship that of exercising spiritual functions. It denied to them the right to preach, to ordain, and to dispense the Sacraments. But not less true is it that it lodged in them a spiritual jurisdiction, and it is the limits of that jurisdiction that have all along been matter of debate. Some have maintained it in the widest sense, as being an entire and perfect jurisdiction; others have argued that this jurisdiction, though lodged in a temporal functionary, is to be exercised through a spiritual instrumentality, and therefore is neither inconsistent with the nature nor hostile to the liberties of the Church. Others have seen in the supremacy of the crown only that fair share of influence and authority which the laity are entitled to exercise in spiritual things. The clergy frame ecclesiastical enactments and Parliament sanctions them, say they, and this dual government is in meet correspondence with the dual constitution of the Church, which is composed partly of clerics and partly of laics. It is ours here not to judge between opinions, but to narrate facts, and gather up the verdict of history; and in that capacity it remains for us to say that, while history exhibits opinion touching the royal supremacy as flowing in a varied and conflicting current, it shows us the actual exercise of the prerogative- whether as regards the rites of worship, admission to benefices, or the determination of controversies on faith-as proceeding in but one direction, namely, the government of the Church by the sovereign, or a secular body representing him.[8]

[8]Those who wish to see at full length the different opinions which have been maintained by divines on the royal supremacy, may consult, among other works, Strype, Eccles. Mem. Bibliotheca Scriptorum Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1709; Becanus (a Jesuit), Dissidium Anglicanum de Primatu Regis, 1612; Madox, Vindication of the Church of England; Professor Archibald Bruce, Dissertation on the Supremacy of Civil Powers, etc., 1802; Dr. Blakeney, History of the Book of Common Prayer, 1870; Dr. Pusey, The Royal Supremacy not an Arbitrary Authority, 1850; Warren, The Queen or the Pope, 1851; Cunningham, Discussion on Church Principles, chapter 6, 1863.

Chapter 16: Excommunication of Elizabeth, and Plots of the Jesuits

England the Head-quarters of Protestantism-Its Subjugation Resolved upon-Excommunication of Queen Elizabeth-Jesuits-Assassins- Dispensation to Jesuits to take Orders in the Church of England-The Nation Broken into Two Parties-Colleges Erected for Training Seminary Priests-Campion and Parsons-Their Plan of Acting- Campion and his Accomplices Executed-Attempts on the Life of Elizabeth-Somerville-Parry-The Babington Conspiracy-Ballard- Savage-Babington-The Plot Joined by France and Spain-Mary Stuart Accedes to it-Object of the Conspiracy-Discovery of the Plot- Execution of the Conspirators

Picture: Queen Elizabeth Addressing her Troops at Tilbury

When Elizabeth was at the weakest, the sudden conversion of an ancient foe into a firm ally brought her unexpected help. So long as Scotland was Popish it was a thorn in the side of Elizabeth, but the establishment of its Reformation in 1560, under Knox, made it one in policy as in faith with England. Up till this period a close alliance had subsisted between Scotland and France, and the union of these two crowns threatened the gravest danger to Elizabeth. The heiress of the Scottish kingdom, Mary Stuart, was the wife of Francis II of France, who on ascending the throne had openly assumed the title and arms of England, and made no secret of his purpose to invade that country and place his queen, Mary Stuart, upon its throne. In this project he was strongly encouraged by the Guises, so noted for their ambition and so practiced in intrigue. The way to carry out his design, as it appeared to [441] the French king, was to pour his soldiers into his wife’s hereditary kingdom of Scotland, and then descend on England from the north and dethrone Elizabeth. The scheme was proceeding with every promise of success, when the progress of the Reformation in Scotland, and the consequent expulsion of the French from that country, completely deranged all the plans of the court of France, and converted that very country, in which the Papists trusted as the instrument of Elizabeth’s overthrow, into her firmest support and security. So marvelously was the path of Elizabeth smoothed, and her throne preserved.

We have briefly traced the measures Elizabeth adopted for the Reformation of her kingdom on her accession, and the prosperity and power of England at the close of the first decade of her reign. Not a year passed, after she unloosed her neck from the yoke of Rome, that did not see a marked advance in England’s greatness. While the Popish Powers around her were consuming their strength in internal conflicts or in foreign wars, which all had their root in their devotion to the Papal See, England was husbanding her force in unconscious anticipation of those great tempests that were to burst upon her, but which instead of issuing in her destruction, only afforded her opportunity of displaying before the whole world, the spirit and resource she had derived from that Protestantism which brought her victoriously out of them.

It was now becoming clear to the Popish Powers, and most of all to the relating Pope, Pius V, that the Reformation was centering itself and drawing to a head in England; that all the Protestant influences that had been engendered in the various countries were finding a focus-a seat-a throne within the four seas of Great Britain; that all the several countries of the Reformations: France, Switzerland, Geneva., Germany, the Netherlands-were sending each its special contribution to form in that sea-girt isle a wider, a more consolidated, and a more perfect Protestantism than existed anywhere else in Christendom: in short, they now saw that British Protestantism, binding up in one, as it was doing, the political strength of England with the religious power of Scotland, was the special outcome of the whole Reformation-that Britain was in fact the Sacred Capitol to which European Protestantism was bearing in triumph its many spoils, and where it was founding its empire, on a wider basis than either Geneva or Wittemerg afforded it. Here therefore must the great battle be fought which was to determine whether the Reformation of the sixteenth century was to establish itself, or whether it was to turn out a failure. Of what avail was it to suppress Protestantism in its first centers, to trample it out in Germany, in Switzerland, in France, while a new Wittemberg and a new Geneva were rising in Britain, with the sea for a rampart, and the throne of England for a tower of defense? They must crush heresy in its head: they must cast down that haughty throne which had dared to lift itself above the chair of Peter, and show its occupant, and the nation she reigned over, what terrible chastisements await those who rebel against the Vicar of Christ, and Vicegerent of the Eternal King. Successful here, they should need to fight no second battle; Great Britain subjugated, the revolt of the sixteenth century would be at an end.

To accomplish that supreme object, the whole spiritual and temporal arms of the Popedom were brought into vigorous action. The man to strike the first blow was Pius V, and that blow was aimed at Queen Elizabeth. The two predecessors of Pius V, though they kept the sentence of excommunication suspended over Elizabeth, had, as we have seen, delayed to pronounce it, in the hope of reclaiming her from her heresy; but the queen’s persistency made it vain longer to entertain that hope, and the energetic and intolerant ecclesiastic who now occupied the Papal throne proceeded to fulminate the sentence. It was given at the Vatican on the 3rd of May, 1570. After large assertion of the Pope’s power over kings and nations, the bull excommunicates “Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England, a slave of wickedness, lending thereunto a helping hand, with whom, as in a sanctuary, the most pernicious of all men have found a refuge. This very woman having seized on the kingdom, and monstrously usurping the supreme place of Head of the Church in all England, and the chief authority and jurisdiction thereof, hath again brought back the said kingdom into miserable destruction, which was then newly reduced to the Catholic faith and good fruits.”

After lengthened enumeration of the “impieties and wicked actions” of the “pretended Queen of England,” the Pope continues: “We do out of the fullness of our Apostolic power declare the aforesaid Elizabeth, being a heretic, and a favorer of heretics, and her adherents in the matters aforesaid, to have incurred the sentence of anathema, and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ. And moreover we do declare her to be deprived of her pretended title to the kingdom aforesaid, and of all dominion, dignity, and privilege whatsoever... And we do command and interdict all and every the noblemen, subjects, people, and others aforesaid, that [442] they presume not to obey her or her monitions, mandates, and laws; and those who shall do the contrary, we do strike with the like sentence of anathema.”[1]

The signal having been given from the Vatican, the war was forthwith commenced. The Papal corps were to invade the land in separate and successive detachments. First came the sappers and miners, for so we may denominate the Jesuits, who followed in the immediate wake of the bull. Next appeared the skirmishers, the men with poignards, blessed and sanctified by Rome, to take off the leading Protestants, and before and above all, Elizabeth. The heavier troops, namely the armies of the Popish sovereigns, were to arrive on the field in the close of the day, and provided the work were not already done by the Jesuit and the assassin, they were to do what remained of it, and complete the victory by the irresistible blow of armed force. Over the great ruin of throne and altar, of rights and liberties, the Papacy would erect once more its pavilion of darkness.

In truth, before the bull of excommunication had been issued, the Jesuits had entered England. About the year 1567, Parsons and Saunders were found itinerating the kingdom, with authority from the Pope to absolve all who were wining to return to the Roman communion. Cummin, a Dominican friar, was detected in the garb of a clergyman of the Church of England, and when examined by Archbishop Parker, he pleaded that although he had not received license from any English bishop, he had nevertheless in preaching and praying most strenuously declaimed against the Pope and the Church of Rome. The source of his zeal it was not difficult to divine. The dispute respecting vestments was by this time waxing hot, and this emissary had been sent from Rome to embitter the strife, and divide the Protestants of England. Another startling discovery was made at this time. Thomas Heath, brother of the deprived Archbishop of York, professed the highest style of Puritanism. Preaching one day in the Cathedral of Rochester, he loudly inveighed against the Liturgy as too little Biblical in its prayers. On descending from the pulpit after sermon, a letter was found in it which he had dropped while preaching. The letter, which was from an eminent Spanish Jesuit, revealed the fact that this zealous Puritan, whose tender conscience had been hurt by the Prayer Book, was simply a Jesuit in disguise. Heath’s lodgings were searched, and a license was found from the Pope, authorizing him to preach whatever doctrines he might judge best fitted to inflame the animosities and widen the divisions of the Protestants. The men who stole into England under this disguise found others, as base as themselves, ready to join their enterprise, and who, in fact, had retained their ecclesiastical livings in the hope of overthrowing one day that Church which ranked them among her ministers. So far the campaign had proceeded in silence and secrecy; the first overt act was that which we have already narrated, the fulmination of the bull of 1570.

This effectually broke the union and peace which had so largely prevailed in England during Elizabeth’s reign. The lay Romanists now withdrew from the churches of an excommunicated worship; they grew cold towards an excommunicated sovereign; they kept aloof from their fellow-subjects, now branded as heretics; and the breach was widened by the measures the Parliament was compelled to adopt, to guard the person of the queen from the murderous attacks to which she now began to be subjected. Two statutes were immediately enacted. The first declared it high treason “to declare that the queen is a heretic or usurper of the crown.”[2] The second made it a like crime to publish any bull or absolution, from Rome.[3] It was shown that these edicts were not to remain a dead letter, for a copy of the bull of excommunication having been posted up on the palace gates of the Bishop of London, and the person who had placed it there discovered, he was hanged as a traitor. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, which occurred soon after (1572), sent a thrill of terror through the court and nation, as the possible precursor of similar scenes in England. The doom of the Huguenots taught Elizabeth and the English Protestants that pledges and promises of peace were no security whatever against sudden and wholesale destruction.

A school was next established to rear seminary priests and assassins. The catechism and the dagger were to go hand in hand in extirpating English Protestantism. Father Allen, afterwards created a cardinal, took the initiative in this matter. He founded a college at Douay, in the north-east of France, and selecting a small band of English youths he carried them thither, to be educated as seminary priests and afterwards employed in the perversion of their native land. The Pope approved so entirely of the plan of Father Allen, that he created a similar institution at Rome-the

[1]Danmatio et Excommunicatio Elizabethae Reginae Angliae, etc. Datum Romae, etc., 1570, 5 cal. Maii, Pontificatus Nostri Anno 5.

[2]Act 13 Elizabeth, chapter 1.

[3]Ibid., chapter 2

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English College,[4] which he endowed with the proceeds of a rich abbey. Into these colleges no student was admitted till first he had given a pledge that on the completion of his studies he would return to England, and there propagate the faith of Rome, and generally undertake whatever service his superiors might deem necessary in a country whose future was the rising or falling of the Papal power.

Before the foreign seminaries had had sufficient time to send forth qualified agents, two students of Oxford, Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons, repairing to Rome, there arranged with the Jesuits the plan for carrying out the execution of the Pope’s bull against Queen Elizabeth. In 1580 they returned and commenced operations. They assumed a new name and wore a different dress each day. “One day,” says Fuller, “they wore one garb, on another a different one, while their nature remained the same. He who on Sunday was a priest or Jesuit, was on Monday a merchant, on Tuesday a soldier, on Wednesday a courtier; and with the shears of equivocation he could cut himself into any shape he pleased. But under all their new shapes they retained their old nature.”[5] Campion made the south of England his field of labor. Parsons traveled over the north, awakening the Roman Catholic zeal and the spirit of mutiny. They lodged in the houses of the Popish nobles. Their arrival was veiled in the deepest secrecy, they tarried but a night, employing the evening in preparing the family and domestics for mass, administering it in the morning, and then departing as stealthily as they had come. At length Campion addressed a letter to the Privy Council, boldly avowing his enterprise, which was to revive in England “the faith that was first planted, and must be restored;” and boasting that the Jesuits of all countries were leagued together for this object, and would never desist from the prosecution of it so long as there remained one man to hang at Tyburn. He concluded by demanding a disputation at which the queen and members of the Privy Council should be present.[6] A warrant was issued for his apprehension, he was seized in the disguise of a soldier, conveyed to the Tower, and along with Sherwin, Kirby, and Briant, his accomplices, executed for high treason, which the Act already passed declared his offense to be.

Campion and Parsons were but the pioneers of a much more numerous body. The training schools at Douay, at Rheims, and at Rome now began to send forth men who were adepts in all the arts which the enterprise required. They entered London, they crept from house to house, they haunted the precincts of the court, they found their way into the provinces.[7] In Salop alone were found not fewer than 100 recusants.[8] They said mass in families, gave absolutions, and worked perseveringly to pervert the people at once from the Protestant faith and their allegiance to Elizabeth. Every year their numbers were recruited by fresh swarms. They held reunions, which they styled synods, to concert a common action; they set up secret printing presses, and began to scatter over the kingdom, pamphlets and books, written with plausibility and at times with eloquence, attacking Protestantism and instilling sedition; and these works had the greater influence, that they had come no man knew whither, save that they issued out of a mysterious darkness.

The impatience of these men to see England a Popish country would not permit them to wait the realization of their hopes by the slow process of instruction and perversion. Some of them carried more powerful weapons for effecting their enterprise than rosaries and catechisms. They came armed with stilettos and curious poisons, and they plunged into plot after plot against the queen’s life. These machinations kept her in continual apprehension and anxiety, and the nation in perpetual alarm. Their grand project, they felt, was hopeless while Elizabeth lived; and not being able to wait till age should enfeeble her, or death make vacant her throne, they watched their opportunity of taking her off with the poignard. The history of England subsequent to 1580 is a continuous record of these murderous attempts, all springing out of, and justifying themselves by, the bull of excommunication. In 1583, Somerville attempted the queen’s life, and to escape the disgrace of a public execution, hanged himself in prison. In 1584, Parry’s treason was discovered, and he was executed. Strype tells us that he had seen among the papers of Lord Burleigh the Italian letter of the Cardinal di Como to Parry, conveying the Pope’s approval of his intention to kill the queen when riding out, accompanied by the full pardon of all his sins.[9] Next came the treason of Throgmorton, in which Mendoza the Spanish ambassador was found to be implicated, and was sent out of England. Not a year passed, after the arrival in England of Campion and Parsons, without an insurrection or plot in some part of

[4]Strype, Annals, vol. 3., p. 40; London, 1728.

[5]Fuller, book 9., p. 130.

[6]Strype, vol. 3. pp. 32, 33.

[7]Strype, vol. 3., p. 39.

[8]Ibid., p. 43.

[9]Ibid., p. 249.

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the queen’s dominions. The prisons of London contained numerous “massing priests, sowers of sedition,” charged with disturbing the public peace, and preaching disaffection to the queen’s government and person.[10]

In 1586 came the Babington conspiracy, the most formidable and most widely ramified of all the treasons hatched against the life and throne of Elizabeth. It originated with John Ballard, a priest who had been educated at the seminary of Rheims, and who, revering the bull of excommunication as the product of infallibility, held that Elizabeth, having been excommunicated by the Pope, ought not to be permitted to enjoy her scepter or her life an hour longer, and that to deprive her of both was the most acceptable service he could do to God, and the surest way of earning a crown in Paradise. Ballard soon found numerous accomplices, both within and without the kingdom. One of the first to join him was John Savage, who had served in the Low Countries under the Duke of Parma. Many gentlemen of good family in the midland and northern counties of England, zealots for the ancient religion, were drawn into the plot, and among these was Babington, from whom it takes its name. The conspiracy embraced persons of still higher rank and power. The concord prevailing at this time among the crowned heads of the Continent permitted their acting together against England and its queen, and made the web of intrigue and treason now weaving around that throne, which was the political bulwark of Protestantism, formidable indeed. The Guises of France gave it every encouragement; Philip of Spain promised his powerful aid; it hardly needed that the Pope should say how fully he accorded it his benediction, and how earnest were his prayers for its success. This mighty confederacy, comprehending conspirators of every rank, from Philip of Spain, the master of half Europe, down to the vagrant and fanatical Ballard, received yet another accession. The new member of the plot was not exactly one of the crowned heads of Europe, for the crown had fallen from her head, but she hoped by enrolling herself among the conspirators to recover it, and a greater along with it. That person was Mary Stuart, who was then living in England as the guest or captive of Elizabeth. Babington laid the plans and objects of himself and associates before Mary, who approved highly of them, and agreed to act the part allotted to herself. The affair was to commence with the assassination of Elizabeth; then the Romanists in England were to be summoned to arms; and while the flames of insurrection should be raging within the kingdom, a foreign army was to land upon the coast, besiege and sack the cities that opposed them, raise Mary Stuart to the throne, and establish the Popish religion in England.

The penetration, wisdom, and patriotism of the statesmen who stood around Elizabeth’s throne-men who were the special and splendid gifts of Providence to that critical time saved England and the world from this bloody catastrophe. Walsingham early penetrated the secret. By means of intercepted letters, and the information of spies, he possessed himself of as minute and exact a knowledge of the whole plot as the conspirators themselves had; and he stood quietly by and watched its ripening, till all was ready, and then he stepped in and crushed it. The crowned conspirators abroad were beyond his reach, but the arm of justice overtook the miscreants at home. The Englishmen who had plotted to extinguish the religion and liberties of their native land in the blood of civil war and the fury of a foreign invasion, were made to expiate their crimes on the scaffold; and as regards the poor unhappy Queen of the Scots, the ending of the plot to her was not, as she had fondly hoped, on the throne of England, but in front of the headsman’s block in the sackcloth-hung hall in Fotheringay Castle.[11]

“Upon the discovery of this dreadful plot,” says Strype, “and the taking up of these rebels and bloody-minded traitors, the City of London made extraordinary rejoicings, by public bonfires, ringing of bells, feastings in the streets, singing of psalms, and such like: showing their excess of gladness, and ample expressions of their love and loyalty to their queen and government”.[12]

An attempt was made at the time, and has since been renewed at intervals, to represent the men executed for their share in this and similar conspiracies as martyrs for religion. The fact is that it is impossible to show that a single individual was put to death under Elizabeth simply because he believed in or professed the Popish faith: every one of these State executions was for promoting or practicing treason. If the Protestant Government of Elizabeth had ever thought of putting Papists to death for their creed, surely the first to suffer would have been Gardiner, Bonner, etc., who had

[10]Strype, vol. 3., p. 217.

[11]Full particulars of the plot, with the documents, and confessions of the conspirators, are given by Strype, Annals, vol. 3., book 2., chapter 5. See also Hume, Groude, the Popish historian Lingard, and others.

[12]Strype, vol. 3. p. 417.

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had so deep a hand in the bloody tragedies under Mary. But even the men who had murdered Cranmer and hundreds besides were never called to account, but lived in ease and peace all their days amid the relations and contemporaries of the men they had dragged to the stake.

Chapter 17: The Armada; its Building

The Armada—The Year 1588 Prophecies—State of Popish and Protestant Worlds previous to the Armada—Building of the Armada—Victualling, Arming, etc., of the Armada—Number of Ships—of Sailors—Galley-Slaves -Soldiers—Guns—Tonnage—Attempts to Delude England—Second Armada prepared in Flanders under Parma—Number of his Army—Deception on English Commissioners—Preparations in England—The Militia—The Navy—Distribution of the English Forces—The queen at Tilbury—Supreme Peril of England

While Mary Stuart lived the hopes and projects of the Catholic Powers centered in her. But Mary Stuart lived no longer. The ax of the headsman in Fotheringay Castle had struck the center out of the great Popish plot: it had not, however, brought it to an end. The decree enjoining the extirpation of Protestantism on all Christian princes still stood recorded among the infallible canons of Trent, and was still acknowledged by the king of the Popish world. The plot now took a new shape, and this introduces us to the story of the Invincible “Armada.”

The year of the Armada (1588) had been looked forward to with dread long before it came, seeing it had been foretold that it would be a year of prodigies and disasters.[1] It was just possible, so had it been said, that the world would this year end; at the least, during its fatal currency thrones would be shaken, empires overturned, and dire calamities would afflict the unhappy race of men. And now as it drew near rumors of portents deepened the prevailing alarm. It was reported that it had rained blood in Sweden, that monstrous births had occurred in France, and that still more unnatural prodigies had terrified and warned the inhabitants of other countries.

But it needed no portent in the sky, and no prediction of astrologer or stargazer to notify the approach of more than usual calamity. No one who reflected on the state of Europe, and the passions and ambitions that were inspiring the policy of its rulers, could be blind to impending troubles. In the Vatican was Sixtus V, able, astute, crafty, and daring beyond the ordinary measure of Popes. On the throne of Spain was Philip II, cold, selfish, gluttonous of power, and not less gluttonous of blood-as dark-minded a bigot as ever counted beads, or crossed himself before a crucifix, no Jesuit could be more secret or more double. His highest ambition was that after-generations should be able to say that in his days, and by his arm, heresy had been exterminated. France was broken into two struggling factions; its throne was occupied by a youth weak, profligate, and contemptible, Henry III. His mother, one of the monstrous births whom those times produced, governed the kingdom, while her son divided his time between shameful orgies and abject penances. Holland was mourning her great William, bereaved of life by the dagger of an assassin, hired by the gold of Spain, and armed by the pardon of the Pope. The Jesuits were operating all over Europe, inflaming the minds of kings and statesmen against the Reformation, and forming them into armed combinations to put it down. The small but select band of Protestants in Spain and in Italy, whose beautiful genius and deep piety, to which was added the prestige of high birth, had seemed the pledge of the speedy Reformation of their native lands, no longer existed. They were wandering in exile, or had perished at the stake. Worst of all, concord was wanting to the friends of the Reformation. The breach over which Calvin had so often mourned, and which he had attempted in vain to heal, was widened. In England a dispute which a deeper insight on the one side, and greater forbearance on the other, would have prevented from ever breaking out, was weakening the Protestant ranks. The wave of spiritual influence which had rolled over Christendom in the first half of the century, bearing on its swelling crest scholars, statesmen, and nations, had now these many years been on the ebb. Luther, Calvin, Knox, Cranmer,

[1]Camden, vol. 3., p. 402. Strada, vol. 2., p. 530.

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and Coligny were all off the stage; and their successors, though men of faith and of ability, were not of the same lofty stature with these who had been before them the giants who had commenced the war. And what a disparity in point of material resources between the nations who favored and the nations who opposed the Reformation! Should it come to a trial of strength between the two, how unlikely was it that England with her four minions of people, and Holland with even fewer, would be able to keep their ground in presence of the mighty armies and rich exchequers of the Popish world! It was coming to a trial of strength. The monarch whose scepter was stretched over some hundred minions of subjects, was coming against her whom only four minions called their sovereign. These were the portents that too surely betokened coming calamity. It required no skill in astrology to read them. One had but to look, not at the stars, but on the earth, and to contrast the different circumstances and spirit of the contending parties the friends of Romanism acting in concert, devising vast schemes, veiling them in darkness, yet prosecuting them with unrelaxing rigor; while the friends of the Reformation were divided, irresolute, cherishing illusions of peace, and making little or no preparations against the awful tempest that was rolling up on all sides of them.

The building of the Armada had been commenced two years before the execution of Mary Stuart. The elevation of Mary to the throne of the excommunicated Elizabeth was to have been the immediate outcome of it, but the preparations did not slacken from what had occurred in Fotheringay Castle. Neither time, nor toil, nor money was spared to fit out such a fleet as the world had never before seen. The long line of coast extending from Cape Finisterre to the extreme point of Sicily was converted into one vast building-yard.[2] Whereever there was a harbor or river’s mouth, advantage was taken of it to construct a war galley or a transport craft. At intervals along this line of some 1,500 or 2,000 miles, might be seen keels laid down of a size then deemed colossal, and carpenters busy fastening thereto the bulging ribs, and clothing them with planks. The entire seaboard rang without intermission with the clang of hammer, the stroke of ax, and the voices of myriad men, employed in building the vessels that were to bear the legionaries of Spain, the soldiers of the Inquisition, over the seas to the shores of heretical England. Wherever ship builders were to be found, whether in the West Indies or in America, Philip II searched them out, and had them transported to Spain to help forward his great and holy work. The inland forests were felled, and many a goodly oak and cork tree were dragged to the coast; thousands of looms were set to work to weave cloth for sails; hundreds of forges were in full blaze, smelting the ore, which gangs of workmen were hammering into guns, pikes, and all sorts of war material. Quantities of powder and shot, and whatever might be needed for invasion, as grappling-irons, bridges for crossing rivers, ladders for scaling the walls of towns, wagons, spades, mattocks, were stored up in abundance. Bread, biscuit, wine, and carcasses of sheep and oxen were brought to Lisbon, where the main portion of the Armada was stationed, and stowed away in the ships.[3] “The Catholic king,” says Meteren, “had finished such a mighty navy as never the like had before that time sailed upon the ocean sea.” The ships were victualled for six months. It was believed that by the expiry of that period the object of the Armada would be accomplished, and the sailors and soldiers of Spain would eat of the corn of England.

The Armada numbered 150 vessels, great and small, armed, provisioned, and equipped for the service that was expected of it. On board of it were 8,000 sailors; 2,088 galley-slaves, for rowing; 20,000 soldiers, besides many noblemen and gentlemen who served as volunteers; its armour consisted of 2,650 pieces of ordnance; its burden was 60,000 tons.[4] This was an immense tonnage at a time when the English navy consisted of twenty-eight sail, and its aggregate burden did not exceed the tonnage of a single Transatlantic steamer of our own day.

The ships were of great capacity and amazing strength. Their strong ribs were lined with planks four feet in thickness, through which it was thought impossible that bullet could pierce. Cables smeared with pitch were wound round the masts, to enable them to withstand the fire of the enemy. The galleons were sixty-four in number. They towered up above the waves like castles: they were armed with heavy brass ordnance. The galliasses were also of great size, and “contained within them,” says Meteren, “chambers, chapels, turrets, pulpits, and other commodities of large houses.” They were mounted with great guns of brass and iron, with the due complement of culverins, halberds, and field-pieces for land service. Each galliass was rowed by 300 galley-slaves, and “furnished and

[2]Hume, vol. 2., chapter 42.

[3]Meteren, book 15. Hakluyt, History of the Navigations, Voyages, etc., of the English Nation, vol. 1., pp. 591, 592; London, 1599.

[4]Meteren, book 15. Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 593.

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beautified with trumpets, streamers, banners, and warlike engines.[5]

During the time that this unprecedentedly vast fleet was being built in the harbors of Spain, everything was done to conceal the fact from the knowledge of the English nation. It was meant that the bolt should fall without warning and crush it. In an age when there were hardly any postal communications, secrecy was more easily attainable than in our day; but the preparations were on far too vast a scale to remain unknown. The next attempt was to propagate a delusion touching the real destination of this vast armament. At one time it was given out that it was intended to sweep from the seas certain pirates that gave annoyance to Spain, and had captured some of her ships. It was next said that Philip meant to chastise certain unknown enemies on the other side of the Atlantic. All that craft and downright lying could do was done, to lay to sleep the suspicions of the people of England. Even the English agent at Madrid, with the Armada building as it were before his eyes, was induced to credit these fabulous explanations; for we find him writing home that there had recently been discovered richer mines in the New World than any heretofore known; but that these treasures were guarded by a gigantic race, which only this enormous fleet could overcome; and this, he felt confident, was the true destination of the Armada. Even Walsingham, one of the most sagacious of the queen’s ministers, expressed his belief-just fifteen days before the Armada sailed-that it never would invade England, and that Philip’s hands were too full at home to leave him leisure to conquer kingdoms abroad. Such being the belief of some of her ambassadors and statesmen, it is not surprising that Elizabeth should have continued to confide in the friendly intentions of the man who was toiling night and day to prepare the means of her destruction, and could with difficulty be roused to put herself and kingdom in a proper posture of defense against the coming blow.

Nor was the fleet now constructing in Spain the whole of that mighty force which was being collected for the overthrow of England and the destruction of Protestantism. There was not one but two Armadas. In the Netherlands, the possession of which gave Philip coasts and ports opposed to England, there was a scene of activity and preparation as vast almost as that upon the seaboard of the Atlantic. Philip’s governor in Belgium at that time was the Duke of Parma, the ablest general of his age, and his instructions were to prepare an army and fleet to cooperate with the Spanish force as soon as the Armada should arrive in the English Channel. The duke, within his well-guarded territory, did not slacken his exertions night or day to execute these orders. He brought ship-wrights and pilots from Italy, he levied mariners at Hamburg, Bremen, Embden, and other places. In the country of Waas, forests were felled to furnish flat-bottomed boats for transport. At Dunkirk he, provided 28 warships. At Nieuport he got ready 200 smaller vessels, and 70 in the river of Watch. He stored up in the ships planks for constructing bridges and rafts for fording the English rivers, stockades for entrenchments, field-pieces, saddles for horses, baking-ovens-in short, every requisite of an invading force. He employed some thousands of workmen in digging the Yper-lee for the transport of ships from Antwerp and Ghent to Bruges, where he had assembled 100 small vessels, which he meant to convey to the sea by the Sluys, or through his new canal. The whole of the Spanish Netherlands, from which wholesome industry had long been banished, suddenly burst into a scene of prodigious but baleful activity.[6]

The duke assembled in the neighborhood of Nieuport a mighty host, of various nationalities. There were 30 regiments of Italians, 10 of Walloons, 8 of Scots, and 8 of Burgundians. Near Dixmuyde were mustered 80 regiments of Dutch, 60 of Spaniards, 6 of Germans, and 7 of English fugitives, under the command of Sir William Stanley. There was hardly a noble house in Spain that had not its representative within the camp of Parma. Quite a flock of Italian and Neapolitan princes and counts repaired to his banners. Believing that the last hour of England had come, they had assembled to witness its fall.[7]

Meanwhile every artifice, deception, and falsehood were resorted to, to delude Elizabeth and the statesmen who served her, and to hide from them their danger till the blow should descend. She sent her commissioners to the Low Countries, but Parma protested, with tears in his eyes, that there lived not on earth one who more vehemently desired peace than himself. Did not his prayers morning and night ascend for its continuance? And as regarded the wise and magnanimous sovereign of England, there was not one of her servants that cherished a higher admiration of her than he did. While indulging day after day in these deliberate lies, he was busy enlisting and arming soldiers,

[5]Meteren, book 15. Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 593.

[6]Meteren, book 15. Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 594.

[7]Ibid.

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drilling regiments, and constructing flat-bottomed boats and transports to carry his forces across the German Ocean, and dethrone and lead captive that very queen for whom he professed this enthusiastic regard. This huge hypocrisy was not unsuccessful. The commissioners returned, after three months’ absence, in the belief that Parma’s intentions were pacific, and they confirmed Elizabeth and her minister in those dreams of peace, from which they were not to be fully awakened till the guns of the Spanish Armada were heard in the English Channel.

In aid of Philip’s earthly armies, the Pope, when all was ready, mustered his spiritual artillery. Sixtus V fulminated his bull against Elizabeth, in which he confirmed the previous one of Pius V, absolved her subjects from their allegiance, and solemnly conferred her kingdom upon Philip II, “to have and to hold as tributary and feudatory of the Papal Chair.” While the Pope with the one hand took away the crown from Elizabeth, he conferred with the other the red hat upon Father Allen. Italian honors to English Papists are usually contemporaneous with insults to English sovereigns, and so was it now: Allen was at the same time made Archbishop of Canterbury by the Pope, and Papal Legate. “This Allen,” says the Dutch historian, “being enraged against his own native country, caused the Pope’s bull to be translated into English, meaning upon the arrival of the Spanish fleet to have it published in England.[8]

There was no longer disbelief in England touching the destination of Philip’s vast feet. In a few weeks his ships would be off the coast; how was the invasion to be met? England had only a handful of soldiers and a few ships to oppose to the myriad host that was coming against her. The royal army then was composed of such regiments as the nobles, counties, and towns could assemble when the crown required their service. Appeals were issued to the Lords Lieutenant of the several counties: the response shows the spirit which animated England. The total foot and horse furnished by England were 87,000. Wales contributed 45,000: making together 132,000. This force was exclusive of what was contributed by London, which appears to have been 20,000.[9] This force was distributed into three armies: one of 22,000 foot and 2,000 horse, for the defense of the capital, and which was stationed at Tilbury under the Earl of Leicester. A second army, consisting of 28,900 men, was for defense of the queen’s person. A third was formed, consisting of 27,400 heavy horse armed with lances, and 1,960 light horse armed with different weapons, to guard the coast. These were stationed at such points in the south and east as were likely to be selected by the enemy for landing. Beacons were prepared, and instructions were issued respecting their kindling, so that the soldiers might know on what point to converge, when the signal blazed forth announcing that the enemy had touched English soil.[10]

The fleet which the queen had sent to sea to oppose the Armada consisted of thirty-four ships of small tonnage, carrying 6,000 men. Besides these, the City of London provided thirty ships. In all the port towns merchant vessels were converted into warships; and the resisting navy might number 150 vessels, with a crew of 14,000. This force was divided into two squadrons-one under Lord Howard, High Admiral of England, consisting of seventeen ships, which were to cruise in the Channel and there wait the arrival of the Armada, The second squadron, under Lord Seymour, consisting of fifteen ships, was stationed at Dunkirk, to intercept Parma, should he attempt to cross with his feet from Flanders. Sir Francis Drake, in his ship the Revenge, had a following of about thirty privateers.[11] After the war broke out the fleet was farther increased by ships belonging to the nobility and the merchants, hastily armed and sent to sea; though the brunt of the fight, it was foreseen, must fall on the queen’s ships.

At this crisis Queen Elizabeth gave a noble example of patriotism and courage to her subjects. Attired in a military dress she appeared on horseback in the camp at Tilbury, and spiritedly addressed her soldiers, declaring her resolution rather to perish in battle than survive the ruin of the Protestant faith, and the slavery of her people.

The force now mustered in England looks much more formidable when set forth on paper than when drawn up in front of Philip’s army. These 100,000 men were simply militia, insufficiently trained, poorly armed, and to be compared in no point, save their spirit, with the soldiers of Spain, who had served in every clime, and met warriors of all nations on the battle-field. And although the

[8]Meteren, book 15. Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 595.

[9]These numbers, with the arrangement of the forces, are taken from Bruce’s Report, which was compiled from documents in the State Paper Office, prepared at the command of Government, and printed but not published. The author is indebted for its use to David Laing, Esq., LL.D.

[10]Bruce, Report, pp. 47,48.

[11]Ibid., pp. 59, 60. Meteren. Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 595.

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English fleet counted hull for hull with the Spanish, it was in comparison but a collection of pinnaces and boats. The queen’s spirit was admirable, but her thrift was carried to such an extreme that she grudged the shot for the guns, and the rations for the men who were to defend her throne. The invading navy was the largest which had ever been seen on ocean since it was first ploughed by keel. The Spanish half alone was deemed more than sufficient to conquer England, and how easy would conquest become when that Armada should be joined, as it was to be, by the mighty force under Parma, the flower of the Spanish army! England, with her long line of coast, her unfortified towns, her four minions of population, including many thousand Papists ready to rise in insurrection as soon as the invader had made good his landing, was at that hour in supreme peril; and its standing or falling was the standing or falling of Protestantism. Had Philip succeeded in his enterprise, and Spain taken the place of England, as the teacher and guide of the nations, it is appalling to think what at this hour would have been the condition of the world. [451]

Chapter 18: The Armada Arrives off England

The Armada Sails—The Admiral Dies—Medina Sidonia appointed to Command—Storm off Cape Finisterre—Second Storm—Four Galleons Lost—Armada Sighted off the Lizard—Beacon-fires—Preparations in Plymouth Harbor—First Encounter between the Armada and English Fleet—The Armada Sails up the Channel, Followed and Harassed by the English Fleet—Its Losses—Second Battle—Third Battle off the Isle of Wight—Superiority of the English Ships—The Armada Anchors off Calais—Parma and his Army Looked for—The Decisive Blow about to be Struck

Picture: English Fireships sent into the Armada.

The last gun and the last sailor had been taken on board, and now the Armada was ready to sail. The ships had been collected in the harbor of Lisbon, where for some time they lay weather-bound, but the wind shifting, these proud galleons spread their canvas, and began their voyage towards England. Three days the fleet continued to glide down the Tagus to the sea, galleon following galleon, till it seemed as if room would scarce be found on the ocean for so vast an armament. These three memorable days were the 28th, the 29th, and the 30th of May, 1588. The Pope, as we have seen, had pronounced his curse on Elizabeth; he now gave his blessing to the fleet, and with this double pledge of success the Armada began its voyage. It was a brave sight, as with sails spread to the breeze, and banners and streamers gaily unfurled, it held its way along the coast of Spain, the St. Peter doubtless taking the lead, for the twelve principal ships of the Armada, bound on a holy enterprise, had been baptized with the names of the twelve apostles. On board was Don Martin Allacon, Administrator and Vicar General of the “Holy Office of the Inquisition,” and along with him were 200 Bare-footed Friars and Dominicans.[1] The guns of the Armada were to begin the conquest of heretical England, and the spiritual arms of the Fathers were to complete it.

Just as the Armada was about to sail, the Marquis Santa Cruz, who had been appointed to the chief command, died. He had been thirty years in Philip’s service, and was beyond doubt the ablest sea captain of whom Spain could boast. Another had to be sought for to fill the place of the “Iron Marquis,” and the Duke of Medina Sidonia was selected for the onerous post. The main recommendation of Medina Sidonia was his vast wealth. He was the owner of large estates which lay near Cadiz, and which had been settled at the first by a colony from Sidon.[2] To counterbalance his inexperience in naval affairs, the ablest seamen whom Spain possessed were chosen as his subordinate officers. The “Golden Duke” was there simply for ornament; the real head of the expedition was to be the Duke of Parma, Philip’s commander in the Netherlands, and the ablest of his generals. The duke was to cross from Flanders as soon as the Armada should have anchored off Calais, and, uniting his numerous army with the vast fleet, he was to descend like a cloud upon the shore of England.

[1]Meteren, book 15. Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 594. Bruce Report, p. 65; see also Appendix No. 50, where the exact number of friars is set down at 180.

[2]Bruce, Report, p. 66, foot-note.

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The Armada had now been three weeks at sea. The huge hulks so disproportional to the tiny sails made its progress windward wearisomely slow. Its twenty-one days of navigation had not enabled it to double Cape Finisterre. It had floated so far upon a comparatively calm sea, but as it was about to open the Bay of Biscay, the sky began to be overcast, black clouds came rolling up from the south-west, and the swell of the Atlantic, sowing into mountainous billows, tumbled about those towering structures, whose bulk only exposed them all the more to the buffering of the great waves and the furious winds. The Armada was scattered by the gale; but the weather moderating, the ships reassembled, and pursuing their course, soon crossed the bay, and were off Ushant. A second and severer storm here burst on them. The waves, dashing against the lofty turrets at stem and stern, sent a spout of white water up their sides and high into mid-air, while the racing waves, coursing across the low bulwarks amidships, threatened every moment to engulf the galleons. One of the greatest of them went down with all on board, and other two were driven on the shore of France. In the case of a fourth this tempest brought liberty on its wing to the galley-slaves aboard of it, among whom was David Gwin, who had been taken captive by the Spaniards, and had passed eleven doleful years on board their galleys.[3] The storm subsiding, the Armada once more gathered itself together, and setting sail entered the Channel, and on the 29th of July was off the Lizard.[4] Next day England had her first sight of her long-expected enemy, coming over the blue sea, her own element, to conquer her. Instantly the beacon-fires were kindled, and blazing along the coast and away into the inland, announced alike to dweller in city and in rural parts that the Spanish fleet was in the Channel. Long as the Armada had been waited for, its appearance took England by surprise. Its sailing from Lisbon two months before had been known in England; but next came tidings that storms had dispersed and driven it back; and orders had been sent from the Admiralty to Plymouth to lay up the ships in dock, and disband their crews.[5] Happily, before these orders could be executed the Armada hove in sight, and all doubt about its coming was at an end. There it was in the Channel. In the afternoon of Saturday, the 30th of July, it could be descried from the high ground above Plymouth harbor, advancing slowly from the south-west, in the form of a crescent, the two horns of which were seven miles apart. As one massive hulk after another came out of the blue distance, and the armament stretched itself out in portentous length on the bosom of the deep, it was seen that rumor had not in the least exaggerated its size. On board his great galleon, the St. Martin, his shoot-proof fortress, stood Medina Sidonia, casting proud glances around him, now at the mighty fleet under his command, moving onwards as he believed to certain victory, and now on the shore under his lee, that land of which the Pope had said to Philip, “To thee will I give it.”

That was a night long to be remembered in England. As another and yet another hilltop lighted its fires in the darkness, and the ever-extending line of light flashed the news of the Armada’s arrival from the shores of the Channel to the moors of Northumberland; and across the Tweed, all through Scotland, where, too, beacon-fires had been prepared, the hearts of men were drawn together by the sense of a common danger and a common terror. All controversies were forgotten in one absorbing interest; and the cry of the nation went up to the Throne above, that He who covered his people in Egypt on that awful night when the Angel passed through the land, would spread his wing over England, and not suffer the Destroyer to touch it.

Meanwhile in the harbor of Plymouth all was bustle and excitement. Howard, Drake, and Hawkins were not the men to sleep over the enterprise. The moment the news arrived that the Armada had been sighted off the Lizard, they began their preparations, and the whole following night was spent in getting the ships ready for sea. By Saturday morning sixty ships had been towed out of harbor. Their numbers were not more than a third of those of the Armada, and their inferiority in size was still greater; but, manned by patriotic crews, they hoisted sail, and away they went to meet the enemy. On the afternoon of the same day the two fleets came in sight of each other. The wind was blowing from the south-west, bringing with it a drizzling rain and a chopping sea. The billows of the Atlantic came tumbling into the Channel, and the galleons of Spain, with their heavy ordnance, and their numerous squadrons, rolled uneasily and worked clumsily; whereas the English ships, of smaller size, and handled by expert seamen, bore finely up before the breeze, took a close survey of the Spanish fleet, and then standing off to windward, became invisible in the haze. The Spaniard was thus informed that the English fleet was in his immediate neighborhood, but the darkness did not permit battle to be joined that night.

Sunday morning, the 31st of July, broke, and

[3]Meteren, book 15. Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 596.

[4]Ibid.

[5]Ibid.

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this day was to witness the first encounter between the great navy of Spain and the little fleet of England. Medina Sidonia gave the signal for an engagement; but to his surprise he found that the power of accepting or declining battle lay entirely with his opponent. Howard’s ships were stationed to windward, the sluggish Spanish galleons could not close with them; whereas the English vessels, light, swift, and skillfully handled, would run up to the Armada, pour a broadside into it, and then swiftly retreat beyond the reach of the Spanish guns. Sailing right in the eye of the wind, they defied pursuit. This was a method of fighting most tantalizing to the Spaniard: but thus the battle, or rather skirmish, went on all day: the Armada moving slowly up-channel before the westerly breeze, and the English fleet hanging upon its rear, and firing into it, now a single shot, now a whole broadside, and then retreating to a safe distance, but quickly returning to torment and cripple the foe, who kept blazing away, but to no purpose, for his shot, discharged from lofty decks, passed over the ships of his antagonist, and fell into the sea. It was in vain that the Spanish admiral hoisted the flag of battle; the wind and sea would not permit him to lie-to; and his little nimble foe would not come within reach, unless it might be for a moment, to send a cannon-ball through the side of some of his galleons, or to demolish a turret or a mast, and then make off, laughing to scorn the ungainly efforts of his bulky pursuer to overtake him. As yet there had been no loss of either ship or man on the part of the English.

Not quite so intact was the Armada. Their size made the ships a more than usually good mark for the English gunners, and scarcely had a shot been fired during the day that had not hit. Besides, the English fired four shots to one of the Spaniards. The Armada sustained other damage besides that which the English guns inflicted upon it. As night fell its ships huddled together to prevent dispersion, and the galleon of Pedro di Valdez, fouling with the Santa Catalina, was so much damaged that it fell behind and became the booty of the English. This galleon had on board a large amount of treasure, and what was of greater importance to the captors, whose scanty stock of ammunition was already becoming exhausted, many tons of gunpowder. Above the loss of the money and the ammunition was that of her commander to the Spaniards, for Pedro di Valdez was the only naval officer in the fleet who was acquainted with the Channel.[6]

Later in the same evening a yet greater calamity befell the Armada. The captain of the rear-admiral’s galleon, much out of humor with the day’s adventures, and quarreling with all who approached him, accused the master-gunner of careless firing. Affronted, the man, who was a Fleming, went straight to the powder magazine, thrust a burning match into it, and threw himself out at one of the port-holes into the sea. In a few seconds came the explosion, flashing a terrific but momentary splendor over the ocean. The deck was upheaved; the turrets at stem and stern rose into the air, carrying with them the paymaster of the fleet and 200 soldiers. The strong hulk, though torn by the explosion, continued to float, and was seized in the morning by the English, who found in it a great amount of treasure, and a supply of ammunition which had not ignited.[7] On the very first day of conflict the Armada had lost two flagships, 450 officers and men, the paymaster of the fleet, and 100,000 ducats of Spanish gold. This was no auspicious commencement of an expedition which Spain had exhausted itself to fit out.

On the following day (Monday, 1st August) the Armada held its way slowly up-channel, followed by the fleet under Howard, who hovered upon its rear, but did not attack it. Next morning (Tuesday) the Armada was off St. Alban’s Head; and here the first really serious encounter took place. As the morning rose, the wind changed into the east, which exactly reversed the position of the two fleets, giving the weather-gauge to the Armada. Howard attempted to sail round it and get to windward of it, but Medina Sidonia intercepted him by coming between him and the shore, and compelled him to accept battle at close quarters. The combat was long and confused. In the evening the Spanish ships gathered themselves up, and forming into a compact group, went on their way. It was believed that they were obeying Philip’s instructions to steer for the point where the Duke of Parma was to join them with his army, and then strike the decisive blow. The shores of the English Channel were crowded with spectators; merchant vessels were hastening from every port of the realm to the spot where the very existence of the English crown hung on the wager of battle. These accessions added greatly to the appearance, but very little to the effective force, of the queen’s navy. The nobles and gentry also were flocking to the fleet; the representatives of the old houses, pouring thither in the same stream with the new men whose genius and patriotism had placed them at the head

[6]Meteren; Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 597.

[7]Meteren; Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 598.

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of affairs, giving by their presence prestige to the cause, and communicating their own enthusiasm to the soldiers and sailors in the fleet.[8]

On Wednesday the Armada continued its course, followed by Howard and his fleet. A few shots were that day exchanged, but no general action took place. On Thursday, the 4th, the Armada was off the Isle of Wight. The wind had again changed into the east, giving to the Armada once more the weather-gauge. Accordingly it lay-to, and here the sharpest action of all was fought. The ships of the two fleets engaged, yardarm to yardarm, and broadside after broadside was exchanged at a distance of about 100 yards. The admiral, Lord Howard, in his ship the Ark, steered right into the heart of the Armada, in search of Medina Sidonia, in his ship the St. Martin, making acquaintance with each galleon as he passed, by pouring a broadside into it. Rear-Admiral Oquendo, perceiving Howard’s design, ran his ship under the bows of the Ark, and by the shock unshipped her rudder, and rendered her unmanageable. Six Spanish galleons closed round her, never doubting that she was their prize. In a trice the Ark’s own boats had her in two, and passing out of the hostile circle she was off, to the amazement of the Spaniards. The fight continued several hours longer.

Ships of apostolic name found their saintly titles no protection from the round shot of the English guns. The St. Matthew, the St. Mark, the St. Philip, the St. Luke, the St. John, the St. Martin, fought with the Lion, the Bull, the Bear, the Tiger, the Dreadnought, the Revenge, the Victory, but they could gain no mastery over their unapostolical antagonists. In the carnal business of fighting the superiority seemed to lie with the heretical combatants. The sides of the orthodox galleons were pierced and riddled with the English shot, their masts cut or splintered, and their cordage torn; and when evening fell, the enemy, who had all through the conflict seen the Spanish shot pass harmlessly over him and bury itself in the sea, stood away, his hulls bearing no sign of battle, hardly a cord torn, and his crews as intact as his ships.

On the following day (Friday) the procession up-channel was resumed, at the same slow pace and in the same order as before, the mighty Armada leading the van, and the humble English fleet following. On the afternoon of Saturday the Spaniards were off Calais. It was here, or near to this, that Medina Sidonia was to be joined by the Duke of Parma, with the fleet and army which he had been preparing all the previous winter, and all that summer, in the harbors of Flanders. The duke had not arrived, but any hour might bring him, and Medina Sidonia resolved here to cast anchor and wait his approach. The Armada accordingly took up its position in the roadstead of Calais, while the English fleet cast anchor a league off to the west.[9]

The hour had now come when it was to be determined whether England should remain an independent kingdom, or become one of Philip’s numerous satrapies; whether it was to retain the light of the Protestant faith, or to fall back into the darkness and serfdom of a mediaeval superstition. Battles, or rather skirmishes, there had been between the two fleets, but now the moment had come for a death-grapple between Spain and England. The Armada had arrived on the battle-ground comparatively intact. It had experienced rough handling from the tempests of the Atlantic; Howard and Drake had dealt it some heavy blows on its way up the Channel; several of those galleons which had glided so proudly out of the harbor of Lisbon, were now at the bottom of the ocean; but these losses were hardly felt by the great Armada. It waited but the junction with the Duke of Parma to be perhaps the mightiest combination of naval and military power which the world had seen. This union might happen the next day, or the day after, and then the Armada, scattering the little fleet which lay between it and the shores to which it was looking across, would pass over, and Elizabeth’s throne would fall.

[8]Meteren; Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 599.

[9]Meteren; Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 600.

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Chapter 19: Destruction of the Armada

The Roadstead of Calais—Vast Preparations in Flanders—The Dutch Fleet Shuts in the Army of Parma—The Duke does not Come—A Great Crisis—Danger of England—Fire-ships—Launched against the Armada—Terror—The Spaniards Cut their Cables and Flee—Great Battle off Gravelines—Defeat of the Spaniards—Shattered State of the Galleons—Narrowly Escape Burial in the Quicksands—Retreat into the North Sea—The Armada off Norway—Driven across to Shetland—Carried round to Ireland—Dreadful Scenes on the Irish Coast—Shipwreck and Massacre—Anstruther—Interview between the Minister and a Shipwrecked Spanish Admiral—Return of a Few Ships to Spain—Grief of the Nation—The Pope Refuses to Pay his Minion of Ducats—The Effects of the Armada—The Hand of God—Medals Struck in Commemoration—Thanksgiving in England and the Protestant States

Picture: Thanksgiving Procession for the Defeat of the Armada.

We left the two fleets watching each other in the roadstead of Calais, the evening closing in darkly, the scud of tempest drifting across the sky, and the billows of the Atlantic forcing their way up the Channel, and rocking uneasily the huge galleons of Spain at their anchorage. The night wore away: the morning broke; and with the returning light the Duke of Medina Sidonia is again seen scrutinizing the eastern ocean, and straining his eyes if haply he may descry the approach of the Duke of Parma. This is the appointed place of meeting. The hour is come, but it has not brought the man and the arrangement so eagerly desired. On his way up the Channel, Medina Sidonia had sent messenger after messenger to Parma, to urge him to be punctual. He had not concealed from him what it must have cost the proud Spaniard no little pain to confess, that he needed his help; but he urged and entreated in vain: there was no sail in the offing. Neither sight nor sound of Parma’s coming could Medina Sidonia obtain.

All the while, Parma was as desirous to be on the scene of action as Medina Sidonia was to have him there. The duke had assembled a mighty force. One of his regiments was accounted the finest known in the history of war, and had excited great admiration on its march from Naples to the Netherlands, by its engraved arms and gilded corslets, as well as its martial bearing. A numerous fleet, as we have already said, of flat-bottomed vessels was ready to carry this powerful host across to England. But one thing was wanting, and its absence rendered all these vast preparations fruitless. Parma needed an open door from his harbors to the ocean, and the Dutch took care not to leave him one. They drew a line of warships along the Netherland coast, and Parma, with his sailors and soldiers, was imprisoned in his own ports. It was strange that this had not been foreseen and provided against. The oversight reveals the working of a Hand powerful enough by its slightest touches to defeat the wisest schemes and crush the mightiest combinations of man.

Parma wrote repeatedly to both Philip and Medina Sidonia to say that all was ready, that sailors, soldiers, and transports were collected, but that the Dutch had shut him in, and months of labor and minions of ducats were lost for want of the means of exit; that the Armada must come across the German Ocean, and with its guns make for him a passage through the hostile fleet, which, so long as it kept watch and ward over him, rendered one arm of the great Armada useless. And yet Philip either would not or could not understand this plain matter; and so, while one half of Spain’s colossal army is being rocked in the roadstead of Calais, its commander fretting at Parma’s delay, the other half lies bound in the canals and harbors of Flanders, champing the curb that keeps them from sharing with their comrades the glory and the golden spoils of the conquest of England.

In the meantime, anxious consultations were being held on board the English fleet. The brave and patriotic men who led it did not conceal from themselves the gravity of the situation. The Armada had reached its appointed rendezvous in spite of all their efforts, and if joined by Parma, it would be so overwhelmingly powerful that they did not see what should hinder its crossing over and landing in England. They were willing to shed their blood to prevent this, and so too were the brave men by whom their ships were manned; but there seemed to be a struggle in the mind of the queen between parsimony and patriotism, and that wretched penuriousness which kept the fleet supplied with neither ammunition nor provisions, threatened to counterbalance all the unrivaled seamanship, together with the bravery and devotion that were now being put forth in defense of the British crown. The hours of the Sunday were [456] wearing away; the crown of England was hanging in the balance; before another dawn had come, Parma’s fleet, for taught they could tell, might be anchored alongside of Medina Sidonia’s in the roadstead of Calais, and the time would be past for striking such a blow as would drive off the Spanish ships, and put the crown and realm of England beyond danger.

A bold and somewhat novel expedient, suggested by her Majesty, as both Camden and Meteren affirm,[1] was resolved upon for accomplishing this object. Eight ships were selected from the crowd of volunteer vessels that followed the fleet; their masts were smeared with pitch, their hulls were filled with powder and all kinds of explosive and combustible materials; and so prepared they were set adrift in the direction of the Armada, leaving to the Spaniards no alternative but to cut their cables or to be burned at their anchors. The night favored the execution of this design. Heavy masses of clouds hid the stars; the muttering of distant thunder reverberated in the sky; that deep, heavy swell of ocean that precedes the tempest was rocking the galleons, and rendering their position every moment more unpleasant-so close to the shallows of Calais on the one side, with the quicksand of Flanders on their lee. While in this feverish state of apprehension, new objects of terror presented themselves to the Spaniards. It was about an hour past midnight when the watch discerned certain dark objects emerging out of the blackness and advancing towards them. They had hardly given the alarm when suddenly these dark shapes burst into flame, lighting up sea and sky in gloomy grandeur. These pillars of fire came stalking onwards over the waters. The Spaniards gazed for a moment upon the dreadful apparition, and, divining its nature and mission, they instantly cut their cables, and, with the loss of some of their galleons and the damage of others in the confusion and panic, they bore away into the German Ocean, the winds their pilot.[2]

With the first light the English admiral weighed anchor, and set sail in pursuit of the fleeing Spaniard. At eight o’clock on Monday morning, Drake came up with the Armada off Gravelines, and giving it no time to collect and form, he began the most important of all the battles which had yet been fought. All the great ships on both sides, and all the great admirals of England, were in that action; the English ships lay-to close to the galleons, and poured broadside after broadside into them. It was a rain of shot from morning to night. The galleons falling back before the fierce onset, and huddling together, the English fire was poured into the mass of hulls and masts, and did fearful execution, converting the ships into shambles, rivulets of blood pouring from their scuttles into the sea. Of the Spanish guns many were dismounted, those that remained available fired but slowly, while the heavy rolling of the vessels threw the shot into the air. Several of the galleons were seen to go down in the action, others put hors de combat reeled away towards Ostend.[3] When the evening fell the fighting was still going on. But the breeze shifting into the northwest, and the sea continuing to rise, a new calamity threatened the disabled and helpless Armada; it was being forced upon the Flanders coast, and if the English had had strength and ammunition to pursue them, the galleons would have that night found common burial in the shoals and quicksand of the Netherlands. They narrowly escaped that fate at the time, but only, after prolonged terrors and sufferings, to be overtaken by it amid wilder seas, and on more savage coasts. The power of the Armada had been broken; most of its vessels were in a sinking condition; from 4,000 to 5,000 of its soldiers, shot down, had received burial in the ocean; and at least as many more lay wounded and dying on board their shattered galleons. Of the English not more than 100 had fallen.

Thankful was the terrified Medina Sidonia when night fell, and gave him a few hours’ respite. But with morning his dangers and anxieties returned. He found himself between two great perils. To the windward of him was the English fleet. Behind him was that belt of muddy water which fringes the Dutch coast, and which indicates to the mariner’s eye those fatal banks where, if he strikes, he is lost. The helpless Armada was nearing these terrible shoals that very moment. Suddenly the wind shifted into the east, and the change rescued the Spanish galleons when on the very brink of destruction. The English fleet, having lost the weather-gauge, stood off; and the Spanish admiral, relieved of their presence, assembled his officers on board his ship to deliberate on the course to be taken. Whether should they return to their anchorage off Calais, or go back to Spain by way of the Orkneys? This was the alternative on which Medina Sidonia requested his officers to give their opinion. To return to Calais involved a second battle with the English, and if this should be, the officers were of opinion that there would come no to-morrow to the Armada;

[1]Meteren; Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 601.

[2]Ibid.

[3]Meteren; Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 602.

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to return to Spain in battered ships, without pilots, and through unknown and dangerous seas, was an attempt nearly as formidable; nevertheless, it was the lesser of the two evils to which their choice was limited, and it was the one adopted.[4] Tempest, conflagration, and battle had laid the pride of Spain in the dust.

No sooner had the change of wind rescued the Spanish ships from the destruction which, as we have seen, seemed to await them, than it shifted once more, and settling in the south-west, blew every moment with greater force. The mostly rudderless ships could do nothing but drift before the rising storm into the northern seas. Drake followed them for a day or two; he did not fire a gun, in fact his ammunition was spent, but the sight of his ships was enough, the Spaniards fled, and did not even stay to succour their leaking vessels, which went down unhelped amid the waves.

Spreading sail to the rising gale, the Armada bore away past the Frith of Forth. Drake had been uneasy about Scotland, fearing that the Spaniards might seek refuge, in the Forth and give trouble to the northern kingdom; but when he saw this danger pass, and the Armada speed away towards the shores of Norway, he resolved to retrace his course before famine should set in among his crews. No sooner did Drake turn back from the fleeing foe than the tempest took up the pursuit, for that moment a furious gale burst out, and the last the English saw of the Armada were the vanishing forms of their retreating galleons, as they entered the clouds of storm and became hid in the blackness of the northern night. In these awful solitudes, which seemed abandoned to tempests, the Spaniards, without pilots and without a chart, were environed by bristling rocks and by unknown shallows, by currents and whirlpools. They were “driven from light into darkness;” they were “chased out of the world.”

The tempest continuing, the Armada was every hour being carried farther into that unknown region which the imagination of its crews peopled with terrors, but not greater than the reality. The fleet was lessening every day, both in men and ships; the sailors died and were thrown overboard; the vessels leaked and sank in the waves. The survivors were tossed about entirely at the mercy of the winds and the water; now they were whirled along the iron-bound coast of Norway, now they were dashed on the savage rocks of the Shetlands, and now they found themselves in the intricate friths and racing currents of the Orkneys. Carried on the tempest’s wings round Cape Wrath, they were next launched amid the perils of the Hebrides. The rollers of the Atlantic hoisted them up, dashed them against the black cliffs, or flung them on the shelving shore; their crews, too worn with toil and want to swim ashore, were drowned in the surf, and littered the beach with their corpses. The winds drove the survivors of that doomed fleet farther south, and now they were careering along the west coast of Ireland. The crowd of sail seen off the coast caused alarm at the first, but soon it was known how little cause there was to fear an Armada which was fleeing when no man was pursuing. There came a day’s calm; hunger and thirst were raging on board the ships; their store of water was entirely spent; the Spaniards sent some boats on shore to beg a supply. They prayed piteously, they offered any amount of money, but not a drop could they have. The natives knew that the Spaniards had lost the day, and that should they succour the enemies of Elizabeth, the Government would hold them answerable. Nor was this the worst; new horrors awaited them on this fated coast. The storm had returned in all its former violence; to windward were the mighty crested billows of the Atlantic, against which both themselves and their vessels were without power to contend; to the leeward were the bristling cliffs of the Irish coast, amid which they sought, but found not, haven or place of rest. The gale raged for eleven days, still during that time galleon after galleon came on shore, scattering their drowned crews by hundreds upon the beach. An eye-witness thus describes the dreadful scene: “When I was at Sligo,” wrote Sir Geoffrey Fenton, “I numbered on one strand of less than five miles in length, eleven hundred dead bodies of men, which the sea had driven upon the shore. The country people told me the like was in other places, though not to the same number.”[5] On the same coast there lay, Sir William Fitzwilliam was told, “in the space of a few miles, as great store of the timber of wrecked ships, more than would have built five of the greatest ships that ever I saw, besides mighty great boats, cables, and other cordage answerable thereto, and some such masts for bigness and length as I never saw any two could make the like.”[6]

The sea was not the only enemy these wretched men had to dread. The natives, though of the same religion with the Spaniards, were more pitiless

[4]Meteren; Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 603.

[5]Fenton to Burghley, October 28: MSS. Ireland-quoted by Froude, vol. 12., p. 451; London, 1870.

[6]Fitzwilliam to the English Council, December 31: MSS. Ireland-apud Froude.

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than the waves. As the Spaniards crawled through the sand up the beach, the Irish slaughtered them for the sake of their velvets, their gold brocades, and their rich chains. Their sufferings were aggravated from another cause. The Government had sent orders to the English garrisons in Ireland to execute all who fell into their hands. This order, which was prompted by the fear that the Spaniards might be joined by the Irish, and that a mutiny would ensue, was relentlessly called out. It was calculated that in the month of September alone, 8,000 Spaniards perished between the Giants’ Causeway and Blosket Sound;[7] 1,100 were executed by the Government officers, and 3,000 were murdered by the Irish. The rest were drowned. The islets, creeks, and shores were strewed with wrecks and corpses, while in the offing there tossed an ever-diminishing fleet, torn and battered, laden with toil-worn, famished, maddened, despairing, dying men. The tragedy witnessed of old on the shore of the Red Sea had repeated itself, with wider horrors, on the coast of Ireland.[8]

We turn to another part of this appalling picture. It is more pleasant than that which we have been contemplating. We are on the east coast of Scotland, in the town of Anstruther, where James Melvine, brother of the illustrious Andrew Melvine, was minister. One morning in the beginning of October, 1558, so he tells us in his autobiography, he was awakened at daybreak by one of the baillies of Anstruther coming to his bedside, and saying, “have news to tell you, sir: there is arrived in our harbor this morning a ship full of Spaniards, but not to give mercy, but to ask it.” The minister got up and accompanied the baillie to the town hall, where the council was about to assemble to hear the petition of the Spaniards, who meanwhile had been ordered back to their ships. After the magistrates, burghers, and minister had deliberated, the commander of the ship was introduced, “a very reverend man, of big stature, and grave and stout countenance, gray-headed, and very humble-like, who, after many and very low courtesies, bowing down with his face near to the ground, and touching my shoe with his hand,” began the story of the Armada and its mishaps. This “very reverend man,” who was now doing obeisance before the minister of Anstruther, was the admiral of twenty galleons. He had been cast upon the “Fair Isle” between Shetland and Orkney, and after seven weeks’ endurance of cold and hunger among the natives, he had managed to procure a ship in which to come south, and now he was asking “relief and comfort” for himself and the captains and soldiers with him, “whose condition was for the present most pitiful and miserable;” and thereupon he again “bowed himself even to the ground.” The issue was that the commander and officers were hospitably entertained at the houses of the neighboring gentry, and that the soldiers, who numbered 260, “young beardless men, weak, toiled, and famished,”[9] were permitted to come ashore, and were fed by the citizens till they were able to pursue their voyage. The name of the commander was Jan Gomes di Medina.[10]

The few galleons that escaped the waves and rocks crept back one by one to Spain, telling by their maimed and battered condition, before their crews had opened their lips, the story of their overthrow. That awful tragedy was too vast to be disclosed all at once. When at last the terrible fact was fully known, the nation was smitten down by the blow. Philip, stunned and overwhelmed, shut himself up in his closet in the Escorial, and would see no one; a cry of lamentation and woe went up from the kingdom. Hardly was there a noble family in all Spain which had not lost one or more of its members. The young grandees, the heirs of their respective houses, who had gone forth but a few months before, confident of returning victorious, were sleeping at the bottom of the English seas, amid hulks and cannon and money-chests. Of the 30,000 who had sailed in the Armada, scarcely 10,000 saw again their native land; and these returned, in almost every instance, to pine and die. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, the commander-in-chief, was almost the only one of the nobles who outlived the catastrophe; but his head was bowed in shame, and envying the fate of those who had perished, he buried himself in his country-seat from the eyes of his countrymen. To add to the grieves of Philip II, he was deeply wounded from a quarter whence he had looked for sympathy and help. Pope Sixtus had promised a contribution of a minion of crowns towards the expenses of the Armada, but when he saw to what end it had come, he refused to pay a single ducat. In vain Philip urged that the Pope had instigated him to the attempt, that the expedition had been undertaken in the sacred cause of the Church, and that the loss ought to be borne mutually. Sixtus was deaf; he

[7]Sir William Fitzwilliam to Walsingham, September 30: MSS. Ireland-apud Froude.

[8]Meteren; Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 604.

[9]“Sillie, trauchled, and houngered.” We have taken the liberty of rendering the Scottish words into the English though the force is disminished thereby.

[10]Autobiography and Diary of Mr. James Melvill, pp. 260-263; Wodrow ed., Edinburgh, 1842.

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was almost satirical. He could not be expected, he said, to give a minion of money for an Armada which had accomplished nothing, and was now at the bottom of the sea.[11]

The Armada was the mightiest effort in the shape of armed force ever put forth by the Popish Powers against Protestantism, and it proved the turning-point in the great war between Rome and the Reformation. Spain was never after what it had been before the Armada. The failure of that expedition said in effect to her, “Remove the diadem; put off the crown.” Almost all the military genius and the naval skill at her service were lost in that ill-fated expedition. The flower of Philip’s army, and the ablest of his admirals, were now at the bottom of the ocean. The financial loss could not be reckoned at less than six minions of ducats; but that was nothing compared with the extinction of Spain’s prestige. The catastrophe stripped her naked. Her position and that of the Protestant Powers were to a large extent reversed. England and the Netherlands rose, and Spain fell. There followed that same year, 1588, other heavy blows to the Popish interest. The two Guises were assassinated; Catherine de Medici passed from the scene of her intrigues and crimes; her son Henry III followed, stricken by the dagger of Clement; the path was opened for Henry IV to mount the throne, and the Protestant interests in France were greatly strengthened. The wavering Protestantism of James VI of Scotland was steadied; the Netherlands breathed freely; and, as we shall immediately see, there came so marvelous a blossoming of arms and arts in the Protestant world as caused the glories of the Spanish Empire to be forgotten.

The tragedy of the Armada was a great sermon preached to the Popish and Protestant nations. The text of that sermon was that England had been saved by a Divine Hand. All acknowledged the skill and daring of the English admirals, and the patriotism and bravery of the English sailors and soldiers, but all at the same time confessed that these alone could not have saved the throne of Elizabeth. The Almighty Arm had been stretched out, and a work so stupendous had been wrought, as to be worthy of a place by the side of the wonders of old time. There were a consecutiveness and a progression in the acts, a unity in the drama, and a sublimity in the terrible but righteous catastrophe in which it issued, that told the least reflective that the Armada’s overthrow was not fortuitous, but the result of arrangement and plan. Even the Spaniards themselves confessed that the Divine Hand was upon them; that One looked forth at times from the storm cloud that pursued them, and troubled them. Christendom at large was solemnize: the ordinary course of events had been interrupted; the heavens had been bowed, and the Great Judge had descended upon the scene. While dismay reigned within the Popish kingdoms, the Protestant States joined in a chorus of thanksgiving. In England by the command of her Majesty, and in the United Provinces by order of the States-General, a day of festival was appointed, whereon all were commanded to repair to church, and “render thanks unto God.” “The aforesaid solemnity,” says the Dutch historian, “was observed on the 29th of November, which day was wholly spent in fasting, prayer, and giving of thanks.”[12] On that day Queen Elizabeth, royally attired, and followed by the estates and dignitaries of the realm, visited London, and rode through the streets of the City to the Cathedral of St. Paul’s, in a triumphal chariot drawn by four white horses. The houses were hung with blue cloth; the citizens in their holiday dress lined the streets, ranged in companies, and displaying the ensigns and symbols of their various guilds and crafts. Eleven banners and flags which had been taken from the Spaniards hung displayed in front of St. Paul’s. The queen with her clergy and nobles, having offered public thanks in the church, thereafter retired to Paul’s Cross, where a sermon was preached from the same stone pulpit from which Ridley’s and Latimer’s voices had often been heard; and after the sermon the queen rose and addressed her assembled subjects, exhorting them to unite with her in extolling that merciful Power which had scattered her foes, and shielded from overthrow her throne and realm.

But the deliverance was a common one to the Protestant kingdoms. All shared in it with England, and each in turn took up this song of triumph. Zealand, in perpetual memory of the event, caused new coin of silver and brass to be struck, stamped on the one side with the arms of Zealand, and the words, “Glory to God alone,” and on the other with a representation of certain great ships, and the words, “The Spanish Fleet.” In the circumference round the ships was the

[11]The Pope was satirized in his turn. When the news of the Armada’s failure arrived in Rome, there was posted up a pasquil, in which Sixtus was made to offer, out of the plenitude of his power, a thousand year’s indulgence to any one who would give him information respecting the whereabouts of the Spanish fleet: wither it had been taken up into heaven, or had descended into hell; whether it was hanging in mid air, or still tossing on the ocean. (Cott. Libr., Titus, B. 2. Strype, Annals, vol. 3., p. 522.)

[12]Strype says the 24th November.

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motto, “It came, went, and was. Anno 1588.”[13] Holland, too, struck a commemorative medal of the Armada’s destruction; and Theodore Beza, at Geneva, celebrated the event in Latin verse.

It seemed as if the days of Miriam, with their judgments and songs of triumph, had returned, and that the Hebrew prophetess had lent her timbrel to England, that she might sing upon it the destruction of a mightier host than that of Egypt, and the overthrow of a greater tyrant than he who lay drowned in the Red Sea. England began the song, as was meet, for around her isle had the Armada been led, a spectacle of doom; but soon, from beyond the German Ocean, from the foot of the Alps, from the shores of Scotland, other voices were heard swelling the anthem, and saying, “Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I win draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.”

[13]Meteren; Hakluyt, vol. 1., p. 608.

Chapter 20: Greatness of Protestant England

The Reformation not Completed under Edward VI—Fails to Advance under Elizabeth—Religious Destitution of England—Supplication for Planting it with Ministers, etc—Dispute respecting Vestments, etc—The Puritans—Their Numbers—Their Aims—Elizabeth Persecutes them—Elizabeth’s Character—Two Types of Protestantism Combine to form One Perfect Protestantism—Outburst of Mind—Glory of England—Science—Literature—Arts—Bacon—Shakespeare—Milton, etc

Picture: John Jewell.

Picture: Edmund Grindal

Picture: John Fox.

Picture: John Aylmer.

As with the kings who gathered together against a famous city of old time, so with the Armada, “it came, it saw, it fled.” The throne of Elizabeth was saved; the mass was not to be re-established in England, and the Reformation was not to be overthrown in Europe. The tempest had done its work, and now the Protestant kingdoms break out into singing, and celebrate in triumphal notes the deliverance which an Almighty Arm had wrought for them.

We now turn to the state of the Protestant faith within the kingdom. In vain has England been saved from the sword of Spain, if the plant of the Reformation be not taking root and flourishing in it. The accession of Elizabeth to the throne had once more opened the Bible to England after the persecutor had shut it, but the permeation of the nation with its light was somewhat slow. Instead of carrying forward the work of Reformation which Edward VI had left so incomplete, Elizabeth was content to stop short of the point which her brother had reached. The work languished. For this, various causes may be assigned. Elizabeth was apathetic, and at times even hostile. The throne was too powerful and too despotic to permit the spiritual principle full scope to develop. Besides, the organization for the instruction of the nation was defective, and matters were not improved by the languid way in which such organization as did exist was worked. We find a “Supplication” given in to the Parliament of 1585, praying it to take steps for the planting of England with an educated and faithful ministry; and the statement of facts with which the Supplication was accompanied, and on which it was based, presents a sad picture of the religious destitution of the kingdom. Some of these facts are explained, and others defended, by the bishops in their answer to the Supplication, but they are not denied. The petitioners affirm that the majority of the clergy holding livings in the Church of England were incompetent for the performance of their sacred duties; that their want of knowledge unfitted them to preach so as to edify the people; that they contented themselves with reading from a “printed book;” and that their reading was so indistinct, that it was impossible any one should profit by what was read. Non-residence was common; pluralities were frequent; the bishops were little careful to license only qualified men; secular callings were in numerous cases conjoined with the sacred office; in many towns and parishes there was no stated ministry of the Gospel, and thousands of the population were left untaught. “Yea,” say they, “by trial it will be found that there are in England whole thousands of parishes destitute of [462] this necessary help to salvation, that is, of diligent preaching and teaching.” The destitute parishes of England must have amounted to the formidable number of from 9,000 to 12,000, for the bishops in their reply say that they were able to provide pastors, through the universities, for not more than a third of the 18,000 parishes of England. It follows that some 12,000 parishes were without pastors, or enjoyed only the services of men who had no university training. The remedies proposed by the petitioners were mainly these: that a code of laws, drawn from the Scriptures, should be compiled for the government of the Church; that a visitation of all the cities and large towns of the kingdom should take place, and the condition of the nation be accurately reported on; and that zealous and faithful men should not be extruded from the ministry simply because they objected to vestments and ceremonies.[1] The substance of the Supplication would seem to have been embodied in sixteen articles, and sent up from the Parliament to the House of Lords, requesting “reformation or alteration of the customs and practices of the Church established.” It was answered by the two archbishops and Cowper, Bishop of Winchester, but nothing more came of it.[2]

The Supplication originated with the Puritans, being drawn up, it is believed, by Mr. Thomas Sampson, a man of some eminence among them. We have seen the first outbreak of that famous but unhappy strife at Frankfort-on-the-Maine. The battle begun on that diminutive stage was continued on the wider theater of England after the accession of Elizabeth. The Marian exiles had contracted a love for the simple polity and worship that existed in the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, Geneva, and some parts of Germany, and on their return to England they sought to establish the same order in their native land. Aiming at this greater purity and simplicity, they were styled Puritans. In the famous Convocation of the Lower House, in 1652, the Puritan party were the majority of those present, but they were out-voted by proxies on the other side. In that assembly they contended for the abrogation of vestments, copes, surplices, and organs in Divine worship; against lay baptism, and the sign of the cross in baptism. As to kneeling at the Lord’s Supper, they urged that it might be left indifferent to the determination of the ordinary. The opposing theologians took their stand on Edward VI’s Liturgy, contending that it should not be altered, and fortifying their position from the venerated names of Cranmer, Ridley, and others, by whom it had been framed, and who had sealed their profession at the stake. Some of the greatest names in the Church of England of that day were friendly to the reform pleaded for by the Puritans. Among others, Grindal, Horn, Sandys, Jewell, Parkhurst, and Bentham shared these sentiments. On the

[1]Strype, Annals, vol. 3. p. 222-227.

[2]Ibid., vol. 3.; Appendix, 39.

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return of these scholars and theologians to England, they were offered bishoprics, but at first declined them, finding the queen inflexible on the question of ceremonies. But after consulting together and finding that these ceremonies were not in themselves sinful, and that the doctrine of the Church remained incorrupt, and that their brethren abroad counseled them to accept, lest the posts offered them should be flled by men hostile to the truth,[3] they came to the conclusion that it was their duty to accept consecration. But there were others, not less distinguished for piety and learning, who could not concur in this course, and who were shut out from the high offices for which their gifts so eminently qualified them. Among these were Miles Coverdale, John Fox the martyrologist, Laurence Humphrey, Christopher Goodman, William Whittingham, and Thomas Sampson. These things are not doctrines, it was argued by those who contended for ceremonies and vestments; they are but forms, they are matters of indifference. If they be indifferent and not vital, it was replied, why force them upon us to the wounding of our consciences, and at the risk of rending the Church of God? The charge of fanaticism was directed against the one side: that of intolerance was retorted upon the other. The aim of the Puritans, beyond doubt, was to perfect the Reformation which Cranmer had left incomplete.

The more eminent of Elizabeth’s ministers of State were substantially with the Puritan party. Lord Burghley, Sir Francis Walsingham, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Francis Knollyes, were friendly to a yet greater reform in the Church of England, and disapproved of the rigor with which the Puritans were treated. The main difficulty lay with the queen. One of her leading aims was the reconcilement of English Papists, and hence her dread of a complete dis-severance of the Church of England from that of Rome. She loved splendor in worship as well as in State affairs, and inheriting the imperiousness of her father, she deemed it intolerable that she should be thwarted in matters of rites and vestments. She hated the Puritans, she confiscated their goods, she threw them into prison, and in some instances she shed their blood. Penry had said that the queen, having mounted the throne by the help of the Gospel, would not permit the Gospel to extend beyond the point of her scepter. He was condemned for felony, and hanged. Meanwhile the Reformation of the Church of England stood still.

The destruction of the Armada solemnized the nation. It sounded like a great voice bidding them suspend their quarrels, and unite together in the work of Reformation, lest all parties should become the prey of a common foe. The years that followed were years of great prosperity and glory to England, but the queen’s views did not enlarge, her policy did not meliorate, nor did her imperiousness abate.

[3]See Letter of P. Martyr to T. Sampson-Zurich Letters, 2nd Series, p. 84; Parker ed., 1846.

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The principle of stability and development, that now began to give such proofs of its mightiness and to draw the eyes of the world upon England, was not planted in Elizabeth; it was rooted somewhere else. She valued the Reformation less for emancipating the conscience than for emancipating her crown. She laid most store upon it for rendering her kingdom independent abroad, not for purifying it at home. As a sovereign she had some good points, but not a few weak ones. She was vaccinating, shuffling, at times deceitful; full of caprices and humors, and without strength of mind to pursue for any long time a high and courageous policy. When threatened or insulted she could assume an attitude and display a spirit that became a great sovereign, but she soon fell back again into her low, shifty policy. She possessed one great quality especially, namely, that of discerning who would prove able and upright servants. She always called strong men to her side, and though she delighted in ornamental men as courtiers, she would permit no hand but a skillful and powerful one to be laid on the helm of the State.

Elizabeth has been called great; but as her character and history come to be better understood, it is seen that her greatness was not her own, but that of the age in which she lived. She formed the center of great events and of great men, and she could not escape being a partaker in the greatness of others, and being elevated into a stature that was not properly her own. The Reformation set England on high; and Elizabeth, as the first person in the State of England, was lifted up along with it.

We have now reached those twenty years (1588-1608) which may be regarded as constituting the era of the Protestant efflorescence in England. At this point two great Protestant streams unite, and henceforth flow together in the one mighty flood of British Protestantism. England and Scotland now combine to make one powerful Protestantism. It was not given to England alone, nor to Scotland alone, to achieve so great a work as that of consolidating and crowning the Reformation, and of presenting a Protestantism complete on both its political and religious sides to the nations of the earth for their adoption; this work was shared between the two countries. England brought a full political development, Scotland an equally full religious development; and these two form one entire and perfect Protestantism, which throws its shield alike over the conscience and the person, over the spiritual and the temporal rights of man.

Of all the various forces that act on society, Protestantism, which is Religion, is by far the most powerful. “Christ brings us out of bondage into liberty,” said Calvin, “by means of the Gospel.” These words contain the sum of all sound political philosophy. Protestantism first of all emancipates the conscience; and from this fortress within the man it carries its conquests all over the world that lies without him. Protestantism had now been the full space of a generation in England, and the men who had been born and trained under it, gave proof of possessing faculties and cherishing aspirations unknown to their fathers. They were a new race, in short. Elizabeth pressed upon the Reformation with the whole weight of the royal supremacy, and the added force of her despotic maxims; but that could not break the spring of the mighty power against which she leaned, nor prevent it lifting up her people into freedom. Protestantism had brought the individual Englishman to the Bible; it taught him that it was at once his duty and his right to examine it, to judge for himself as to what it contained, and to act upon his independent judgment; and the moment he did so he felt that he was a new man. He had passed from bondage into freedom, as respects that master-faculty that gives motion and rigor to all the rest, namely, conscience. As the immediate consequence, the human mind, which had slept through the Middle Ages, awoke in a strength and grandeur of faculty, a richness and beauty of development, which it had exhibited in no former age. England underwent a sudden and marvelous transformation.

In returning to the right road as respects religion, England found that she had returned to the right road as respects government, as respects science, and letters-in short, that she had discovered the one true path to national greatness. The same method-the Inductive-which had put her in possession of a Scriptural faith, would, she saw, as certainly conduct her to freedom in the State. Turning from the priest, England went to the Bible, the great storehouse of revealed truth, and she found there all that was to be believed, and all that was to be done. She adopted the same method in her inquiry after what was true and good in civil government. She looked at the principles of justice and order on which human society has been constituted by its Author, and framing these into law, she found that she had arrived at the right science of political government. Instead of the teaching of the priest, England, in adopting the Reformation, substituted the writing of God in the Bible as the basis of the Church. So in the State; instead of the arbitrary win of one man, England substituted as the basis of government the eternal writing of God, in the constitution [465] which he has given to society. It was the same method with another application; and the consequence was that the political constitution of England, which had remained at the same point for two centuries, now began to make progress, and the despotic rods of the Tudors to be transformed into the constitutional scepters of the princes of the House of Orange.

The same method was pursued in philosophy and science, and with the same result. “If,” said Bacon, laying hold of the great principle of the Reformers, “if we would have a really true and useful science, we must go forth into the world of Nature, observe her facts, and study her laws.” The key by which the Reformation opened the path to the one true religion, was that which Bacon employed to open the path to true science. And what a harvest of knowledge has since been reaped! The heavens stood unveiled; every star unfolded the law by which it is hung in the vault above; every flower, and crystal, and piece of matter animate and inanimate, organic and inorganic, disclosed its secret properties, affinities, and uses. Then arose the sciences of astronomy, of chemistry, and others, which are the foundation of our arts, our mechanics, our navigation, our manufactures, and our agriculture. In a word, out of the principle first proclaimed in modern times by the Reformation, has come the whole colossal fabric of our industrial skin, our mechanical power, our agricultural riches, and our commercial wealth. In fine, from the great fundamental principle of Protestantism, which is the substitution of a Divine for a human authority, came our literature. Thought, so far as thinking to any good purpose was concerned, had slept for long centuries, and would have awaked no more, had it not been touched by the Ithuriel spear of Protestantism. It was long since one really great or useful work, or one really new idea, had been given to the world. A feeble dawn had preceded the Reformation, the fall of the Eastern Empire having compelled a few scholars, with their treasures of Greek lore, to seek asylum in the West. But that dawn might never have been, but for the desire which Wicliffe had originated to possess the Scriptures in the original tongues. It is also to be borne in mind that the great intellects that arose in Italy in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, though living in the communion of the Roman Church, and devoting, in the instance of some of them, their genius to her service, had in heart left her theology, and found their way to the Cross. Dante, Petrarch, Michael Angelo, Torquato Tasso, Ariosto, and others owed the emancipation of their genius to their belief in the Evangelical faith. The great poet, painter, and sculptor, Michael Angelo, who reared the dome of St. Peter’s and painted the Sistine, thus sings:

“Ah! what does sculpture, what does painting prove,
When we have seen the Cross, and fixed our eye
On Him whose arms of love were there outspread?”[4]

It is the same Evangelical faith-the bondage of the will by sin, and salvation of God-which Ariosto embodies in the following lines:

“How shall my cold and lifeless prayer ascend,
Father of mercies, to thy seat on high,
If, while my lips for thy deliverance cry,
My heart against that liberty contend?
To spare offenders, being penitent,
Is even ours; to drag them from the pip,
Themselves resisting, Lord, is thine alone.”[5]

In all the countries of the Reformation a great intellectual awaking was the immediate consequence of the introduction of Protestantism. Geneva and Zurich became centers of literary light and industrial activity; the Huguenots were the first soldiers, writers, merchants, and artisans of France. Holland became as renowned for letters and arts in the years that succeeded its great struggle, as it had been for arms when contending against Spain. But it was in England that the great intellectual outburst attendant on the Reformation culminated. There mind opened out into an amplitude of faculty, a largeness of judgment, a strength and subtlety of reason, and a richness, boldness, and brilliancy of imagination, of which the world had seen no similar example, and which paled even the brightest era of classic times. By one quality were all the great thinkers and writers who illuminated the horizon of England in the Elizabethan age marked, namely, great creative power; and that eminently is the product of Protestantism. To it we owe our great thinkers and writers. Had not the Reformation gone before, Bacon would never have opened the path to true science; Shakespeare’s mighty voice would have been dumb for ever; Milton would never have written his epic; nor would John Bunyan have told us his dream; Newton would never have discovered the law of gravitation; Barrow would never have reasoned; nor would Taylor, Baxter, Howe, and many more ever have discoursed; not one of these deathless names would have been known to us, nor would England or the world ever have possessed one of their immortal works.

[4]Glassford, Lyrical Compostions from the Italian Poets, p. 55; Edinburgh, 1846. The original is still more pointed-“Che aperse in croce a prender noi le braccia” (The arms which were stretched out upon the cross to lay hold of us). M. Angelo and Ariosto were born in 1474.

[5]Ibid., p. 51.

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Book 24: Protestantism in Scotland

Chapter 1: The Darkness and the Daybreak

English and Scottish Reformations Compared—Early Picture of Scotland—Preparation—The Scots become a Nation—Its Independence Secured—Bannockburn—Suppression of the Culdees—Establishment of the Church of Rome?Its Great Strength—Acts against Lollards and Heretics in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries?Martyrdom of John Resby?Bible Readers—Paul Crawar Burned—The Lollards of Kyle—Hector Boece—Luther’s Tracts Enter Scotland—The Bible Introduced—It becomes the Nation’s One Instructor?Permission to Read it

Picture: View of the Ruins of the Pends or Gatewa of a Monastery, St. Andrews

Picture: View of Linlithgow Palace.

England, in reforming itself, worked mainly from the political center. Scotland worked mainly from the religious one. The ruling idea in the former country was the emancipation of the throne from the supremacy of the Pope; the ruling idea in the latter was the emancipation of the conscience from the Popish faith. The more prominent outcome of the Reformation in England was a free State; the more immediate product of the Reformation in Scotland was a free Church. But soon the two countries and the two Reformations coalesced: common affinities and common aims disengaged them from old allies, and drew them to each other’s side; and Christendom beheld a Protestantism strong alike in its political and in its spiritual arm, able to combat the double usurpation of Rome, and to roll it back, in course of time, from the countries where its dominion had been long established, and over its ruins to go forward to the fulfillment of the great task which was the one grand aim of the Reformation, namely, the evangelizing and civilizing of the earth, and the planting of pure churches and free governments.

From an early date Scotland had been in course of preparation for the part it was to act in the great movement of the sixteenth century. It would beforehand have been thought improbable that any very distinguished share awaited it in this great revolution of human affairs. A small country, it was parted by barbarism as well as by distance from the rest of the world. Its rock-bound coast was perpetually beaten by a stormy sea; its great mountains were drenched in rains and shrouded in mist; its plains, abandoned to swamps, had not been conquered by the plough, nor yielded aught for the sickle. The mariner shunned its shore, for there no harbor opened to receive his vessel, and no trader waited to buy his wares. This land was the dwelling of savage tribes, who practiced the horrid rites and worshipped, under other names, the deities to which the ancient Assyrians had bowed down.

Scotland first tasted of a little civilization from the Roman sword. In the wake of the Roman Power came the missionaries of the Cross, and the Gospel found disciples where Caesar had been able to achieve no triumphs. Next came Columba, who kindled his evangelical lamp on the rocks of Iona, at the very time that Mohammedanism was darkening the East, and Rome was stretching her shadow farther every year over the West. In the ninth century came the first great step in Scotland’s preparation for the part that awaited it seven centuries later. In the year 838, the Picts and the Scots were united under one crown. Down to this year they had been simply two roving and warring clans; their union made them one people, and constituted them into a nation. In the erection of the Scots into a distinct nationality we see a foothold laid for Scotland’s having a distinct national Reformation: an essential point, as we shall afterwards see, in order to the production of a perfect and catholic Protestantism.

The second step in Scotland’s preparation for its predestined task was the establishment of its independence as a nation. It was no easy matter to maintain the political independence of so small a kingdom, surrounded by powerful neighbors who were continually striving to effect its subjugation and absorption into their own wealthier and larger dominions. To aid in this great struggle, on which were suspended far higher issues than were dreamed of by those who fought and bled in it, there arose from time to time “mighty men of valor.” Wallace and Bruce were the pioneers of Knox. The struggle for Scotland’s political independence in the fourteenth century was a necessary preliminary to its struggle for its religious Reformation in [467] the sixteenth. If the battle of the warrior, “with its confused noise, and garments rolled in blood,” had not first been won, we do not see how a stage could have been found for the greater battle that was to come after. The grand patriotism of Wallace, and the strong arm of Bruce, held the door open for Knox; and Edward of England learned, when he saw his mailed cavalry and terrible bowmen falling back before the Scottish battle-axes and broadswords, that though he should redden all Scotland with the noblest blood of both kingdoms, he never should succeed in robbing the little country of its nationality and sovereignty.

It is now the twelfth century; Iona still exists, but its light has waxed dim. Under King David the Culdee establishments are being suppressed, to make way for Popish monasteries; the presbyters of Iona are driven out, and the lordly prelates of the Pope take their place; the edifices and heritages of the Culdees pass over wholesale to the Church of Rome, and a body of ecclesiastics of all orders, from the mitred abbot down to the begging friar, are brought from foreign countries to occupy Scotland, now divided into twelve dioceses, with a full complement of abbeys, monasteries, and nunneries. But it is to be noted that this establishment of Popery in the twelfth century is not the result of the conversion of the people, or of their native teachers: we see it brought in over the necks of both, simply at the will and by the decree of the monarch. So little was Scottish Popery of native growth, that the men as well as the system had to be imported from abroad.

If in no country of Europe was the dominant reign of Popery so short as in Scotland, extending only from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, in no country was the Church of Rome so powerful when compared with the size of the kingdom and the number of the population. The influences which in countries like France set limits to the power of the Church did not exist in Scotland. On her lofty height she was without a rival, and looked down upon all ranks and institutions-upon the throne, which was weak; upon the nobles, who were parted into factions; upon the people, who were sunk in ignorance. Bishops and abbots filled all the great posts at court and discharged all the highest offices in the State. They were chancellors, secretaries of State, justiciaries, ambassadors; they led armies, fought battles, and tried and executed criminals. They were the owners of lordships, hunting-grounds, fisheries, houses; and while a full half of the kingdom was theirs, they heavily taxed the other half, as they did also all possessions, occupations, and trades. Thus with the passing years cathedrals and abbeys continued to multiply and wax in splendor; while acres, tenements, and tithings, in an ever-flowing stream, were pouring fresh riches into the Church’s treasury. In the midst of the prostration and ruin of all interests and classes, the Church stood up in overgrown arrogance, wealth, and power.

But even in the midst of the darkness there were glimmerings of light, which gave token that a better day would yet dawn. From the Papal chair itself we hear a fear expressed that this country, which Rome held with so firm a grasp, would yet escape from her dominion. In his bull for anointing King Robert the Bruce, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, John XXII. complains that Scotland was still defiled by the presence of heretics. From about this time the traces of what Rome styles heresy became frequent in Scotland. The first who suffered for the Reformed faith, so far as can be ascertained, was James Resby, an Englishman, and a disciple of John Wicliffe. He taught that “the Pope was not Christ’s Vicar, and that he was not Pope if he was a man of wicked life.” This was pronounced heresy, and for that heresy he had to do expiation in the fire at Perth.[1] He was burned in 1406 or 1407, some nine years before the martyrdom of Huss. In 1416 the University of St. Andrews, then newly founded, ordained that all who commenced Master of Arts should take an oath to defend the Church against the insults of the Lollards,[2] proof surely that the sect was sufficiently numerous to render Churchmen uneasy. A yet stronger proof of this was the appointment of a Heretical Inquisitor for Scotland. The office was bestowed upon Laurence Lindores, Abbot of Scone.[3] Prior Winton in his Metrical Chronicle (1420) celebrates the zeal of Albany, Governor of Scotland, against Lollards and heretics.[4] Murdoch Nisbet, of Hardhill, had a manuscript copy of the New Testament (of Wicliffe’s translation doubtless), which he concealed in a vault, and read to his family and acquaintance by night.[5] Gordon of Earlston, another early favorer of the disciples of Wicliffe, had in his possession a copy of the New Testament, in the vulgar tongue, which he read at meetings held in a wood near to Earlston House.[6] The Parliament of James I, held at Perth (1424),

[1]See an extract from the original account of Resby, by Bower, the continuator or Fordun, in The Works of John Knox, collected and edited by David Laing, ESq., LL.D.; vol. 1., Appendix 2.; Edinburgh, 1846.

[2]McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., p. 415; Edinburgh, 1819.

[3]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., p. 497.

[4]Ibid., p. 495.

[5]McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., p. 414.

[6]Wodrow, vol. 2., p. 67.

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enacted that all bishops should make inquiry by Inquisition for heretics, and punish them according to the laws of “holy Kirk,” and if need were they should call in the secular power to the aid of “holy Kirk.”[7]

In 1431 we find a second stake set up in Scotland. Paul Crawar, a native of Bohemia, and a disciple of John Huss, preaching at St. Andrews, taught that the mass was a worship of superstition. This was no suitable doctrine in a place where a magnificent cathedral, and a gorgeous hierarchy, were maintained in the service of the mass, and should it fall they too would fall. To avert so great a catastrophe, Crawar was dragged to the stake and burned, with a ball of brass in his mouth to prevent him from addressing the people in his last moments.[8]

The Lollards of England were the connecting link between their great master, Wicliffe, and the English Reformers of the sixteenth century. Scotland too had its Lollards, who connected the Patriarch and school of Iona with the Scottish Reformers. The Lollards of Scotland could be none other than the descendants of the Culdee missionaries, and such of the disciples of Wicliffe as had taken refuge in Scotland.[9] In the testimony of both friend and foe, there were few counties in the Lowlands of Scotland where these Lollards were not to be found. They were numerous in Fife; they were still more numerous in the districts of Cunningham and Kyle; hence their name, the Lollards of Kyle. In the reign of James IV (1494) some thirty Lollards were summoned before the archiepiscopal tribunal of Glasgow on a charge of heresy. They were almost all gentlemen of landed property in the districts already named, and the tenets which they were charged with denying included the mass, purgatory, the worshipping of images, the praying to saints, the Pope’s vicarship, his power to pardon sin-in short, all the peculiar doctrines of Romanism. Their defense appears to have been so spirited that the king, before whom they argued their cause, shielded them from the

[7]Acta Parl. Scotiae, ii. 7.

[8]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., p. 497. Dr. Laing gives original notices respecting Crawar from Fox, Bower, and Boece.

[9]“We can trace the existence of the Lollards in Ayrshire from the times of Wicliffe to the days of George Wishart.” (McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., p. 8.)

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doom that the archbishop, Blackadder, would undoubtedly have pronounced upon them.[10]

These incidental glimpses show us a Scriptural Protestantism already in Scotland, but it lacks that spirit of zeal and diffusion into which the sixteenth century awoke it. When that century came new agencies began to operate. In 1526, Hector Boece, Principal of King’s College, Aberdeen, and the fellow-student and correspondent of Erasmus, published his History of Scotland. In that work he draws a dark picture of the manners of the clergy; of their greed in monopolizing all offices, equaled only by their neglect of their duties; of their promotion of unworthy persons, to the ruin of letters; and of the scandals with which the public feeling was continually outraged, and religion affronted; and he raises a loud cry for immediate Reformation if the Church of his native land was to be saved. About the same time the books and tracts of Luther began to enter the seaports of Montrose, Dundee, Perth, St. Andrews, and Leith. These were brought across by the skippers who made annual voyages to Flanders and the Lower Germany. In this way the east coast of Scotland, and the shores of the Frith of Forth, were sown with the seeds of Lutheranism.[11] By this time Tyndale had translated the New Testament into English, and he had markets for its sale in the towns visited by the Scottish traders, who bought numerous copies and carried them across to their countrymen. When the New Testament entered, a ray from heaven had penetrated the night that brooded over the country. Its Reformation had begun. The Bible was the only Reformer then possible in Scotland. Had a Luther or a Knox arisen at that time, he would have been consigned before many days to a dungeon or a stake. The Bible was the only missionary that could enter with safety, and operate with effect. With silent foot it began to traverse the land; it came to the castle gates of the primate, yet he heard not its steps; it preached in cities, but its voice fell not on the ear of bishop; it passed along the highways and by-ways unobserved by the spy. To the Churchman’s eye all seemed calm-calm and motionless as during the four dark centuries which

[10]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., pp. 6-12.

[11]Lorimer, Scottish Reformation, chapter 1; London, 1860.

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had gone before; but in the stillness of the midnight hour men welcomed this new Instructor, and opened their heart to its comforting and beneficent teaching. The Bible was emphatically the nation’s one great teacher; it was stamping its own ineffaceable character upon the Scottish Reformation; and the place the Bible this early made for itself in the people’s affections, and the authority it acquired over their judgments, it was destined never to lose. The movement thus initiated was helped forward by every event that happened, till at last in 1543 its first great landing-place was reached, when every man, woman, and child in Scotland was secured by Act of Parliament in the right to read the Word of God in their own tongue.

Chapter 2: Scotland’s First Preacher and Martyr, Patrick Hamilton

A Martyr Needed—Patrick Hamilton—His Lineage—His Studies at Paris and Marburg—He Returns to Scotland—Evangelizes around Linlithgow—is Inveigled to St. Andrews—St. Andrews in the Sixteenth Century—Discussions with Doctors and Canons—Alesius—Prior Campbell—Summoned before the Archbishop—His Brother Attempts his Rescue—Hamilton before Beaton—Articles of Accusation—Referred to a Commission—Hamilton’s Evening Party—What they Talk about—His Apprehension—His Trial—His Judges—Prior Campbell his Accuser—His Condemnation—He is Led to the Stake—Attacks of Prior Campbell—Campbell’s Fearful Death—Hamilton’s Protracted Sufferings—His Last Words—The Impression produced by his Martyrdom

Picture: View of St. Salvators Church: St. Andrews.

Picture: Parting of Patrick Hamilton from his Friends at the Stake.

The first step in the preparation of Scotland for the task that awaited it was to form its tribes into a nation. This was accomplished in the union of the Pictish and Scottish crowns. The second step was the establishment of its nationality on a strong basis. The arms of Wallace and Bruce effected this; and now Scotland, planted on the twin pillars of Nationality and Independence, awaited the opening of a higher drama than any enacted by armies or accomplished on battlefields. A mightier contest than Bannockburn was now to be waged on its soil. In the great war for the recovery in ampler measure, and on surer tenure, of the glorious heritage of truth which the world once possessed, but which it had lost amid the superstitions of the Dark Ages, there had already been two great centers, Wittemberg and Geneva. The battle was retreating from them, and the Protestant host was about to make its stand at a third center, namely Scotland, and there sustain its final defeat, or achieve its crowning victory.

The Reformation of Scotland dates from the entrance of the first Bible into the country, about the year 1525. It was doing its work, but over and above there was needed the living voice of the preacher, and the fiery stake of the confessor, to arouse the nation from the dead sleep in which it was sunk. But who of Scotland’s sons shall open the roll of martyrdom? A youth of royal lineage, and princely in mind as in birth, was chosen for this high but arduous honour. Patrick Hamilton was born in 1504. He was the second son of Sir Patrick Hamilton, of Kincavel, and the great-grandson, both by the father’s and the mother’s side, of James II.[1] He received his education at the University of St. Andrews, and about 1517 was appointed titular Abbot of Ferne, in Ross-shire, though it does not appear that he ever took priest’s orders. In the following year he went abroad, and would seem to have studied some time in Paris, where it is probable he came to the first knowledge of the truth; and thence he went to pursue his studies at the College of Marburg, then newly opened by the Landgrave of Hesse. At Marburg the young Scotsman enjoyed the friendship of a very remarkable man, whose views on some points of Divine truth exceeded in clearness even those of Luther; we refer to Francis Lambert, the ex-monk of Avignon, whom Landgrave Philip had invited to Hesse to assist in the Reformation of his dominions.

The depth of Hamilton’s knowledge, and the beauty of his character, won the esteem of Lambert, and we find the ex-Franciscan saying to Philip, “This young man of the illustrious family of the Hamiltons... is come from the end of the world, from Scotland, to your academy, in order to

[1]See his exact relationship to the Scottish king traced by Dr. David Laing, Knox, vol. 1., p. 501.

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be fully established in God’s truth. I have hardly ever met a man who expresses himself with so much spirituality and truth on the Word of the Lord.”[2]

Hamilton’s preparation for his work, destined to be brief but brilliant, was now completed, and he began to yearn with an intense desire to return to his native land, and publish the Gospel of a free salvation. He could not hide from himself the danger which attended the step he was meditating. The priests were at this hour all-powerful in Scotland. A few years previously (1513), James IV and the flower of the Scottish nobility had fallen on the field of Flodden. James V was a child: his mother, Margaret Tudor, was nominally regent; but the clergy, headed by the proud, profligate, and unscrupulous James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, had grasped the government of the kingdom. It was not to be thought that these men would permit a doctrine to be taught at their very doors, which they well knew would bring their glory and pleasures to an end, if they had the power of preventing it. The means of suppressing all preaching of the truth were not wanting, certainly, to these tyrannical Churchmen. But this did not weigh with the young Hamilton. Intent upon dispelling the darkness that covered Scotland, he returned to his native land (1527), and took up his abode at the family mansion of Kincavel, near Linlithgow.

With the sword of Beaton hanging over his head, he began to preach the doctrines of the Reformed faith. The first converts of the young evangelist were the inmates of the mansion-house of Kincavel. After his kinsfolk, his neighbors became the next objects of his care. He visited at the houses of the gentry, where his birth, the grace of his manners, and the fame of his learning made him at all times welcome, and he talked with them about the things that belonged to their peace. Going out into the fields, he would join himself to groups of laborers as they rested at noon, and exhort them, while laboring for the “meat that perisheth,” not to be unmindful of that which “endures unto eternal life.” Opening the Sacred Volume, he would explain to his rustic congregation the “mysteries of the kingdom” which was now come nigh unto them, and bid them strive to enter into it. Having scattered the seed in the villages around Linlithgow, he resolved to carry the Gospel into its Church of St. Michael. The ancient palace of Linlithgow, “the Versailles of Scotland,” as it has been termed, was then the seat of the court, and the Gospel was now brought within the hearing of the priests of St. Michael’s, and of the members of the royal family who repaired to it. Hamilton, standing up amid the altar and images, preached to the polished audience that filled the edifice, with that simplicity and chastity of speech which were best fitted to win his way with those now listening to him. It is not, would he say, the cowl of St. Francis, nor the frock of St. Dominic, that saves us; it is the righteousness of Christ. It is not the shorn head that makes a holy man, it is the renewed heart. It is not the chrism of the Church, it is the anointing of the Holy Spirit that replenishes the soul with grace. What doth the Lord require of thee, O man? To count so many beads a day? To repeat so many paternosters? To fast so many days in the year, or go so many miles on pilgrimages? That is what the Pope requires of thee; but what God requires of thee is to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly. Pure religion, and undefiled, is not to kiss a crucifix, or to burn candles before Our Lady; pure religion is to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, and to keep one’s self unspotted from the world. “Knowest thou,” he would ask, “what this saying means? ‘Christ died for thee?’ Verily that thou shouldest have died perpetually, and Christ, to deliver thee from death, died for thee, and changed thy perpetual death into his own death; for thou madest the fault, and he suffered the pain.”[3]

Among Hamilton’s hearers in St. Michael’s there was a certain maiden of noble birth, whose heart the Gospel had touched. Her virtues won the heart of the young evangelist, and he made her his wife. His marriage was celebrated but a few weeks before his martyrdom.[4]

A little way inland from the opposite shores of the Forth, backed by the picturesque chain of the blue Ochils, was the town of Dunfermline, with its archiepiscopal palace, the towers of which might almost be descried from the spot where Hamilton was daily evangelizing. Archbishop Beaton was at this moment residing there, and news of the young evangelist’s doings were wafted across to that watchful enemy of the Gospel. Beaton saw at a glance the difficulty of the case. A heretic of low degree would have been summarily disposed of; but here was a Lutheran with royal blood in his veins, and all the Hamiltons at his back, throwing

[2]Dedication of Exegeseos Francisci Lamberti, etc., quoted in Laing, Knox, vol. 1., Appendix 3.

[3]Fox, Acts and Monuments, vol. 4., pp. 570, 571.

[4]We owe our knowledge of this fact to Professor Lorimer. See his Patrick Hamilton, etc. and historical sketch.

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down the gage of battle to the hierarchy. What was to be done? The cruel and crafty Beaton hit on a device that but too well succeeded. Concealing his dark design, the primate sent a pressing message to Patrick, soliciting an interview with him on points of Church Reformation. Hamilton divined at once what the message portended, but in spite of the death that almost certainly awaited him, and the tears of his friends, who sought to stay him, he set out for St. Andrews. He seemed to feel that he could serve his country better by dying than by living and laboring.

This city was then the ecclesiastical and literary metropolis of Scotland. As the seat of the archiepiscopal court, numerous suitors and rich fees were drawn to it. Ecclesiastics of all ranks and students from every part of the kingdom were to be seen upon its streets. Its cathedral was among the largest in Christendom. It had numerous colleges, monasteries, and a priory, not as now, gray with age and sinking in ruin, but in the first bloom of their architecture. As the travel ler approached it, whether over the long upland swell of Fife on the west, or the waters of the German Ocean on the east, the lofty summit of St. Regulus met his eye, and told him that he was nearing the chief seat of authority and wealth in Scotland.

On arriving at St. Andrews, Hamilton found the archbishop all smiles; a most gracious reception, in fact, was accorded him by the man who was resolved that he should never go hence. He was permitted to choose his own lodgings; to go in and out; to avow his opinions; to discuss questions of rite, and dogma, and administration with both doctors and students; and when he heard the echoes of his own sentiments coming back to him from amid the halls and chairs of the “Scottish Vatican,” he began to persuade himself that the day of Scotland’s deliverance was nearer than he had dared to hope, and even now rifts were appearing in the canopy of blackness over his native land. An incident happened that specially gladdened him. There was at that time, among the Canons of St. Andrews, a young man of quick parts and candid mind, but enthralled by the scholasticism of the age, and all on the side of Rome. His name was Alane, or Alesius-a native of Edinburgh. This young canon burned to cross swords with the heretic whose presence had caused no little stir in the university and monasteries of the ancient city of St. Andrew. He obtained his wish, for Hamilton was ready to receive all, whether they came to inquire or to dispute. The Sword of the Spirit, at almost the first stroke, pierced the scholastic armor in which Alesius had encased himself, and he dropped his sword to the man whom he had been so confident of vanquishing.

There came yet another, also eager to do battle for the Church-Alexander Campbell, Prior of the Dominicans-a man of excellent learning and good disposition. The archbishop, feeling the risks of bringing such a man as Hamilton to the stake, ordered Prior Campbell to wait on him, and spare no means of bringing back the noble heretic to the faith of the Church. The matter promised at first to have just the opposite ending. After a few interviews, the prior confessed the truth of the doctrines which Hamilton taught. The conversion of Alesins seemed to have repeated itself. But, alas! no; Campbell had received the truth in the intellect only, not in the heart. Beaton sent for Campbell, and sternly demanded of him what progress he was making in the conversion of the heretic. The prior saw that on the brow of the archbishop which told him that he must make his choice between the favor of the hierarchy and the Gospel. His courage failed him: the disciple became the accuser.

Patrick Hamilton had now been a month at St. Andrews, arguing all the time with doctors, priests, students, and townspeople. From whatever cause this delay proceeded, whether from a feeling on the part of Beaton and the hierarchy that their power was too firmly rooted to be shaken, or from a fear to strike one so exalted, it helped to the easy triumph of the Reformed opinions in Scotland. During that month Hamilton was able to scatter on this center part of the field a great amount of the “incorruptible seed of the Word,” which, watered as it was soon thereafter to be with the blood of him who sowed it, sprang up and brought forth much fruit. But the matter would admit, of no longer delay, and Patrick was summoned to the archiepiscopal palace, to answer to a charge of heresy.

Before accompanying Hamilton to the tribunal of Beaton, let us mention the arrangements of his persecutors for putting him to death. Their first care was to send away the king. James V was then a youth of seventeen, and it was just possible that he might not stand quietly by and see them ruthlessly murder one who drew his descent from the royal house. Accordingly the young king was told that his soul’s health required that he should make a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Duthac, in Ross-shire, whither his father had often gone to disburden his conscience.[5] It was winter, and the

[5]His journey has been doubted. Knox, Spottiswood, and others mention it. Besides, a letter of Angus to Wolsey, of date the 30th March, 1528, says that the king was at that time in the north country, in the extreme parts of his dominions.

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journey would necessarily be tedious; but the purpose of the priests would be all the better served thereby. Another precaution taken by the archbishop was to cause the movements of Sir James Hamilton, Patrick’s brother, to be watched, lest he should attempt a rescue. When the tidings reached Kincavel that Patrick had been arrested, consternation prevailed at the manor-house; Sir James, promptly assembling a body of men-at-arms, set out at their head for St. Andrews. The troop marched along the southern shore of the Forth, but on arriving at Queensferry, where they intended to cross, they found a storm raging in the Frith. The waves, raised into tumult in the narrow sea by the westerly gale, would permit no passage; and Sir James, the precious hours gliding away, could only stand gazing helplessly on the tempest, which showed no signs of abating. Meanwhile, being descried from the opposite shore, a troop of horse was at once ordered out to dispute their march to St. Andrews. Another attempt to rescue Patrick from the hands of his persecutors was also unsuccessful. Duncan, Laird of Ardrie, in the neighborhood of St. Andrews, armed and mounted about a score of his tenants and servants, intending to enter the city by night and carry off his friend, whose Protestant sentiments he shared; but his small party was surrounded, and himself apprehended, by a troop of horsemen.[6] Hamilton was left in the power of Beaten.

The first rays of the morning sun were kindling the waters of the bay, and gilding the hilltops of Angus on the other side of the Tay, when Hamilton was seen traversing the streets on his way to the archiepiscopal palace, in obedience to Beaton’s summons. He had hoped to have an interview with the archbishop before the other judges had assembled; but, early as the hour was, the court was already met, and Hamilton was summoned before it and his accusation read. It consisted of thirteen articles, alleged to be heretical, of which the fifth and sixth may be taken as samples. These ran: “That a man is not justified by works, but by faith alone,” and “that good works do not make a good man, but that a good man makes good works.”[7] Here followed a discussion on each of the articles, and finally the whole were referred to a committee of the judges chosen by Beaten, who were to report their judgment upon them in a few days. Pending their decision, Hamilton was permitted his liberty as heretofore; the object of his enemies being to veil what was coming till it should be so near that rescue would be impossible.

In a few days the commissioners intimated that they had arrived at a decision on the articles. This opened the way for the last act of the tragedy. Beaten issued his orders for the apprehension of Patrick, and at the same time summoned his court for the next day. Fearing a tumult should he conduct Hamilton to prison in open day, the officer waited till night-fall before executing the mandate of the archbishop. A little party of friends had that evening assembled at Patrick’s lodgings. Their converse was prolonged till late in the evening, for they felt loth to separate. The topics that engaged their thoughts and formed the matter of their talk, it is not difficult to conjecture. Misgivings and anxieties they could not but feel when they thought of the sentence to be pronounced in the cathedral tomorrow. But with these gloomy presentiments there would mingle cheering hopes inspired by the prosperous state of the Reformation at that hour on the Continent of Europe. When from their own land, still covered with darkness, they turned their eyes abroad, they saw only the most splendid triumphs. In Germany a phalanx of illustrious doctors, of chivalrous princes, and of free cities had gathered round the Protestant standard. In Switzerland the new day was spreading from canton to canton with an effulgence sweeter far than ever was day-break on the snows of its mountains. Farel was thundering in the cities of the Jura, and day by day advancing his posts nearer to Geneva. At the polished court of Francis I., and in the halls of the Sorbonne, Luther’s doctrine had found eloquent expositors and devoted disciples, making the hope not too bold that the ancient, civilized, and. powerful nation of France would in a short time be won to the Gospel. Surmounting the lofty banner of snows and glaciers within which Italy reposes, the light was circulating round the shores of Como, gilding the palaces of Ferrara and Florence, and approaching the very gates of Rome itself. Amid the darkness of the Seven Hills, whispers were beginning to be heard, “The morning cometh.”

Turning to the other extremity of Europe, the prospect was not less gladdening. In Denmark the mass had fallen, and the vernacular Scriptures were being circulated through the nation. In Sweden a Protestant king filled the throne, and a Protestant clergy ministered to the people. In

[6]McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., note D.

[7]The articles of Hamilton’s indictment, quoted from the Registers, are given in full by Fox, vol. 4., pp. 559, 560. Calderwood, vol. 1., p. 76. Spottiswood, p. 63.

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Norway the Protestant faith had taken root, and was flourishing amid its fjords and pine-covered mountains. Nay, to the shores of Iceland had that blessed day-spring traveled. It could not be that the day should break on every land between Italy’s “snowy ridge” and Iceland’s frozen shore, and the night continue to cover Scotland. It could not be that the sunrise should kindle into glory the Swiss mountains, the German plains, and the Norwegian pine-forests, and no dawn light up the straths of Caledonia. No! the hour would strike: the nation would shake off its chains, and a still brighter lamp than that which Columba had kindled at Iona would shed its radiance on hill and valley, on hamlet and city of Scotland. Whatever tomorrow might bring, this was what the future would bring; and the joy these prospects inspired could be read in the brightening eyes and on the beaming faces of the little company in this chamber, and most of all on those of the youthful and noble form in the center of the circle.

But hark! the silence of the night is broken by a noise as of hostile steps at the door. The company, startled, gaze into one another’s faces, and are silent. Heavy footsteps are now heard ascending the stair; the next moment there is a knocking at the chamber door. With calm voice Hamilton bids them open the door; nay, he himself steps forward and opens it. The archbishop’s officer enters the apartment. “Whom do you want?” inquires [475] [476] Patrick. “I want Hamilton,” replies the man. “I am Hamilton,” says the other, giving himself up, requesting only that his friends might be allowed to depart unharmed.

A party of soldiers waited at the door to receive the prisoner. On his descending, they closed round him, and led him through the silent streets of the slumbering city to the castle. Nothing was heard save the low moaning of the night-wind, and the sullen dash of the wave as it broke against the rocky foundations of the sea tower, to the dungeons of which Hamilton was consigned for the night.

It is the morning of the last day of February, 1528. Far out in the bay the light creeps up from the German Ocean: the low hills that run along on the south of the city, come out in the dawn, and next are seen the sands of the Tay, with the blue summits of Angus beyond, while the mightier masses of the Grampians stand up in the northern sky. Now the sun rises; and tower and steeple and, proudest of all, Scotland’s metropolitan cathedral began to glow in the light of the new-risen luminary. A terrible tragedy is that sun to witness before he shall set. The archbishop is up betimes, and so too are priest and monk. The streets are already all astir. A stream of bishops, nobles, canons, priests, and citizens is roiling in at the gates of the cathedral. How proudly it lifts its towers to the sky! There is not another such edifice in all Scotland; few of such dimensions in all Christendom. And now we see the archbishop, with his long train of lords, abbots, and doctors, sweep in and take his seat on his archiepiscopal throne. Around him on the tribunal are the Bishops of Glasgow, Dunkeld, Brechin, and Dunblane. The Prior of St. Andrews, Patrick Hepburn; the Abbot of Arbroath, David Benton; as also the Abbots of Dunfermline, Cambuskenneth, and Lindores; the Prior of Pittenweem; the Dean and Sub-Dean of Glasgow; Ramsay, Dean of the Abbey of St. Andrews; Spens, Dean of Divinity in the University; and among the rest sits Prior Alexander Campbell, the man who had acknowledged to Hamilton in private that his doctrine was true, but who, stifling his convictions, now appears on the tribunal as accuser and judge.

The tramp of horses outside announced the arrival of the prisoner. Hamilton was brought in, led through the throng of canons, friars, students, and townspeople, and made to mount a small pulpit erected opposite the tribunal. Prior Campbell rose and read the articles of accusation, and when he had ended began to argue with Hamilton. The prior’s stock of sophisms was quickly exhausted. He turned to the bench of judges for fresh instructions. He was bidden close the debate by denouncing the prisoner as a heretic. Turning to Hamilton, the prior exclaimed, “Heretic, thou saidst it was lawful to all men to read the Word of God, and especially the New Testament.” “I wot not,” replied Hamilton, “if I said so; but I say now, it is reason and lawful to all men to read the Word of God, and that they are able to understand the same; and in particular the latter will and testament of Jesus Christ.” “Heretic,” again urged the Dominican, “thou sayest it is but lost labor to call on the saints, and in particular on the blessed Virgin Mary, as mediators to God for us.” “I say with Paul,” answered the confessor, “there is no mediator between God and us but Christ Jesus his Son, and whatsoever they be who call or pray to any saint departed, they spoil Christ Jesus of his office.” “Heretic,” again exclaimed Prior Campbell, “thou sayest it is all in vain to sing soul-masses, psalms, and dirges for the relaxation of souls departed, who are continued in the pains of purgatory.” “Brother,” said the Reformer, “I have never read in the Scripture of God of such a place as purgatory, nor yet believe I there is anything that can purge the souls of men but the blood of Jesus Christ.” Lifting up his voice once more Campbell shouted out, as if to drown the cry in his own conscience, “Heretic, detestable, execrable, impious heretic!” “Nay, brother,” said Hamilton, directing a look of compassion towards the wretched man, “thou dost not in thy heart think me heretic-thou knowest in thy conscience that I am no heretic.”

Not a voice was there on that bench but in condemnation of the prisoner. “Away with him! away with him to the stake!” said they all. The archbishop rose, and solemnly pronounced sentence on Hamilton as a heretic, delivering him over to the secular arm that is, to his own soldiers and executioners-to be punished.

This sentence, Benton believed, was to stamp out heresy, give a perpetuity of dominion and glory to the Papacy in Scotland, and hallow the proud fane in which it was pronounced, as the high sanctuary of the nation’s worship for long centuries. How would it have amazed the proud prelate, and the haughty and cruel men around him, had they been told that this surpassingly grand pile should in a few years cease to be-that altar, and stone image, and archiepiscopal throne, and tall massy column, and lofty roof, and painted oriel, before this generation had passed away, smitten by a sudden stroke, should fall in ruin, and nothing of all the glory on which their eyes now rested remain, save a few naked walls and shattered towers, with the hoarse roar of the ocean sounding on the shingly beach [477] beneath, and the loud scream of the sea bird, as it flew past, echoing through their ruins!

Escorted by a numerous armed band, Hamilton was led back to the castle, and men were sent to prepare the stake in front of St. Salvator’s College.[8] The interval was passed by the martyr in taking his last meal and conversing calmly with his friends. When the hour of noon struck, he rose up and bade the governor be admitted. He set out for the place where he was to die, carrying his New Testament in his hand, a few friends by his side, and his faithful servant following. He walked in the midst of his guards, his step firm, his countenance serene.

When he came in sight of the pile he halted, and uncovering his head, and raising his eyes to heaven, he continued a few minutes in prayer. At the stake he gave his New Testament to a friend as his last gift. Then calling his servant to him, he took off his cap and gown and gave them to him, saying, “These will not profit in the fire; they will profit thee. After this, of me thou canst receive no commodity except the example of my death, which I pray thee bear in mind. For albeit it be bitter to the flesh, and fearful before man, yet is it the entrance to eternal life, which none shall possess that denies Christ Jesus before this wicked generation.”

He now ascended the pile. The executioners drew an iron band round his body, and fastened him to the stake. They piled up the fagots, and put a bag of gunpowder amongst them to make them ignite. “In the name of Jesus,” said the martyr, “I give up my body to the fire, and commit my soul into the hands of the Father.”

The torch was now brought. The gunpowder was exploded; it shot a fagot in the martyr’s face, but did not kindle the wood. More powder was brought and exploded, but without kindling the pile. A third supply was procured; still the fagots would not burn: they were green. Turning to the deathsman, Hamilton said, “Have you no dry wood?” Some persons ran to fetch some from the castle; the sufferer all the while standing at the stake, wounded in the face, and partially scorched, yet “giving no signs of impatience or anger.” So testifies Alesins, who says, “I was myself present, a spectator of that tragedy.”[9]

Hovering near that pile, drawn thither it would seem by some dreadful fascination, was Prior Campbell. While the fresh supplies of powder and wood were being brought, and the executioners were anew heaping up the fagots, Campbell, with frenzied voice, was calling on the martyr to recant. “Heretic,” he shouted, “be converted; call upon Our Lady; only say, Salve Regina.” “If thou believest in the truth of what thou sayest,” replied the confessor, “bear witness to it by putting the tip of thy finger only into the fire in which my whole body is burning.”[10] The Dominican burst out afresh into accusations and insults. “Depart from me, thou messenger of Satan,” said the martyr, “and leave me in peace.” The wretched man was unable either to go away or cease reviling. “Submit to the Pope,” he cried, “there is no salvation but in union to him.” “Thou wicked man,” said Hamilton, “thou knowest the contrary, for thou toldest me so thyself. I appeal thee before the tribunal-seat of Jesus Christ.” At the hearing of these words the friar rushed to his monastery: in a few days his reason gave way, and he died raving mad, at the day named in the citation of the martyr.[11]

Patrick Hamilton was led to the stake at noon: the afternoon was wearing, in fact it was now past sunset. These six hours had he stood on the pile, his face bruised, his limbs scorched; but now the end was near, for his whole body was burning in the fire, the iron band round his middle was red-hot, and the martyr was almost burned in two. One approached him and said, “If thou still holdest true the doctrine for which thou diest, make us a sign.” Two of the fingers of his right hand were already burned, and had dropped off. Stretching out his arm, he held out the remaining three fingers till they too had fallen into the fire. The last words he was heard to utter were, “How long, O Lord, shall darkness overwhelm this realm? How long wilt thou suffer this tyranny of men? Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

We have given prominence to this great martyr, because his death was one of the most powerful of the instrumentalities that worked for the emancipation of his native land. It was around his stake that the first decided dawn of Scotland’s Reformation took place. His noble birth, the fame of his learning, his spotless character, his gracious manners, his protracted sufferings, born with such majestic meekness, and the awful death of the man who had been his accuser before the tribunal, and his tormentor at the stake, combined to give unusual

[8]Now the united College of St. Salvator’s and St. Leonard’s. The Martyrs’’ Free Church marks the site of the martyrdom. ¶

[9]Alesius, Liber Psalm.

[10]Alesius, Liber Psalm.

[11]So Fox narrates on the testimony of men who had been present at the burning, and who were alive in Scotland when the materials of his history were collected. See Laing, Knox, vol. 1., Appendix 3.; also Alesius, Liber Psalm; an Buchanan, lib. xiv., ann. (1527) 1528.

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grandeur, not unmingled with terror, to his martyrdom, and made it touch a chord in the nation’s heart, that never ceased to vibrate till “the rage of the great red dragon” was vanquished, and “the black and settled night of ignorance and Christian tyranny” having been expelled, “the odour of the returning Gospel” began to bathe the land with “the fragrancy of heaven.”[12]

[12]Milton, Prose Works: Of Reformation in England.

Chapter 3: Wishart is Burned, and Knox Comes Forward

Growing Discredit of the Hierarchy—Martyrs—Henry Forrest—David Straiton and Norman Gourlay—Their Trial and Burning—Thomas Forrest, Vicar of Dollar—Burning of Five Martyrs—Jerome Russel and Alexander Kennedy—Cardinal David Beaton—Exiles—Number of Sufferers—Plot to Cut off all the Nobles favorable to the New Opinions—Defeat at the Solway, and Discovery of the Plot—Ministry and Martyrdom of George Wishart—Birth and Education of Knox

Picture: George Wishart.

Between the death of Hamilton and the appearance of Knox there intervenes a period of a chequered character; nevertheless, we can trace all throughout it a steady onward march of Scotland towards emancipation. Hamilton had been burned; Alesius and others had fled in terror; and the priests, deeming themselves undisputed masters, demeaned themselves more haughtily than ever. But their pride hastened their downfall. The nobles combined to set limits to an arrogance which was unbearable; the greed and profligacy of the hierarchy discredited it in the eyes of the common people; the plays of Sir David Lindsay, and the satires of the illustrious George Buchanan, helped to swell the popular indignation; but the main forces in Scotland, as in every other country, which weakened the Church of Rome, and eventually overthrew it, were the reading of the Scriptures and the deaths of the martyrs.

The burning of Patrick Hamilton began immediately to bear fruit. From his ashes arose one to continue his testimony, and to repeat his martyrdom. Henry Forrest was a Benedictine in the monastery of Linlithgow, and had come to a knowledge of the truth by the teaching and example of Hamilton. It was told the Archbishop of St. Andrews that Forrest had said that Hamilton “was a martyr, and no heretic,” and that he had a New Testament in his possession, most probably Tyndale’s, which was intelligible to the Scots of the Lowlands. “He is as bad as Master Patrick,” said Beaton; “we must burn him.” A “merry gentleman,” James Lindsay, who was standing beside the archbishop when Forrest was condemned, ventured to hint, “My lord, if ye will burn any man, let him be burned in how [hollow] cellars, for the reek [smoke] of Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it did blow upon.” The rage of Beaton blinded him to the wisdom of the advice. Selecting the highest ground in the immediate neighborhood of St. Andrews, he ordered the stake of Forrest to be planted there (1532), that the light of his pile, flashing across the Tay, might warn the men of Angus and Forfarshire to shun his heresy.[1]

The next two martyrs were David Straiton and Norman Gourlay. David Straiton, a Forfarshire gentleman, whose ancestors had dwelt on their lands of Laudston since the sixth century, was a great lover of field sports, and was giving himself no concern whatever about matters of religion. He happened to quarrel with Patrick Hepburn, Prior of St. Andrews, about his ecclesiastical dues. His lands adjoined the sea, and, daring and venturous, he loved to launch out into the deep, and always returned with his boat laden with fish. Prior Hepburn, who was as great a fisher as himself, though in other waters and for other spoil, demanded his tithe. Straiton threw every tenth fish into the sea, and gruffly told the prior to seek his tithe where he had found the stock. Hepburn summoned the laird to answer to a charge of heresy. Heresy! Straiton did not even know what the word meant. He began to inquire what that thing called heresy might be of which he was accused. Unable himself to read, he made his nephew open the New Testament and read it to him. He felt his sin; “he was changed,” says Knox, “as if by miracle,” and began that course of life which soon drew upon him the eyes of the hierarchy. Norman Gourlay,

[1]Knox, History. Calderwood, History. Fox, Acts and Monuments. Lorimer, Scottish Reformation.

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the other person who now fell under the displeasure of the priesthood, had been a student at St. Andrews, and was in priest’s orders. The trial of the two took place in Holyrood House, in presence of King James V, “clothed all in red;” and James Hay, Bishop of Ross, acting as commissioner for Archbishop Beaten. They were condemned, and in the afternoon of the same day they were taken to the Rood of Greenside, and there burned. This was a high ground between Edinburgh and Leith, and the execution took place there “that the inhabitants of Fife, seeing the fire, might be stricken with terror.” To the martyrs themselves the fire had no terror, because to them death had no sting.[2]

Four years elapsed after the death of Straiten and Gourlay till another pile was raised in Scotland. In 1538, five persons were burned. Dean Thomas Forrest, one of the five martyrs, had been a canon regular in the Augustinian monastery of St. Colme Inch, in the Frith of Forth, and had been brought to a knowledge of the truth by perusing a volume of Augustine, which was lying unused and neglected in the monastery. Lest he should infect his brethren he was transferred to the rural parish of Dollar, at the foot of the picturesque Ochils. Here he spent some busy years preaching and catechizing, till at last the eyes of the Archbishop of St. Andrews were drawn to him. There had been a recent change in that see?the uncle, James Beaten, being now dead, the more cruel and bloodthirsty nephew, David Beaten, had succeeded him. It was before this tyrant that the diligent and loving friar of Dollar was now summoned. He and the four companions who were tried along with him were condemned to the stake, and on the afternoon of the same day were burned on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh. Placed on this elevated site, these five blazing piles proclaimed to the men of Fife, and the dwellers in the Lothians, how great was the rage of the priests, but how much greater the heroism of the martyrs which overcame it.[3]

If the darkness threatened to close in again, the hierarchy always took care to disperse it by kindling another pile. Only a year elapsed after the bunting of the five martyrs on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh, when other two confessors were called to suffer the fire. Jerome Russel, a Black Friar, and Alexander Kennedy, a gentleman of Ayrshire, were put on their trial before the Archbishop of Glasgow and condemned for heresy, and were burned next day. At the stake, Russel, the more courageous of the two, taking his youthful fellow-sufferer by the hand, bade him not fear. “Death,” he said, “cannot destroy us, seeing our Lord and Master has already destroyed it.”

The blood the hierarchy was spilling was very fruitful. For every confessor that perished, a little company of disciples arose to fill his place. The martyr-piles, lit on elevated sites and flashing their gloomy splendor over city and shire, set the inhabitants a-talking; the story of the martyrs was rehearsed at many a fire-side, and their meekness contrasted with the cruelty and arrogance of their persecutors; the Bible was sought after, and the consequence was that the confessors of the truth rapidly increased.

The first disciples in Scotland were men of rank and learning; but these burnings carried the cause down among the humbler classes. The fury of the clergy, now presided over by the truculent David Beaten, daily waxed greater, and numbers, to escape the stake, fled to foreign countries. Some of these were men illustrious for their genius and their scholarship, of whom were Gawin Logic, Principal of St. Leonard’s College, the renowned George Buchanan, and McAlpine, or Maccabaeus, to whom the King of Denmark gave a chair in his University of Copenhagen. The disciples in humble life, unable to flee, had to brave the terrors of the stake and cord. The greater part of their names have passed into oblivion, and only a few have been preserved.[4] In 1543, Cardinal Beaten made a tour through his diocese, illustrating his pride by an ostentatious display of the symbols of his rank, and his cruelty by hanging, burning, and in some cases drowning heretics, in the towns where it pleased him to set up his tribunal. The profligate James V had fallen under the power of the hierarchy, and this emboldened the cardinal to venture upon a measure which he doubted not would be the death-blow of heresy in Scotland, and would secure to the hierarchy a long and tranquil reign over the country. He meditated cutting off by violence all the nobles who were known to favor the Reformed opinions. The list compiled by Beaten contained above 100 names, and among those marked out for slaughter were Lord Hamilton, the first peer in the realm, the Earls of Cassillis and Glencairn, and the Earl Marischall-a proof of the hold which the Protestant doctrine had now taken in Scotland. Before the bloody plot could be executed the Scottish army sustained a terrible defeat at the Solway, and the king soon

[2]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., pp. 58-60, and footnotes. Calderwood, History, vol. 1., p. 106. McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1. pp. 356-369, notes.

[3]Knox, History. Fox, Acts and Monuments. Scots Worthies; Glasgow ed., 1876.

[4]See a list of sufferers in McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1., pp. 356-369; Edinburgh, 1831.

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thereafter dying of a broken heart, the list of the proscribed was found upon his person after death. The nation saw with horror how narrow its escape had been from a catastrophe which, beginning with the nobility, would have quickly extended to all the favorers of the Protestant opinions.[5] The discovery helped not a little to pave the way for the downfall of a hierarchy which was capable of concocting so diabolical a plot.

Instead of the nobility and gentry of Scotland, it was the king himself whom the priests had brought to destruction; for, hoping to prevent the Reformed opinions entering Scotland from England, the priests had instigated James V to offer to Henry VIII the affront which led to the disaster of Solway-moss, followed so quickly by the death-bed scene in the royal palace of Falkland. The throne now vacant, it became necessary to appoint a regent to govern the kingdom during the minority of the Princess Mary, who was just eight days old when her father died, on the 16th of December, 1542. The man whose name was first on the list of nobles marked for slaughter, was chosen to the regency, although Cardinal Beaten sought to bar his way to it by producing a forged will of the late king appointing himself to the post.[6] The fact that Arran was a professed Reformer contributed quite as much to his elevation as the circumstance of his being premier peer. Kirkaldy of Grange, Learmonth of Balcomy, Balnaves of Halhill, Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, and other known friends of the Reformed opinions became his advisers. He selected as his chaplains Thomas Guilliam and John Rough, and opening to them the Church of Holyrood, they there preached “doctrine so wholesome,” and so zealously reproved “impiety and superstition,” that the Gray Friars, says Knox, “rowped as they had been ravens,” crying out, “Heresy! Heresy! Guilliam and Rough will carry the governor to the devil!”[7] But the most important of all the measures of the regent was the passing of the Act of Parliament, 15th of March, 1543, which made it lawful for every subject in the realm to read the Bible in his mother tongue. Hitherto the Word of God had lain under the ban of the hierarchy; that obstruction now removed, “then might have been seen,” says Knox, “the Bible lying upon almost every gentleman’s table. The New Testament was borne about in many men’s hands.” And though, as Knox tells us, some simulated a zeal for the Bible to make court to the governor, “yet thereby did the knowledge of God wondrously increase, and God gave his Holy Spirit to simple men in great abundance. Then were set forth works in our own tongue, besides those that came from England, that did disclose the pride, the craft, the tyranny and abuses of that Roman Antichrist.”[8]

It was only four months after Scotland had received the gift of a free Bible, that another boon was given it in the person of an eloquent preacher. We refer to George Wishart, who followed Patrick Hamilton at an interval of seventeen years. Wishart, born in 1512, was the son of Sir James Wishart of Pitarrow, an ancient and honorable family of the Mearns. An excellent Grecian, he was the first who taught that noblest of the tongues of the ancient world in the grammar schools of Scotland. Erskine of Dun had founded an academy at Montrose, and here the young Wishart taught Greek, it being then not uncommon for the scions of aristocratic and even noble families to give instructions in the learned languages. Wishart, becoming “suspect” of heresy, retired first to England, then to Switzerland, where he passed a year in the society of Bullinger and the study of the Helvetic Confession. Returning to England, he took up his abode for a short time at Cambridge. Let us look at the man as the graphic pen of one of his disciples has painted him. “He was a man,” says Tylney

- writing long after the noble figure that enshrined so many sweet virtues, and so much excellent learning and burning eloquence, had been reduced to ashes-“he was a man of tall stature, polled-headed, and on the same a round French cap of the best. Judged of melancholy complexion by his physiognomy, black-haired, long-bearded, comely of personage, well-spoken after his country of Scotland, courteous, lowly, lovely, glad to teach, desirous to learn, and was well-traveled; having on him for his habit or clothing never but a mantle, frieze gown to the shoes, a black Milan fustian doublet, and plain black hosen, coarse new canvass for his shirts, and white falling bands and cuffs at the hands.”[9]

Wishart returned to Scotland in the July of

[5]Sadler, Papers, vol. 1., p. 94. Memoirs of Sir James Melvil, pp. 3, 4; Edinburgh, 1735. Laing, Knox, vol. 1., pp. 80-84, and notes. Sir Ralph Sadler, in a letter to Henry VIII., 27th March, 1543, detailing a conversation he had with Governor Hamilton, sayst that “the scroll contained eighteen score noblemen and gentlemen, all well-minded to God’s Word.”

[6]Keith has sought to discredit this allegation, but the great preponderance of testimony is against him. (See Laing, Knox, vol. 1., p. 91, footnote).

[7]Knox, History, vol. 1., pp. 96, 67; Laing’s edition.

[8]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., p. 100.

[9]Fox, quoted by Professor Lormier, Scottish Reformation, p. 99.

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1543. Arran’s zeal for the Reformation had by this time spent itself; and the astute and resolute Beaton was dominant in the nation. It was in the midst of perils that Wishart began his ministry. “The beginning of his doctrine” was in Montrose, at that time the most Lutheran town perhaps in Scotland. He next visited Dundee, where his eloquence drew around him great crowds. Following the example of Zwingle at Zurich, and of Calvin at Geneva, instead of discoursing on desultory topics, he opened the Epistle to the Romans, and proceeded to expound it chapter by chapter to his audience. The Gospel thus rose before them as a grand unity. Beginning with the “one man” by whom sin entered, they passed on to the “one Man” by whom had come the “free gift.” The citizens were hanging upon the lips of the greatest pulpit orator that had arisen in Scotland for centuries, when they were surprised by a visit from the governor and the cardinal, who brought with them a train of field-artillery. Believing the town to be full of Lutherans, they had come prepared to besiege it. The citizens retired, taking with them, it is probable, their preacher, leaving the gates of the city open for the entrance of the Churchman and his unspiritual accompaniments. When the danger had passed Wishart and his flock returned, and, resuming his exposition at the point where the cardinal’s visit had compelled him to break off, he continued his labours in Dundee for some months. Arran had sunk into the mere tool of the cardinal, and it was not to be expected that the latter, now all-powerful in Scotland, would permit the erection of a [482] Lutheran stronghold almost at his very door. He threatened to repeat his visit to Dundee if the preacher were not silenced, and Wishart, knowing that Beaten would keep his word, and seeing some of the citizens beginning to tremble at the prospect, deemed it prudent to obey the charge delivered to him in the queen’s name, while in the act of preaching, to “depart, and trouble the town no more.”

The evangelist went on his way to Ayr and Kyle. That was soil impregnated with seed sown in it by the hands of the Lollards. The church doors were locked against the preacher, but it was a needless precaution, no church could have contained the congregations that flocked to hear him. Wishart went to the market crosses, to the fields, and making of a “dry dyke”[10] a pulpit, he preached to the eager and awed thousands seated round him on the grass or on the heather. His words took effect on not a few who had been previously notorious for their wickedness; and the sincerity of their conversion was attested, not merely by the tears that rolled down their faces at the moment, but by the purity and consistency of their whole after-life. How greatly do those err who believe the Reformation to have been but a battle of dogmas!

The Reformation was the cry of the human conscience for pardon. That great movement took its rise, not in the conviction of the superstitions, exactions, and scandals of the Roman hierarchy, but in the conviction of each individual of his own sin. That conviction was wrought in him by the Holy Spirit, then abundantly poured down upon the nations; and the Gospel which showed the way of forgiveness delivered men from bondage, and imparting a new life to them, brought them into a world of liberty. This was the true Reformation. We would call it a revival were it not that the term is too weak: it was a creation; it peopled Christendom with new men, in the first place, and in the second it covered it with new Churches and States.

Hardly had Wishart departed from Dundee when the plague entered it. This was a visitant whose shafts were more deadly than even the cardinal’s artillery. The lazar-houses that stood at the “East Port,” round the shrine of St. Roque, the protector from pestilence, were crowded with the sick and the dying. Wishart hastened back the moment he heard the news, and mounting on the top of the Cowgate the healthy inside the gate, the plague-stricken outside-he preached to the two congregations, choosing as his text the words of the 107th Psalm, “He sent his Word and healed them.” A new life began to be felt in the stricken city; measures were organized, by the advice of Wishart, for the distribution of food and medicine among the sick,[11] and the plague began to abate. One day his labours were on the point of being brought to an abrupt termination. A priest, hired by the cardinal to assassinate him, waited at the foot of the stairs for the moment when he should descend. A cloak thrown over him concealed the naked dagger which he held in his hand; but the keen eye of Wishart read the murderous design in the man’s face. Going up to him and putting his hand upon his arm, he said, “Friend, what would ye?” at the same time disarming him. The crowd outside rushed in, and would have dispatched the would-be assassin, but Wishart threw himself between the indignant citizens and the man, and thus, in the words of Knox, “saved the life of him who sought his.”

On leaving Dundee in the end of 1545, Wishart repaired to Edinburgh, and thence passed into East Lothian, preaching in its towns and villages. He had a deep presentiment that his end was near, and that he would fall a sacrifice to the wrath of Beaton. Apprehended at Ormiston on the night of the 16th of January, 1546, he was carried to St. Andrews, thrown into the Sea-tower, and brought to trial on the 28th of February, and condemned to the flames. Early next morning the preparations were begun for his execution, which was to take place at noon. The scaffold was erected a little way in front of the cardinal’s palace, in the dungeons of which Wishart lay. The guns of the castle, the gunners by their side, were shotted and turned on the scaffold; an iron stake, chains, and gunpowder were provided for the martyr; and the windows and wall-tops were lined with cushions, and draped with green hangings, for the luxurious repose of the cardinal and bishops while witnessing the spectacle. At noon Wishart was led forth in the midst of soldiers, his hands tied behind his back, a rope round his neck, and an iron chain round his middle. His last meal in the hall of the castle before being led out he had converted into the “Last Supper,” which he partook with his friends. “Consider and behold my visage,” said he, “ye shall not see me change my color. The grim fire I fear not. I know surely that my soul shall sup with my Savior this night.” Having taken his place at the stake, the powder-bags were first exploded, scorching him severely; the rope round his neck was then drawn tightly to strangle him, and last of all his body was burned to ashes.”[12]

“It was Wishart,” says Dr. Lorimer, “who first molded the Reformed theology of Scotland

[10]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., p. 128.

[11]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., p. 130.

[12]Ibid., p. 169-171.

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upon the Helvetic, as distinguished from the Saxon type; and it was he who first taught the Church of Scotland to reduce her ordinances and Sacraments with rigorous fidelity to the standard of Christ’s Institutions.”[13]

It is at the stake of Wishart that we first catch sight as it were of Knox, for the parting between the two, so affectingly recorded by Knox himself, took place not many days before the death of the martyr. John Knox, descended from the Knoxes of Ranferly, was born in Gifford-gate, Haddington,[14] in 1505. From the school of his native town he passed (1522) to the University of Glasgow, and was entered under the celebrated John Major, then Principal Regent or Professor of Philosophy and Divinity. After leaving college he passes out of view for ten or a dozen years. About this time he would seem to have taken priest’s orders, and to have been for upwards of ten years connected with one of the religious establishments in the neighborhood of Haddington. He had been enamoured of the scholastic philosophy, the science that sharpened the intellect, but left the conscience unmoved and the soul unfed; but now loathing its dry crusts, and turning away from its great doctors, he seats himself at the feet of the great Father of the West. He read and studied the writings of Augustine. Rich in evangelical truth and impregnate with the fire of Divine love, Augustine’s pages must have had much to do with the molding of Knox’s mind, and the imprinting upon it of that clear, broad, and heroic stamp which it wore all his life long.

Augustine and Jerome led Knox to the feet of a Greater. The future Reformer now opens the Sacred Oracles, and he who had once wandered in the dry and thirsty wilderness of scholasticism finds himself at the fountain and well-head of Divine knowledge. The wonder he felt when the doctrines of the schools vanished around him like mist, and the eternal verities of the Gospel stood out before him in the clear light of the Bible, we are not told. Did the day which broke on Luther and Calvin amid lightning and great thundering dawn peacefully on Knox? We do not think so. Doubtless the Scottish Reformer, before escaping from the yoke of Rome, had to undergo struggles of soul akin to those of his two great predecessors; but they have been left unrecorded. We of this age are, in this respect, free-born; the men of the sixteenth century had to buy their liberty, and ours at the same time, with a great sum.

From the doctors of the Middle Ages to the Fathers of the first ages, from the Fathers to the Word of God, Knox was being led, by a way he knew not, to the great task that awaited him. His initial course of preparation, begun by Augustine, was perfected doubtless by the private instructions and public sermons of Wishart, which Knox was privileged to enjoy during the weeks that immediately preceded the martyr’s death. That death would seal to Knox all that had fallen from the lips of Wishart, and would bring him to the final resolve to abandon the Roman communion and cast in his lot with the Reformers. But both the man and the country had yet to pass through many sore conflicts before either was ready for that achievement which crowned the labours of the one and completed the Reformation of the other.

[13]The Scottish Reformation, p. 154.

[14]An entry in the archives of the Hotel de Ville of Geneva, first brought to light by Dr. David Laing, places it beyond a doubt that Knox’s birthplace was not the village of Gifford, as Dr. McCrie had been led to suppose, but the Gifford-gate, Haddington. (See Laing, Knox, vol. vi., preface; ed. 1864.

Chapter 4: Knox’s Call to the Ministry and First Sermon

Cardinal Beaton Assassinated—Castle of St. Andrews Held by the Conspirators, Knox Enters it?Called to the Ministry—His First Sermon—Key-note of the Reformation Struck—Knox in the French Galleys—The Check Useful to Scotland—Useful to Knox—What he Learned Abroad—Visits Scotland in 1555—The Nobles Withdraw from Mass—A “Congregation”—Elders—The First “Band” Subscribed—Walter Mill Burned at St. Andrews—The Last Martyr of the Reformation in Scotland

Picture: View of the Ruins of the Castle: St. Andrews (Cardinal’s Palace).

Picture: George Wishart Protecting his would-be Assassin

On Saturday morning, the 29th of May, the Castle of St. Andrews was surprised by Norman Leslie and his accomplices, and Cardinal Beaton slain. This was a violence which the Reformation did not need, and from which it did not profit. The cardinal [484] was removed, but the queen-dowager, Mary of Guise, a woman of consummate craft, and devoted only to France and Rome, remained. The weak-minded Arran had now consummated his apostasy, and was using his power as regent only at the bidding of the priests. Moreover, the see which the dagger of Leslie had made vacant was filled by a man in many respects as bad as the bloodthirsty and truculent priest who had preceded him. John Hamilton, brother of the regent, did not equal Beaten in rigor of mind, but he equaled him in profligacy of manners, and in the unrelenting and furious zeal with which he pursued all who favored the Gospel. Thus the persecution did not slacken.

The cardinal’s corpse flung upon a dung-hill, the conspirators kept possession of his castle. It had been recently and strongly repaired, and was well mounted with arms; and although the regent besieged it for months, he had to retire, leaving its occupants in peace. Its holders were soon joined by their friends, favorers of the Reformation, though with a purer zeal, including among others Kirkaldy of Grange, Melville of Raith, and Leslie of Rothes. It had now become an asylum for the persecuted, and at Easter, 1547, it opened its gates to receive John Knox. Knox had now reached the mature age of forty-two, and here it was that he entered on that public career which he was to pursue without pause, through labor and sorrow, through exile and peril, till the grave should bring him repose.

That career opened affectingly and beautifully. The company in the castle had now grown to upwards of 150, and “perceiving the manner” of Knox’s teaching, they “began earnestly to travail with him that he would take the preaching place upon him,” and when he hesitated they solemnly adjured him, as Beza had done Calvin, “not to refuse this holy vocation.” The flood of tears, which was the only response that Knox was able to make, the seclusion in which he shut himself up for days, and the traces of sore mental conflict which his countenance bore when at last he emerged from his chamber, paint with a vividness no words can reach the sensibility and the conscientiousness, the modesty and the strength of his character. It is a great office, it is the greatest of all offices, he feels, to which he is called; and if he trembles in taking it upon him, it is not alone from a sense of unfitness, but from a knowledge of the thoroughness of his devotion, and that the office once undertaken, its responsibilities and claims must and will, at whatever cost, be discharged.

Knox preached in the castle, and at times also in the parish church of St. Andrews. In his first sermon in the latter place he struck the key-note of the Reformation in his native land. The Church of Rome, said he, is the Antichrist of Scripture. No movement can rise higher than its fundamental principle, and no doctrine less broad than this which Knox now proclaimed could have sustained the weight of such a Reformation as Scotland needed. “Others sned [lopped] the branches of the Papistrie,” said some of his hearers, “but he strikes at the root to destroy the whole.”[1] Hamilton and Wishart had stopped short of this. They had condemned abuses, and pointed out the doctrinal errors in which these abuses had their source, and they had called for a purging out of scandalous persons-in short, a reform of the existing Church. Knox came with the ax in his hand to cut down the rotten tree. He saw at once the point from which he must set out if he would arrive at the right goal. Any principle short of this would but give him an improved Papacy, not a Scriptural Church-a temporary abatement to be followed by a fresh outburst of abuses, and the last end of the Papacy in Scotland would be worse than the first. Greater than Hamilton, greater than Wishart, Knox took rank with the first minds of the Reformation, in the depth and comprehensiveness of the principles from which he worked. The deliverer of Scotland stood before his countrymen.

But no sooner had he been revealed to the eyes of those who waited for deliverance than he was withdrawn. The first gun in the campaign had been fired; the storming of the Papacy would go vigorously forward under the intrepid champion who had come to lead. But so it was not to be; the struggle was to be a protracted one. On the 4th of June, 1547, the French war-ships appeared in the offing. In a few hours the castle, with its miscellaneous occupants, was enclosed on the side towards the sea, while the forces of Arran besieged it by land. It fell, and all in it, including Knox, were put on board the French galleys and, in violation of the terms of capitulation, borne away into foreign slavery. The last French ship had disappeared below the horizon, and with it had vanished the last hope of Scotland’s Reformation. The priests loudly triumphed, and the friends of the Gospel hung their heads.

The work now stood still, but only to the eye—it was all the while advancing underground. In this check lay hid a blessing to Scotland, for it was well that its people should have time to meditate upon the initial principle of the Reformation which Knox had put before them. That principle was

[1]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., p. 192.

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the seed of a new Church and a new State, but it must have time to unfold itself. The people of Scotland had to be taught that Reformation could not be furthered by the dagger; the stakes of Hamilton and Wishart had advanced the cause, but the sword of Norman Leslie had thrown it back; they had to be taught, too, that to reform the Papacy was to perpetuate it, and that they must return to the principle of Knox if they were ever to see a Scriptural Church rising in their land.

To Knox himself this check was not less necessary. His preparation for the great task before him was as yet far from complete. He wanted neither zeal nor knowledge, but his faculties had to be widened by observation, and his character strengthened by suffering. His sojourn abroad shook him free of those merely insular and home views, which cling to one who has never been beyond seas, especially in an age when the channels of intercourse and information between Scotland and the rest of Christendom were few and contracted. In the French galleys, and scarcely less in the city of Frankfort, he saw deeper than he had ever done before into the human heart. It was there he learned that self-control, that parlance of labor, that meek endurance of wrong, that calm and therefore steady and resolute resistance to vexatious and unrighteous opposition, and that self-possession in difficulty and danger that so greatly distinguished him ever after, and which were needful and indeed essential in one who was called, in planting religion in his native land, to confront the hostility of a Popish court, to moderate the turbulence of factious barons, and to inform the ignorance and control the zeal of a people who till that time had been strangers to the blessings of religion and liberty. It was not for nothing that the hand which gave to Scotland its liberty, should itself for nearly the space of two years have worn fetters.

It was another advantage of his exile that from a foreign stand-point Knox could have a better view of the drama now in progress in his native land, and could form a juster estimate of its connection with the rest of Christendom, and the immense issues that hung upon the Reformation of Scotland as regarded the Reformation of other countries. Here he saw deeper into the cunningly contrived plots and the wide-spread combinations then forming among the Popish princes of the age-a race of rulers who will remain renowned through all time for their unparalleled cruelty and their unfathomable treachery. These lessons Knox learned abroad, and they were worth all the years of exile and wandering and all the hope deferred which they cost him; and of how much advantage they were to him we shall by-and-by see, when we come to narrate his supreme efforts for his native land.

Nor could it be other than advantageous to come into contact with the chiefs of the movement, and especially with him who towered above them all. To see Calvin, to stand beside the source of that mighty energy that pervaded the whole field of action to its farthest extremities, must have been elevating and inspiring. Knox’s views touching both the doctrine and the polity of the Church were formed before he visited Calvin, and were not altered in consequence of that visit; but doubtless his converse with the great Reformer helped to deepen and enlarge all his views, and to keep alive the fire that burned within him, first kindled into a flame during those days of anguish which he passed shut up in his chamber in the Castle of St. Andrews. In all his wanderings it was Scotland, bound in the chains of Rome, riveted by French steel, that occupied his thoughts; and intently did he watch every movement in it, sometimes from Geneva, sometimes from Dieppe, and at other times from the nearer point of England; nor did he ever miss an opportunity of letting his burning words be heard by his countrymen, till at length, in 1555, eight years from the time he had been carried away with the French fetters on his arm, he was able again to visit his native land.

Knox’s present sojourn in Scotland was short, but it tended powerfully to consolidate and advance the movement. His presence imparted new life to its adherents; and his counsels led them to certain practical measures, by which each strengthened the other, and all were united in a common action. Several of the leading nobles were now gathered round the Protestant banner. Among these were Archibald, Lord Lorne, afterwards Earl of Argyle; John, Lord Erskine, afterwards Earl of Mar; Lord James Stuart, afterwards Earl of Murray; the Earl Marischall; the Earl of Glencairn; John Erskine of Dun; William Maitland of Lethington, and others.[2] Up to this time these men had attended mass, and were not outwardly separate from the communion of the Roman Church; but, at the earnest advice of the Reformer, they resolved not to participate in that rite in future, and to withdraw themselves from the Roman worship and pale; and they signalised their secession by receiving the Sacrament in its Protestant form at the hands of Knox[3] We see in this the laying of the

[2]McCrie, Life of Knox, vol., p. 177.

[3]Ibid., p. 175.

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first foundations of the Reformed Church of Scotland. In the days of Hamilton and Wishart the Reformation in Scotland was simply a doctrine; now it was a congregation. This was all that the times permitted the Reformer to do for the cause of the Gospel in Scotland; and, feeling that his continued presence in the country would but draw upon the infant community a storm of persecution, Knox retired to Geneva, where his English flock anxiously waited his coming. But on this second departure from Scotland, he was cheered by the thought that the movement had advanced a stage. The little seed he had deposited in its soil eight years before had been growing all the while he was absent, and now when a second time he goes forth into exile, he leaves behind him a living organization-a company of men making profession of the truth.

From this time the progress of the Reformation in Scotland was rapid. In the midland counties, comprehending Forfar, Fife, the Lothians, and Ayr, there were few places in which there were not now professors of the Reformed faith. They had as yet no preachers, but they met in such places, his such times, as circumstances permitted, for their mutual edification. The most pious of their number was appointed to read the Scriptures, to exhort, and to offer up prayer. They were of all classes-nobles, barons, burgesses, and peasants. They felt the necessity of order in their meetings, and of purity in their lives; and with this view they chose elders to watch over their morals, promising subjection to them. Thus gradually, stage by stage, did they approach the outward organization of a Church, and at it is interesting to mark that in the Reformed Church of Scotland elders came before ministers. The beginning of these small congregations, presided over by elders, was in Edinburgh. The first town to be provided with a pastor, and favored with the dispensation of the Sacraments, was Dundee, the scene of Wishart’s labours, of which the fruits were the zeal and piety that at this early stage of the Reformation distinguished its citizens.[4] Dundee came to be called the Geneva of Scotland; it was the earliest and loveliest flower of that spring-time.

The next step of the “lords of the Congregation”

[4]Laing, Knox, 1., 300. McCrie, Life of Knox, 1. 227, 228.

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was the framing of a “band” or covenant, in which they promised before “the Majesty of God and his Congregation” to employ their “whole power, substance, and very lives” in establishing the Gospel in Scotland, in defending its ministers, and building up its “Congregation.” The earliest of these “bands” is dated the 3rd December, 1557;[5] and the subscribers are the Earls of Argyle, Glencairn, Morton, Lord Lorne, and Erskine of Dun. Strengthened by this “oath to God” and pledge to one another, they went forth to the battle. The year that followed (1558) witnessed a forward movement on the part of the Protestant host. The lords of the Congregation could not forbid mass, or change the public worship of the nation; nor did they seek to do so; but each nobleman within his own jurisdiction caused the English “Book of Common Prayer,” together with the lessons of the Old and New Testament, to be read every Sunday and festival-day in the parish church by the curate, or if he were unable or unwilling, by the person best qualified in the parish. The Reformed teachers were also invited to preach and interpret Scripture in private houses, or in the castles of the reforming nobles, till such time as the Government would allow them to exercise their functions in public.[6] The latter measures in particular alarmed the hierarchy.

It began to be apparent that destruction impended ever the hierarchy unless speedy measures were taken to avert it. But the priests unhappily knew of only one weapon, and though their cause had reaped small advantage from it in the past, they were still determined to make use of it. They once more lighted the flames of martyrdom. Walter Mill, parish priest of Lunan, near Montrose, had been adjudged a heretic in the time of Cardinal Beaten, but effecting his escape, he preached in various parts of the country, sometimes in private and sometimes in public. He was tracked by the spies of Beaton’s successor, Archbishop Hamilton, and brought to trial in St. Andrews. He appeared before the court with tottering step and bending figure, so that all who saw him despaired of his being able to answer the questions about to be put to him. But when, on being helped up into the pulpit, he began to speak, “his voice,” says Knox, “had such courage and stoutness that the church rang again.” “Wilt thou not recant thy errors?” asked the tribunal after he had been subjected to a long questioning. “Ye shall know,” said he, looking into the faces of his enemies, “that I will not recant the truth, for I am corn and not chaff. I will not be blown away with the wind, nor burst with the flail, but I will abide both.”

He stood before his judges with the burden of eighty-two years upon him, but this could procure him no pity, nor could his enemies wait till he should drop into the grave on the brink of which he stood. He was condemned to the flames. A rope was wanted to bind the old man to the stake, but so great was the horror of his burning among the townsmen that not a merchant in all St. Andrews would sell one, and the archbishop was obliged to furnish a cord from his own palace. When ordered by Oliphant, an officer of the archbishop, to mount the pile, “No,” replied the martyr, “I will not unless you put your hand to me, for I am forbidden to be accessory to my own death.” Whereupon Oliphant pushed him forward, and Mill ascended with a joyful countenance, repeating the words of the Psalm, “I will go to the altar of God.” As he stood at the stake, Mill addressed the people in these words: “As for me, I am fourscore and two years old, and cannot live long by course of nature; but a hundred better shall rise out of the ashes of my bones. I trust in God that I shall be the last that shall suffer death in Scotland for this cause.[7] He expired on the 28th of August, 1558.

These few last words, dropped from a tongue fast becoming unable to fulfil its office, pealed forth from amid the flames with the thrilling power of a trumpet. They may be said to have rung the death-knell of Popery in Scotland. The citizens of St. Andrews raised a pile of stones over the spot where the martyr had been burned. The priests caused them to be carried off night by night, but the ominous heap rose again duly in the morning. It would not vanish, nor would the cry from it be silenced.[8] The nation was roused, and Scotland waited only the advent of one of its exiled sons, who was day by day drawing nearer it, to start up as one man and rend from its neck the cruel yoke which had so long weighed it down in serfdom and superstition.

[5]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., pp. 273, 275; ed. 1846. Dr. McCrie mentions a similar “band” in 1556, but he earliest extant is that referred to in the text. An original copy of it, with the autographs of the subscribers, was discovered in 1860 by the Rev. James Young in the charter-chest of the Cuninghame of Balgownie. The author has had an opportunity of the comparing it with Knox’s copy: the two exactly agree, as do also the names of the subscribers.

[6]McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1., pp. 228, 229.

[7]Lindsay of Pitscottie, History, p. 200. McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1, p. 232.

[8]Calderwood, History, vol. 1., pp. 242, 243.

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Chapter 5: Knox’s Final Return to Scotland

The Priests Renew the Persecution—The Queen Regent openly Sides with them—Demands of the Protestant Lords—Rejected—Preaching Forbidden—The Preachers Summoned before the Queen—A Great Juncture—Arrival of John Knox—Consternation of the Hierarchy—The Reformer of Scotland—Knox Outlawed—Resolves to Appear with the Preachers before the Queen—The Queen’s Perfidy—Knox’s Sermon at Perth—Destruction of the Gray Friars’ and Black Friars’ Monasteries, etc—The Queen Regent Marches against Perth—Commencement of the Civil War

It was now thirty years since the stake of Patrick Hamilton had lighted Scotland into the path of Reformation. The progress of the country had been slow, but now the goal was being neared, and events were thickening. The two great parties into which Scotland was divided stood frowning at each other: the crime of burning Mill on the one side, and “the oath to the Majesty of Heaven” on the other, rendered conciliation hopeless, and nothing remained but to bring the controversy between the two to a final issue.

The stake of Mill was meant to be the first of a series of martyrdoms by which the Reformers were to be exterminated. Many causes contributed to the adoption of a bolder policy on the part of the hierarchy. They could not hide from themselves that the Reformation was advancing with rapid strides. The people were deserting the mass; little companies of Protestants were forming in all the leading towns, the Scriptures were being interpreted, and the Lord’s Supper dispensed according to the primitive order; many of the nobles were sheltering Protestant preachers in their castles. It was clear that Scotland was going the same road as Wittemberg and Geneva had gone; and it was equally clear that the champions of the Papacy must strike at once and with decision, or surrender the battle.

But what specially emboldened the hierarchy at this hour was the fact that the queen regent had openly come over to their side. A daughter of the House of Lorraine, she had always been with them at heart, but her ambition being to secure the crown-matrimonial of Scotland for her son-in-law, Francis II, she had poised herself, with almost the skill of a Catherine de Medici, between the bishops and the lords of the Congregation. She needed the support of both to carry her political objects. In October, 1558, the Parliament met; and the queen regent, with the assistance of the Protestants, obtained from “the Estates” all that she wished. It being no longer necessary to wear the mask, the queen now openly sided with her natural party, the men of the sword and the stake. Hence the courage which emboldened the priests to re-kindle the fires of persecution; and hence, too, the rigor that now animated the Reformers. Disenchanted from a spell that had kept them dubiously poised between the mass and the Gospel, they now saw where they stood, and, shutting their ears to Mary’s soft words, they resolved to follow the policy alike demanded by their duty and their safety.

They assembled at Edinburgh, and agreed upon certain demands, which they were to present by commissioners to the convention of the nobility and the council of the clergy. The reforms asked for were three that it should be lawful to preach and to dispense the Sacraments in the vulgar tongue; that bishops should be admitted into their sees only with the consent of the barons of the diocese, and priests with the consent of the parishioners; and that immoral and incapable persons should be removed from the pastoral office. These demands were rejected, the council having just concluded a secret treaty with the queen for the forcible suppression of the Reformation.[1] No sooner had the Protestant nobles left Edinburgh than the regent issued a proclamation prohibiting all persons from preaching or dispensing the Sacraments without authority from the bishops.

The Reformed preachers disobeyed the proclamation. The queen, on learning this, summoned them to appear before her at Stirling, on the 10th of May, and answer to a charge of heresy and rebellion. There were only four preachers in Scotland, namely, Paul Methven, John Christison, William Harlow, and John Willock. The Earl of Glencairn and Sir Hugh Campbell, Sheriff of Ayr, waited on the queen to remonstrate against this arbitrary proceeding. She haughtily replied that “in spite of them all their preachers should be

[1]McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1., pp. 251, 252. See their “Protestation,” given to Parliament, in Laing, Knox, vol. 1., pp. 309-314.

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banished from Scotland.” “What then,” they asked, “became of her oft-repeated promises to protect their preachers?” Mary, not in the least disconcerted, replied that “it became not subjects to burden their princes with promises further than they pleased to keep them.” “If so,” replied Glencairn, “we on our side are free of our allegiance.” The queen’s tone now fell, and she promised to think seriously over the further prosecution of the affair. At that moment, news arrived that France and Spain had concluded a peace, and formed a league for the suppression of the Reformation by force of arms. Scotland would not be overlooked in the orthodox crusade, and the regent already saw in the contemplated measures the occupation of that country by French soldiers. She issued peremptory orders for putting the four Protestant ministers upon their trial. It was a strange and startling juncture. The blindness of the hierarchy in rejecting the very moderate reform which the Protestants asked, the obstinacy of the queen in putting the preachers upon their trial, and the league of the foreign potentates, which threatened to make Scotland a mere dependency of France, all met at this moment, and constituted a crisis of a trimly momentous character, but which above most things helped on that very consummation towards which Scotland had been struggling for upwards of thirty years.

There wanted yet one thing to complete this strange conjuncture of events. That one thing was added, and the combination, so formidable and menacing till that moment, was changed into one of good promise and happy augury to Protestantism. While the queen and the bishops were concerting their measures in Edinburgh, and a few days were to see the four preachers consigned to the same fate which had overtaken Mill; while the Kings of Spain and France were combining their armies, and meditating a great blow on the Continent, a certain ship had left the harbor of Dieppe, and was voyaging northward with a fair wind, bound for the Scottish shore, and on board that ship there was a Scotsman, in himself a greater power than an army of 10,000 men. This ship carried John Knox, who, without human pre-arrangement, was arriving in the very midst of his country’s crisis.

Knox landed at Leith on the 2nd of May, 1559. The provincial council was still sitting in the Monastery of the Gray Friars when, on the morning of the 3rd of May, a messenger entering in haste announced that John Knox had arrived from France, and had slept last night in Edinburgh. The news fell like a thunder-bolt upon the members of council. They sat for some time speechless, looking into one another’s faces, and at last they broke up in confusion. Before Knox had uttered a single word, or even shown himself in public, his very name had scattered them. A messenger immediately set off with the unwelcome news to the queen, who was at that time in Glasgow; and in a few days a royal proclamation declared Knox a rebel and an outlaw.[2] I the proclamation accomplished nothing else, it made the fact of the Reformer’s presence known to all Scotland.

The nation had now found what it needed, a man able to lead it in the great war on which it was entering. His devotion and zeal, now fully matured in the school of suffering; his sincerity and uprightness; his magnanimity and courage; his skill in theological debate, and his political insight, in which he excelled all living Scotsmen; the confidence and hope with which he was able to inspire his fellow-countrymen; and the terror in which the hierarchy stood of his very name, all marked him out as the chosen instrument for his country’s deliverance. He knew well how critical the hour was, and how arduous his task would be. Religion and liberty were within his country’s grasp, and still it might miss them. The chances of failure and of success seemed evenly poised; half the nobles were on the side of Rome; all the Highlands, we may say, were Popish; there were the indifference, the gross ignorance, the old murky superstition of the rural parts; these were the forces bearing down the scale, and making the balance incline to defeat. On the other side, a full half of the barons were on the side of the Reformation; but it was only a few of them who could be thoroughly depended upon; the rest were lukewarm or wavering, and not without an eye to the spoils that would be gathered from the upbreak of a hierarchy owning half the wealth of the kingdom. The most disinterested, and also the most steadfast, supporters of the Reformation lay among the merchants and traders of the great towns the men who loved the Gospel for its own sake, and who would stand by it at all hazards. So evenly poised was the balance; a little thing might make it incline to the one side or to the other; and what tremendous issues hung upon the turning of it!

Not an hour did Knox lose in beginning his work. The four preachers, as we have already said, had been summoned to answer before the queen at Stirling. “The hierarchy,” said the lords of the Congregation, “hope to draw our pastors into their net, and sacrifice them as they did Walter

[2]McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1., p. 256.

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Mill. We will go with them, and defend them.” “And I too,” said Knox, not daunted by the outlawry which had been passed upon him, “shall accompany my brethren, and take part in what may await them before the queen.” But when the queen learned that Knox was on his way to present himself before her, she deserted the Diet against the preachers, and forbade them to appear; but with the characteristic perfidy of a Guise, when the day fixed in the citation came, she ordered the summons to be called, and the preachers to be outlawed for not appearing.[3]

When the news reached Perth that the men who had been forbidden to appear before the queen, were outlawed for not appearing, indignation was added to the surprise of the nobles and the townspeople. It chanced that on the same day Knox preached against the mass and image-worship. The sermon was ended, and the congregation had very quietly dispersed, when a priest, “to show his malapert presumption,” says Knox, “would open ane glorious tabernacle that stood upon the high altar,” and began to say mass. A boy standing near called out, “Idolatry!” The priest repaid him with a blow: the youth retaliated by throwing a stone, which, missing the priest, hit one of the images on the altar, and shivered it in pieces. It was the sacking of Antwerp Cathedral over again, but on a smaller scale. The loiterers in the church caught the excitement; they fell upon the images, and the crash of one stone idol after another reechoed through the edifice; the crucifixes, altars, and church ornaments shared the same fate. The noise brought a stream of idlers from the street into the building, eager to take part in the demolition. Mortified at finding the work finished before their arrival, they bent their steps to the monasteries.[4] The tempest took the direction of the Gray Friars on the south of the town, another rolled away towards the Black Friars in the opposite quarter, and soon both monasteries were in ruins, their inmates being allowed to depart with as much of their treasure as they were able to carry. Not yet had the storm expended itself; it burst next over the abbey of the Charter House. This was a sumptuous edifice, with pleasant gardens shaded by trees. But neither its splendor, nor the fact that it had been founded by the first James, could procure its exemption from the fury of the iconoclasts. It perished utterly. This tempest burst out at the dinner hour, when the lords, the burghers, and the Reformers were in their houses, and only idlers were abroad. Knox and the magistrates, as soon as they were informed of what was going on, hastened to the scene of destruction, but their utmost efforts could not stop it. They could only stand and look on while stone cloister, painted oriel, wooden saint, and fruit-tree, now clothed in the rich blossoms of early summer, fell beneath the sturdy blows of the “rascal multitude.” The monasteries contained stores of all good things, which were divided amongst the poor; “no honest man,’ says Knox, “was enriched thereby the value of a groat.”[5]

It is to be remarked that in Perth, as in the other towns of Scotland, it was upon the monasteries that the iconoclastic vengeance fell; the cathedrals and churches were spared. The monasteries were in particularly evil repute among the population as nests of idleness, gluttony, and sin. Dark tales of foul and criminal deeds transacted within their walls were continually in circulation, and the hoarded resentment of long years now burst out, and swept them away. The spark that kindled the conflagration was not Knox’s sermon, for few if any of those rioters had heard it: Knox’s hearers were in their own houses when the affair began. The more immediate provocative was the wanton perfidy of the queen, which more disgraced her than this violence did the mob; and the remoter cause was the rejection of that moderate measure of Reformation which the lords of the Congregation had asked for, protesting at the same time that they would not be responsible for the irregularities and violences that might follow the rejection of their suit.

Knox deplored the occurrence. Not that he mourned over idol slain, and nest of lazy monk and moping nun rooted out, but he foresaw that the violence of the mob would be made the crime of the Reformers. And so it happened; it gave the queen the very pretext she had waited for. The citizens of Perth, with the lords of the Congregation at their head, had, in her eye, risen in rebellion against her government. Collecting an army from the neighboring counties, she set out to chastise the rebels, and lay waste the city of Perth with fire and sword.

[3]Laing, Knox, vol, i., pp. 318, 319.

[4]This site is now the burial-place of the city.

[5]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., pp. 317-324.

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Chapter 6: Establishment of the Reformation in Scotland

Peace between the Queen and the Reformers—Consultation—The Lords of the Congregation Resolve to Set up the Protestant Worship—Knox Preaches at St. Andrews—His Sermon—St. Andrews Reformed—Glasgow, Edinburgh, etc., Follow—Question of the Demolition of the Images and Monasteries—The Queen and her Army at Leith—The Lords Evacuate Edinburgh—Knox Sets out on a Preaching Tour—His Great Exertions—Scotland Roused—Negotiations with England—England Aids Scotland—Establishment of the Reformation in Scotland

Picture: Knox Pulpit: St. Andrews Parish Church.

When the queen regent arrived before Perth at the head of 8,000 men, she found the Reformers so well prepared to receive her that, instead of offering them battle as she had intended, she agreeably surprised them with overtures of peace. Although fully resolved to repel by arms an assault which they deemed none the less illegal and murderous that it was led by the queen, the lords of the Congregation joyfully accepted the olive-branch now held out to them. “Cursed be he,” said they, “that seeks effusion of blood, war, or dissension. Give us liberty of conscience, and the free profession of the ‘Evangel,’[1] and none in all the realm will be more loyal subjects than we.” Negotiations were opened between the regent and the Reformers, which terminated amicably, and the strife ceased for the moment. The lords of the Congregation disbanded their army of about 5,000, and the queen took peaceable possession of the city of Perth, where her followers began to make preparations for mass, and the altars having been overturned, their place was supplied by tables from the taverns, which, remarks Knox, “were holy enough for that use.”

The Reformers now met, and took a survey of their position, in order to determine on the course to be adopted. They had lost thirty years waiting the tardy approach of the reforms which the queen had promised them. Meanwhile the genius, the learning, the zeal which would have powerfully aided in emancipating the country from the sin and oppression under which it groaned, were perishing at the stake. Duped by the queen, they had stood quietly by and witnessed these irreparable sacrifices. The reform promised them was as far off as ever. Abbot, bishop, and cowled monk were lifting up the head higher than before. A French army had been brought into the country, and the independence and liberties of Scotland were menaced.[2] This was all the Reformers had reaped by giving ear to the delusive words of Mary of Guise. While other countries had established their Reformation Scotland lingered on the threshold, and now it found itself in danger of losing not only its Reformation, but its very nationality. The lords of the Congregation, therefore, resolved to set up the Reformed worship at once in all those places to which their authority extended, and where a majority of the inhabitants were favorable to the design.[3]

A commencement was to be made in the ecclesiastical metropolis of Scotland. The Earl of Argyle and Lord James Stuart, Prior of St. Andrews, arranged with Knox to meet in that city on an early day in June, and inaugurate there the Protestant worship. The archbishop, apprised of Knox’s coming, hastened in from Falkland with 100 spears, and sent a message to him on Saturday night, that if he dared to appear in the pulpit of the cathedral tomorrow, he would cause his soldiers to shoot him dead. The lords, having consulted, agreed that Knox should forego the idea of preaching. The resolution seemed a prudent one. The dispositions of the townspeople were unknown; the lords had but few retainers with them; the queen, with her French army, was not more than fifteen miles off; and to preach might be to give the signal for bloodshed. Knox, who felt that to abandon a great design when the moment for putting it in execution had arrived, and retire before an angry threat, was to incur the loss of prestige, and invite greater attacks in future, refused for one moment to entertain the idea of not preaching. He said that when lying out in the Bay of St. Andrews in former years, chained to the deck of a French galley, his eye had lighted on the roof of the cathedral, which the sun’s rays at that moment illuminated, and he said in the hearing of some still alive, that he felt assured that he should yet preach there before closing his career; and now when God, contrary to the expectations of all men,

[1]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., p. 342.

[2]Memoirs of Sir James Melvil, p. 49; Edinburgh, 1735.

[3]McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1., pp. 264, 265.

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had brought him back to this city, he besought them not to hinder what was not only his cherished wish, but the deep-rooted conviction of his heart. He desired neither the hand nor weapon of man to defend him; He whose glory he sought would be his shield. “I only crave audience,” said he, “which, if it be denied here unto me at this time, I must seek where I may have it.”[4]

The intrepidity of Knox saved the Reformation from the; brand of timidity which the counsel of the lords, had it been followed, would have brought upon it. It was a display of courage at the right time, and was rewarded with a career of success. On the morrow Knox preached to perhaps the most influential audience that the Scotland of that day could furnish; nobles, priests, and townspeople crowding to hear him. Every part of the vast edifice was filled, and not a finger was lifted, nor a word uttered, to stop him. He preached on the cleansing of the Temple of old, picturing the crowd of buyers and sellers who were busy trafficking in that holy place, when One entered, whose awful glance, rather than the scourge of cords which he carried, smote with terror the unholy crew, and drove them forth a panic-stricken crowd. The preacher then called up before his hearers a yet greater crowd of traffickers, occupied in a yet unholier merchandise, therewith defiling, with immeasurably greater pollutions and abominations the New Testament temple. As he described the corruptions which had been introduced into the Church under the Papacy-the great crowd of simonists, pardon-mongers, sellers of relics and charms, exorcists, and traffickers in the bodies and souls of men, with the sin and shame and ruin that followed-his eye began to burn, his words grew graphic and trenchant, the tones of his righteous yet terrible reproof rung out louder and fiercer, and rolled over the heads of the thousands gathered around him, till not a heart but quaffed under the solemn denunciations. It seemed as if past ages were coming up for trial; as if mitred abbots and bishops were leaving their marble tombs to stand at the judgment-seat; as if the voices of Hamilton, and Wishart, and Mill-nay, as if the voice of a yet Greater were making itself audible by the lips of the preacher. The audience saw as they had never done before the superstitions which had been practiced as religion, and felt the duty to comply with the call which the Reformer urged on all, according to the station and opportunity of each, to assist in removing these abominations out of the Church of God before the fire of the Divine wrath should descend and consume what man refused to put away. When he had ended, and sat down, it may be said that Scotland was reformed.

Knox, though he did not possess the all-grasping, all-subduing intellect of Calvin, nor the many-toned eloquence of Luther, which could so easily rise from the humorous and playful to the pathetic and the sublime, yet, in concentrated fiery energy, and in the capacity to kindle his hearers into indignation, and rouse them to action, excelled both these Reformers. This one sermon in the parish church of St. Andrews, followed as it was by a sermon in the same place on the three consecutive days, cast the die, and determined that the Reformation of Scotland should go forward. The magistrates and townspeople assembled, and came to a unanimous resolution to set up the Reformed worship in the city. The church was stripped of its images and pictures,[5] and the monasteries were pulled down. The example of St. Andrews was quickly followed by many other places of the kingdom. The Protestant worship was set up at Craft, at Cupar, at Lindores, at Linlithgow, at Scone, at Edinburgh and Glasgow.[6] This was followed by the purgation of the churches, and the demolition of the monasteries. The fabrics pulled down were mostly those in the service of the monks, for it was the cowled

[4]Laing, Knox, vol. 1., pp. 347-349.

[5]Laing, Knox, 1. 350. McCrie, Life of Knox, i. 267.

[6]McCrie, p.268.

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portion of the Romish clergy whom the people held in special detestation, knowing that they often did the dishonorable work of spies at the same time that they scoured the country in quest of alms. A loud wail was raised by the priests over the destruction of so much beautiful architecture, and the echoes of that lamentation have come down to our day. But in all righteously indignant mobs there is excess, and however much it may be regretted that their zeal outran their discretion, their motives were good, and the result they helped achieve was enduring peace, progress, and prosperity.

The peace between the queen regent and the Reformers, agreed upon at Perth, was but short-lived. The queen, hearing of the demolition of images and monasteries at St. Andrews, marched with her French soldiers to Cupar-Moor, and put herself in order of battle. The tumult of a mob she held to be the rebellion of a nation, and threatened to chastise it as such. But when the lords of the Congregation advanced to meet her, she fled at their approach, and going round by Stirling, took refuge in Edinburgh. On being followed by the forces of the “Congregation,” she quitted the capital, and marched to Dunbar. After a few weeks, learning that the soldiers of the Reformers had mostly returned to their homes, she set out with her foreign army for Leith, and took possession of it. The lords of the Congregation now found themselves between two fires: the queen threatened them on the one side, and the guns of the castle menaced them on the other, and their new levies having left them, they were forced to conclude a treaty by which they agreed to evacuate Edinburgh. The stipulation secured for the citizens the right of worshipping after the Protestant form, and Willock was left with them as their minister. Knox, who had preached in St. Giles’s Cathedral, and in the abbey church, had been chosen as pastor by the inhabitants, but he was too obnoxious to Mary of Guise, to be left in her power, and at the earnest request of the lords of the Congregation he accompanied them when they left the capital. On retiring from Edinburgh the Reformer set out on a preaching-tour, which embraced all the towns of note, and almost all the shires on the south of the Grampian chain.

From the time of his famous sermon in St. Andrews, Knox had been the soul of the movement. The year that followed was one of incessant and Herculean labor. His days were spent in preaching, his nights in writing letters, he roused the country, and he kept it awake. His voice like a great trumpet rang through the land, firing the lukewarm into zeal, and inspiriting the timid into courage. When the friends of the Reformation quarreled, he reconciled and united them. When they sank into despondency he rallied their spirits. He himself never desponded. Cherishing a firm faith that his country’s Reformation would be consummated, he neither sank under labor, nor fell back before danger, nor paused in the efforts he found it necessary every moment to put forth. He knew how precious the hours were, and that if the golden opportunity were lost it would never return. He appealed to the patriotism of the nobles and citizens. He told them what an ignominious vassalage the Pope and the Continental Powers had prepared for them and their sons, namely, that of hewers of wood and drawers of water to France. He especially explained to them the nature of the Gospel, the pardon, the purity, the peace it brings to individuals, the stable renown it confers on kingdoms; he forecast to them the immense issues that hung upon the struggle. On the one side stood religion, like an angel of light, beckoning Scotland onwards; on the other stood the dark form of Popery, pulling the country back into slavery. The crown was before it, the gulf behind it. Knox purposed that Scotland should win and wear the crown.

The Reformer was declared an outlaw, and a price set upon his head; but the only notice we find him deigning to take of this atrocity of the regent and her advisers, was in a letter to his brother-in-law, in which with no nervous trepidation whatever, but good-humoredly, he remarks that he “had need of a good horse.”[7] Not one time less did Knox preach, although he knew that some fanatic, impelled by malignant hate, or the greed of gain, might any hour deprive him of life. The rapidity of his movements, the fire he kindled wherever he came, the light that burst out all over the land-north, south, east, and west-confounded the hierarchy; unused to preach, unskilled in debate, and too corrupt to think of reforming themselves, they could only meet the attack of Knox with loud wailings or impotent threatenings.

A second line of action was forced upon Knox, and one that not only turned the day in favor of the Reformation of Scotland, but ultimately proved a protection to the liberties and religion of England. It was here that the knowledge he had acquired abroad came to his help, and enabled him to originate a measure that saved two kingdoms. Just the year before-that is, in 1558-Spain and France, as we have previously mentioned, had united their arms to effect the complete and eternal extirpation of Protestantism. The plan of the great

[7]McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1., p. 294, footnote.

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campaign-a profounder secret then than now-had been penetrated by Calvin and Knox, who were not only the greatest Reformers, but the greatest statesmen of the age, and had a deeper insight into the politics of Europe than any other men then living. The plan of that campaign was to occupy Scotland with French troops, reduce it to entire dependency on the French crown, and from Scotland march a French army into England. While France was assailing England on the north, Spain would invade it on the south, put down the Government of Elizabeth, raise Mary Stuart to her throne, and restore the Romish religion in both kingdoms. Knox opened a correspondence with the great statesmen of Elizabeth, in which he explained to them the designs of the Papal Powers, their purpose to occupy Scotland with foreign troops, and having trampled out its religion and liberties, to strike at England through the side of Scotland. He showed them that the plan was being actually carried out; that Mary of Guise was daily bringing French soldiers into Scotland; that the raw levies of the Reformers would ultimately be worsted by the disciplined troops of France, and that no more patriotic and enlightened policy could England pursue than to send help to drive the French soldiers out of the northern, country; for assuredly, if Scotland was put down, England could not stand, encompassed as she then would be by hostile armies. Happily these counsels were successful. The statesmen of Elizabeth, convinced that this was no Scottish quarrel, but that the liberty of England hung upon it also, and that in no more effectual way could they rear a rampart around their own Reformation than by supporting that of Scotland, sent military aid to the lords of the Congregation, and the result was that the French evacuated Scotland, and the Scots became once more masters of their own country. Almost immediately thereafter, Mary of Guise, the regent of the kingdom, was removed by death, and the government passed into the hands of the Reformers. The way was now fully open for the establishment of the Reformation. It is hardly possible to over-estimate the impotence of the service which Knox rendered. It not only led to the establishment of Protestantism in Scotland, and the perpetuation of it in England; but, in view of the critical condition in which Europe then was, it may indeed with justice be said that it saved the Reformation of Christendom.[8]

The fifteen months which Knox had spent in Scotland had brought the movement to its culminating point. The nation was ready to throw off the Popish yoke; and when the Estates of the Realm met on the 8th of August, 1560, they simply gave expression to the nation’s choice when they authoritatively decreed the suppression of the Romish hierarchy and the adoption of the Protestant faith. A short summary of Christian doctrine had been drawn up by Knox and his colleagues;[9] and being read, article by article, in the Parliament, it was on the 17th of August adopted by the Estates.[10] It is commonly known as the First Scots Confession.[11] Only three temporal lords voted in the negative, saying “that they would believe as their fathers believed.” The bishops, who had seats as temporal lords, were silent.

On the 24th of August, Parliament abolished the Pope’s jurisdiction; forbade, under certain penalties,[12] the celebration of mass; and rescinded the laws in favor of the Romish Church, and against the Protestant faith.[13]

Thus speedily was the work consummated at last. There are supreme moments in the life of nations, when their destiny is determined for ages.

Such was the moment that had now come to Scotland. On the 17th of August, 1560, the Scotland of the Middle Ages passed away, and a New Scotland had birth-a Scotland destined to be a sanctuary of religion, a temple of liberty, and a fountain of justice, letters, and art. Intently had the issue been watched by the Churches abroad, and when they learned that Scotland had placed itself on the side of Protestant truth, these elder daughters of the Reformation welcomed, with songs of joy, that country which had come, the last of the nations, to share with them their glorious inheritance of liberty.

[8]See account of Knox’s negotiations with the English Government in McCrie’s Life of Knox, vol. 1., pp. 283-294. See also Knox’s letters to Cecil, Sadler, and Queen Elizabeth, in Dr. David Laing’s edition of Knox’s Works, vol. 2., pp. 15-56, and footnotes; and Calderwood’s History of the Kirk of Scotland, vol. 1., pp. 490-497., Wodrow ed. 1842.

[9]Laing, Knox, vol. 2., p. 92.

[10]Act. Parl. Scot. Vol. 2., p. 534.

[11]See copy of Confession in Laing, Knox, vol. 2., pp. 95-120; Calderwood, History, vol. 2., pp. 17-35.

[12]Death was decreed for the third offense, but the penalty was in no instance inflicted. No Papist ever suffered death for his religion in Scotland.

[13]Act. Parl. Scot., vol. 2., p. 534.

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Chapter 7: Constitution of the “Kirk“: Arrival of Mary Stuart

A Second Battle—Knox’s Idea of the Church—Spiritual Independence Essential—Differs from Popish Independence—Calvin demanded a Pure Communion-table; Knox, a Free Assembly—Organization of Scottish “Kirk”—Ministers, Doctors, Elders, and Deacons—Kirk Session—Presbytery, Synod, and Assembly—Knox’s Educational Plan—How Defeated—Mary Stuart—Her Accomplishments—Her Beauty—Her Life in France—Her Widow-hood—Invited to Return to Scotland—Sails from France—Arrives at Leith—Enters Holyrood

Picture: View of St. Giles Cathedral: Edinburgh

Picture: Mary Queen of Scots Entering Holyrood.

Knox had now the sublime satisfaction of thinking that his country was emancipated from the superstition and thralldom of Popery, and illumined in no small degree with the light of the “Evangel.” But not yet had he rest; no sooner had he ended one battle than he had to begin another; and the second battle was in some respects more arduous than the first. He had called the Reformation into being, and now he had to fight to preserve it. But before following him in this great struggle, let us consider those organizations of an ecclesiastical and educational kind which he was called to initiate, and which alone could enable the Reformation to spread itself over the whole land, and transmit itself to after-ages.

Knox’s idea of a Church was, in brief, a divinely originated, a divinely enfranchised, and a divinely governed society. Its members were all those who made profession of the Gospel; its law was the Bible, and its King was Christ. The conclusion from these principles Knox did not hesitate to avow and carry out, that the Church was to be governed solely by her own law, administered by her own officers, whose decisions and acts in all things falling within the spiritual and ecclesiastical sphere were to be final. This freedom he held to be altogether essential to the soundness of the Church’s creed, the purity of her members, and that vigor and healthfulness of operation without which she could not subserve those high ends which she had been ordained to fulfil to society. This independence he was careful to confine to the spiritual sphere; in all other matters the ministers and members of the Church were to be subject to the civil law of their country. He thus distinguished it from the independence of the Romish Church, which claimed for its clergy exemption from the civil tribunals, and exalted its jurisdiction above the power of the crown. The beginning of this theory was with Wicliffe; Calvin developed it; but in a little city like Geneva, where the same persons nearly composed both the Church and the State, it was neither very easy nor very necessary to draw the line between the two jurisdictions. The power of admitting or excluding members from the Communion-table was all that Calvin had demanded; and he had a hard battle to fight before he could obtain it; but having won it, it gave a century of glory to the Church of Geneva. Knox in Scotland had more room for the development of all that is implied in the idea of a Church with her own law, her own government, and her own monarch. An independent government in things spiritual, but rigidly restricted to things spiritual, was the root-idea of Knox’s Church organization. Knox hinged this independence on another point than that on which Calvin rested it. Calvin said “Take from us the purity of the Communion-table, and you take from us the Evangel.” Knox said, “Take from us the freedom of Assemblies, and you take from us the Evangel.” It was, however, the same battle on another field: the contest in both cases had for its object the freedom of the Church to administer her own laws, without which she could exist for no useful end.

A few sentences will enable us to sketch the Church organization which Knox set up. Parliament had declared Protestantism to be the faith of the nation: Knox would make it so in fact. The orders of ecclesiastical men instituted by him were four-1st, Ministers, who preached to a congregation; 2nd, Doctors, who expounded Scripture to the youth in the seminaries and universities; 3rd, Elders, who were associated with the minister in ruling, though not in teaching, the congregation; and, 4th, Deacons, who managed the finance, and had the care of the poor. In every parish was placed a minister; but as the paucity of ministers left many places without pastoral instruction meanwhile, pious persons were employed to read the Scriptures and the common prayers; and if such gave proof of competency, they were permitted to supplement their reading of the Scriptures with a few plain exhortations. Five Superintendents completed the ecclesiastical staff, and their duty was to travel [497] through their several districts, with the view of planting Churches, and inspecting the conduct of ministers, readers, and exhorters.[1]

The government of the Church, Knox regarded as hardly second to her instruction, believing that the latter could not preserve its purity unless the other was maintained in its rigor. First came the Kirk Session, composed of the minister and elders, who managed the affairs of the congregation; next came the Presbytery, formed by the delegation of a minister and elder from every congregation within the shire; above it was the Synod, constituted by a minister and elder from each congregation within the province, and having, like the court below it, power to decide on all causes arising within its bounds. Last of all came the General Assembly, which was constituted of a certain number of delegates from every Presbytery. This scheme gave to every member of the Church, directly or indirectly, a voice fix her government; it was a truly popular rule, but acting only through constitutional channels, and determining all cases by the laws of Scripture. In the lowest court the laity greatly outnumbered the ministers; in all the others the two were equal. This gradation of Church power, which had its bases in the Kirk Sessions distributed all over the land, found its unity in the General Assembly; and the concentrated wisdom and experience of the whole Church were thus available for the decision of the weightiest causes.

The Reformer no more overlooked the general tuition of the people than he did their indoctrination in the faith. He sketched a scheme of education more, complete and thorough than any age or country had ever yet been privileged to enjoy. He proposed that a school should be planted in every parish, that a college should be erected in every notable town, and a university established in the three chief cities of Scotland.[2] He demanded that the nobility and gentry should send their sons to these seminaries at their own expense, and that provision should be made for the free education of the entire youth of the humbler classes, so that not a child in all Scotland but should be thoroughly instructed, and the path of all departments of knowledge and the highest offices of the State opened to every one who had inclination or talent for the pursuit. Such was the scheme proposed by Knox in the First Book of Discipline. In order to carry it out, the Reformer proposed that the funds set free by the fall of the Romish Church, after due provision for the dismissed incumbents, should be divided into three parts, and that one-third should go to the support of the Protestant Church, another to the endowment of the schools and colleges, and the remaining portion to the support of the deserving poor. Could these funds have been devoted to worthier objects? Was there any class in the country who had a prior or a stronger claim upon them? How then came it that a third only of the revenues of the fallen establishment was given to these objects, and that the munificent scheme of Knox was never carried out, and to this day remains unrealized? The answer of history to this question is that the nobles rapaciously seized upon these lands and heritages, and refused to disgorge their plunder. The disappointment must have been unspeakably bitter to the great patriot who devised the plan: but while disgusted at the greed which had tendered it frustrate, he places his scheme sorrowfully on record, as if to challenge future ages to produce anything more perfect.

Had the grand and patriotic device of Knox been fully carried out, Scotland would have rivaled, it may be eclipsed, the other kingdoms of Europe, in the number of its educational institutions, and in the learning of its sons. As it was, an instantaneous impulse was given to all its energies, intellectual and industrial. Learning and art began to flourish, where for four centuries previously nothing had prospered save hierarchic pride and feudal tyranny. And if Scotland has attained no mean rank among the nations despite the partial and crippled adoption of the Reformer’s plan, how much more brilliant would have been its place, and how much longer the roll of illustrious names which it would have been to letters and science, to the senate, the army, and the State, had the large-hearted plan of Knox been in operation during the three following centuries?

The Reformer was yet smarting from the avariciousness of those who preferred the filling of their purses and the aggrandizing of their families to the welfare and grandeur of their country, when another powerful adversary stood up in his path. This new opponent sought to strip him of all the fruits of his labor, by plucking up by the very roots the ecclesiastical and educational institutions he had just planted in Scotland. On the 19th of August, 1561, Mary Stuart arrived at Holyrood from France. There are few names in Scottish history that so powerfully fascinate to this day as that of Mary Stuart. She could have been no

[1]Pastors were elected by the congregation, examined by the Presbytery, and admitted into office in presence of the people. Superintendents were admitted in the same way as other officers, and were subject to the General Assembly.

[2]See First Book of Discipline, chapter 7.

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common woman to have taken so firm a hold upon the imaginations of her countrymen, and retained it so long. Great qualities she must have possessed, and did no doubt possess. Her genius was quick and penetrating; she was an adept in all field exercises, more particularly those of riding and hunting; she was no less skilled in the accomplishments of her age. She was mistress of several languages, and was wont, when she lived in France, to share with her husband, Francis II, the cares of State, and to mingle in the deliberations of the Cabinet. In person she was tall and graceful: the tradition of her beauty, and of the fascination of her manners, has come down to our days. Had Mary Stuart known to choose the better part, had she taken the side of her country’s religion and liberty, she might, with her many valuable and brilliant qualities, her wit, her penetration, her courage, her capacity for affairs, her power of awakening affection and winning homage, have been one of the happiest of women, and one of the best of sovereigns. But these great faculties, perverted by a sinister influence, led her first of all into hurtful follies, next into mean deceptions and debasing pleasures, then into dark intrigues, and at of last into bloody crimes. The sufferings of Mary Stuart have passed into a proverb. Born to a throne, yet dying as a felon: excelling all the women of her time in the grace of her person and the accomplishments of her mind, and yet surpassing them in calamity and woe as far as she did in beauty and talent! Unhappy in her life-every attempt to retrieve her fallen fortunes but sank her the deeper in guilt; and equally unhappy in death, for whenever the world is on the point of forgetting a life from the odiousness of which there is no escape but in oblivion, there comes forward, with a certainty almost fated-the Nemesis, one might say, of Mary Stuart-an apologist to rehearse the sad story over again, and to fix the memory of her crimes more indelibly than ever in the minds of men.

It is at the tragic death-bed of her father, James V, in the palace of Falkland, that we first hear the name of Mary Stuart. A funeral shadow rests above her natal hour. She was born on the 8th of December, 1542, in the ancient palace of Linlithgow. The infant had seen the light but a few days when, her father dying, she succeeded to the crown. While only a girl of six years of age, Mary Stuart [499] [500] was sent to France, accompanied by four young ladies of family, all of her own age, and all bearing the same name with their royal mistress, and known in history as the “Queen’s Maries.”

Habituated to the gallantry and splendor of the French court, her love of gaiety was fostered into a passion; and her vanity and self-will were strengthened by the homage constantly paid to her personal charms. Under the teaching of her uncles, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, she contracted a blind attachment to the religion of Rome, and an equally blind detestation of the faith of her future subjects. So had passed the youth of Mary Stuart. It is hardly possible to conceive a course of training that could have more unfitted her to occupy the throne of a Protestant nation, and that nation the Scots.

Fortune seemed to take a delight in tantalizing her. A mishap in the tournament field suddenly raised her to the throne of France. She had hardly time to contemplate the boundless prospect of happiness which appeared to be opening to her on the throne of a powerful, polished, and luxurious nation, when she was called to descend from it by the death of her husband. It was now that the invitation reached her to return to her native country and assume its government. No longer Queen of France, Mary Stuart turned her face towards the northern land which had given her birth. She set sail from Calais on the 15th of August, 1561. The anguish that wrung her heart in that hour it is easy to conceive, and impossible not to sympathize with. She was leaving a land where the manners of the people were congenial to her tastes, where the religion was dear to her heart, and where the years as they glided past brought her only new pleasures and brighter splendors. Mary took her stand on the deck of the vessel that was bearing, her slowly away, and fixed her eyes on the receding shores of France. The sun sank in the ocean; the shades of evening descended; but the queen made her couch be placed on the vessel’s deck. The morning dawned: Mary was still there, gazing in the direction of the shore, which was still in sight. But now a breeze springing up, she was quickly borne away into the North Sea. “Farewell,” said she, as the land sank finally beneath the wave, “farewell, happy France! I shall nevermore see thee.”[3]

The queen arrived at Leith on the 19th of August. The citizens, who had not reckoned on the voyage being completed in four days, were not prepared to receive her, and they had to extemporize a cavalcade of ponies to convey their queen to the palace of Holyrood. This simplicity could be no agreeable surprise to the young sovereign. Nature seemed as much out of unison with the event as man. It had dressed itself in somber shadows when Mary was about to step upon the ancient Scottish shore. A dull vapor floated over-head.[4] The shores, islands, and bold rocky prominences that give such grandeur to the Frith of Forth were wholly hidden; a gray mist covered Arthur Seat, and shed a cold cheerless light upon the city which lay stretched out at its feet. Edinburgh, which in romantic beauty throws even the Paris of today into the shade, was then by no means imposing, and needed all the help which a bright sun could give it; and the region around it, which in our times much excels in rich and careful cultivation the country around the French capital, must then to an eye accustomed to the various fruitage of France have looked neglected and wild; for the principle from which were to spring all the marvels which now adorn this same spot had not yet had time to display its plastic energy. Nevertheless, despite this conjunction of untoward circumstances, which made Mary’s arrival so unlike the first entrance of a sovereign into the capital of her dominions, the demonstrations of the people were loyal and hearty, and the youthful queen looked really pleased, as surrounded by her Scottish nobles and her French attendants, and dressed in widow’s weeds, she passed in under those gray towers, which were destined to wear from this day the halo of a tragic interest in all coming time.

[3]Brantome, p. 483.

[4]Knox says: “I the memory of man, that day of the year, was never seen a more dolorous face of the heaven than was at her arrival. The sun was not seen to shine two days before nor two days after.” Brantome also mentions the thick fog (grand brouillard) which prevailed so that they could not see from one end of the vessel to the other. (Laing, Knox, vol. 2., pp. 269, 270; Calderwood, History, vol. 2, pp. 142, 143).

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Chapter 8: Knox’s Interview with Queen Mary

Mary’s Secret Purpose—Her Blandishments—The Protestant Nobles begin to Yield—Mass in the Chapel of Holyrood—Commotion—Knox’s Sermon against Idolatry—The Mass more to be Feared than 10,000 Armed Men—Reasonableness of the Alarm—Knox Summoned to the Palace of Holyrood—Accused by the Queen of Teaching Sedition—His Defense—Debate between Knox and Mary—God, not the Prince, Lord of the Conscience—The Bible, not the Priest, the Judge in Matters of Faith, etc—Importance of the Interview

Picture: Portrait of Mary Stuart: Queen of Scots.

Picture: View of Knoxs House: High Street: Edinburgh

The nobles had welcomed with a chivalrous enthusiasm the daughter of their ancient kings; and the people, touched by her beauty and her widowhood, had begun to regard her with mingled feelings of compassion and admiration. All was going well, and would doubtless have continued so to do, but for a dark purpose which Mary Stuart carried in her breast. She had become the pivot around which revolved that plot to which those monstrous times had given birth, for the extermination of the Protestant faith in all the countries of the Reformation. If that conspiracy should succeed, it would open the Scottish queen’s way to a fairer realm and a mightier throne than the kingdom she had just arrived to take possession of. The first step in the projected drama was the forcible suppression of the Protestant faith in Scotland, and the restoration in it of the Church of Rome. This was the dark purpose which Mary had carried across the seas, and brought with her to Holyrood.[1]

But meanwhile, as tutored by her uncles the Guises, who accompanied her, she dissembled and temporized. Smiles and caresses were her first weapons; the nobles were to be gained over by court blandishments and favors; the ministers were to be assailed by hypocritical promises; and the people were to be lured by those fawning arts of which there lived no greater adept than Mary Stuart. The “holy water of the court” soon began to tell upon the Protestant leaders. Even the lords of the Congregation were not proof against the fascination which the young queen seemed to exert upon every one who entered her presence. If her thinly-veiled Romish proclivities had at first alarmed or offended them, they had been no long time in the queen’s presence till their anger cooled, their fears were laid aside, and their Protestant zeal in some measure evaporated. Every man, one man excepted, who entered this charmed circle was straightway transformed. Knox in his History has quaintly described the change that passed upon the nobility under this almost magical influence. “Every man as he came up to court,” says he, “accused them that were before him; but, after they had remained a certain space, they came out as quiet as the former. On perceiving this, Campbell of Kinyeancleugh, a man of some humor and zealous in the cause, said to Lord Ochiltree, whom he met on his way to court, “My lord, now ye are come last of all, and I perceive that the fire edge is not yet off you, but I fear that after the holy water of the court be sprinkled upon you, ye shall become as temperate as the rest. I think there be some enchantment by which men are bewitched.”[2]

On the first Sunday after her arrival, Mary adventured on an act, by the advice of her uncles, which was designed to feel the pulse of her Protestant subjects;[3] at all events, it unmistakably notified to them what her future course was to be: mass was said in her chapel of Holyrood. Since the establishment of the Reformation, mass had not been publicly celebrated in Scotland, and in fact was prohibited by Act of Parliament. When the citizens learned that preparations were making for its celebration in the Chapel Royal, they were thrown into excitement and alarm, and but for the interposition of Knox would have forcibly prevented it. Lord James Stuart, Prior of St. Andrews, and the brother of Mary, stood sentinel at the door of the chapel, all the time the service was going on; the man who carried in the candle trembled all over; and the priest who performed the rite was, at its conclusion, conducted to his chamber by two Protestant lords. The queen’s relatives and attendants threatened that they would instantly return to France, for they could not live in a land where mass could not be said, without which they could not have the pardon of their sins. “Would,” says Knox, “that they, together with the mass, had taken good night of this realm for ever.”[4]

On the following Sunday, Knox, although he had

[1]Calderwood, History, vol. 2., pp. 130, 131.

[2]Laing, Knox, vol. 2., p. 275.

[3]McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 2., p. 24.

[4]Laing, Knox, vol. 2., pp. 270, 271.

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restrained the more zealous of the Protestants who sought by force to suppress the celebration, sounded a note of warning from the pulpit of St. Giles’s. He preached on the sin of idolatry, “showing what tenable plagues God had taken upon realms and nations for the same;” and added, “One mass is more fearful to me than if 10,000 armed enemies were landed in any part of the realm, of purpose to suppress the whole religion.”[5] We are apt at this day to think that the alarm expressed was greater than its cause warranted. So thought the queen’s guards at the time, who said openly in the church that “such fear was no point of their faith.” But, we may ask, had mass no more significance in the Scotland of the sixteenth century than it would have in the Scotland of the nineteenth? Mary had not yet ratified the Act of Parliament establishing the Protestant faith, and alienating the national revenues from the Romish Church. Her refusal implied that what the Estates had done in changing the national faith was illegal, and that the Reformation was rebellion. What construction then could her subjects put upon this mass, but that it was the first step towards the overthrow of the Protestant Church, and the restoration of the Romish ritual and hierarchy? Nor did they do their sovereign injustice in so construing it. To compel her subjects to abjure their Protestantism, and to embrace again the creed they had renounced, by soft methods if possible, and if not by the stake and the cord, was Mary’s settled purpose. In Italy, in Spain, in France, and in the Netherlands, pries were at that moment blazing in support of the mass. The same baleful fires were but newly extinguished in England and in Scotland; and were they to be lighted before they had well ceased to burn, or the ashes of the noble men who had perished in them had grown cold? Had not all their past experience told them that the stake followed the mass as invariably as the shadow followed the substance; that the written law of the Popish system, and its ineradicable instincts, made it at all times and in all places a persecutor? The Scots would have shown themselves incapable of reading the past, and forecasting the future, had they failed in these circumstances to take alarm. It was the alarm not of timidity, but of wisdom; no of bigotry, but of patriotism.

It is probable that the substance of the Reformer’s sermon was reported to the queen for in a few days after its delivery she sent a message to Knox, commanding his attendance at the palace. This interview has gathered round it great historic grandeur, mainly from the sentiments avowed by Knox before his sovereign, which made it one of the turning-points in the history of the man and of the country, and partly also from the charge which the flatterers of despotic princes have founded upon it, that Knox was on that occasion lacking in courtesy to Mary as a woman, and in loyalty to her as his sovereign; as if it were a crime to defend, in words of truth and soberness, the religion and liberties of a country in the presence of one bent on ruining both. The queen opened the conference, at which only her brother Lord James Stuart, and two ladies in waiting were present, with a reference to the Reformer’s book on the “Regiment of Women,” and the “necromancy” by which he accomplished his ends; but departing from the grave charge of magic, she came to what was uppermost in her mind, and what was the head and front of Knox’s offending.

“You have taught the people,” remarked the queen, “to receive another religion than that which their princes allow; but God commands subjects to obey their prince;” ergo, “you have taught the people to disobey both God and their prince.” Mary doubtless thought this syllogism unanswerable, till Knox, with a little plain sense, brushed it away completely.

“Madam,” replied the Reformer, “as right religion received neither its origin nor its authority from princes, but from the eternal God alone, so are not subjects bound to frame their religion according to the tastes of their princes. For oft it is that princes, of all others, are the most ignorant of God’s true religion. If all the seed of Abraham had been of the religion of Pharaoh, whose subjects they long were, I pray you, madam, what religion would there have been in the world? And if all in the days of the apostles had been of the religion of the Roman emperors, I pray you, madam, what religion would there have been now upon the earth?... And so, madam, you may perceive that subjects are not bound to the religion of their princes, although they are commanded to give them reverence.”

“Yea,” relied the queen, “but none of these men raised the sword against their princes.”

“Yet, madam,” rejoined Knox, “they resisted, for they who obey not the commandment given them, do in some sort resist.”

“But,” argued the queen, “they resisted not with the sword.”

“God, madam,” answered the Reformer, “had not given them the power and the means.”

“Think ye,” said the queen, “that subjects having the power may resist their princes?”

[5]Laing, Knox, vol. 2., p. 276.

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“If princes exceed their bounds, madam, and do that which they ought not, they may doubtless be resisted even by power. For neither is greater honour nor greater obedience to be given to kings and princes, than God has commanded to be given to father and mother. But, madam, the father may be struck with a frenzy, in which he would slay his own children. Now, madam, if the children arise, join together, apprehend him, take the sword from him, bind his hands, and keep him in prison till the frenzy be over, think ye, madam, that the children do any wrong? Even so is it, madam, with princes who would murder the children of God who are subject unto them. Their blind zeal is nothing but a mad frenzy; and, therefore, to take the sword from them, to bind their hands, and to cast them into prison till they be brought to a sober mind, is no disobedience against princes, but a just obedience, because it agreeth with the will of God.” We must carry ourselves three centuries back, and think of the slavish doctrines then prevalent all over Christendom-that it was taught as infallibly true in theological canons and juridical codes, and echoed back from university chairs, that kings reigned by Divine right, and that the understandings and consciences of their subjects were in their keeping; and we must think too of the high-handed way in which these demoralizing and enslaving doctrines were being carried out in Europe-that in every Popish country a scaffold or a stake was the certain fate of every man who dared to maintain the right of one’s thinking for oneself?we must transport ourselves into the midst of these times, we say, before we can fully estimate the courage of Knox in avowing these sentiments in the presence of Mary Stuart. These plain bold words, so different from the glozing terms in which she had been accustomed to be addressed in France, fell upon her ear like a thunder-peal. She was stunned and amazed, and for a quarter of all hour stood speechless. If her passion found not vent in words, it showed itself in the pallor of her face. “Her countenance altered.” The past age of feudalism and the coming age of liberty stood confronting each other under the roof of Holyrood. We wait with intense anxiety during that quarter of an hour’s silence, to see what the next move in this great battle shall be, and whether it is to be maintained or abandoned by Knox. Vast issues hang upon the words by which the silence is to be broken! If Knox yield, not only will Scotland fall with him, but Christendom also; for it is Philip of Spain, and Pius IV of Rome, who are confronting ‘him in the person of Mary Stuart.

At last Lord James Stuart, feeling the silence insupportable, or fearing that his sister had been seized with sudden illness, began to entreat her and to ask, “What has offended you, madam?” But she made him no answer. The tempest of her pride and self-will at length spent itself. Her composure returned, and she resumed the argument.

“Well then,” said she, “I deafly perceive that my subjects shall obey you, and not me; and shall do what they list, and not what I command; and so must I be subject to them, and not they to me.”

“God forbid,” promptly rejoined the Reformer, “that ever I take upon me to command any to obey me, or to set subjects at liberty to do whatever pleases them.” Is then Knox to concede the “right Divine?” Yes; but he lodges it where alone it is safe; not in any throne on earth. “My travail,” adds he, “is that both subjects and princes may obey God. And think not, madam, that wrong is done you when you are required to be subject unto God; for he it is who subjects peoples unto princes, and causes obedience to be given unto them. He craves of kings that they be as it were foster-fathers to his Church, and commands queens to be nurses to his people.”

“Yes,” replied the queen; “but ye are not the Kirk that I will nourish. I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for it is, I think, the true Kirk of God.”

“Your will, madam,” said Knox, “is no reason; neither doth it make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ. I offer myself, madam, to prove that the Church of the Jews which crucified Christ Jesus was not so far degenerate from the ordinances and statutes given it of God, as the Church of Rome is declined, and more than 500 years hath declined, from the purity of that religion which the apostles taught and planted.”

“My conscience,” said Mary, “is not so.” “Conscience, madam,” said Knox, “requires knowledge, and I fear that right knowledge ye have none.”

“But,” said she, “I have both heard and read.” “Have you,” inquired Knox, “heard any teach but such as the Pope and cardinals have allowed? You may be assured that such will speak nothing to offend their own estate.”

“You interpret the Scripture in one way, and they interpret it in another,” said Mary: “whom shall I believe, and who shall be judge?”

“You shall believe God, who plainly speaketh in his Word,” was the Reformer’s answer, “and farther than the Word teaches you, ye shall believe neither the one nor the other. The Word of God is plain in itself, and if in any one place there be obscurity, [504] the Holy Ghost, who never is contrary to himself, explains the same more clearly in other places, so that there can remain no doubt but unto such as are obstinately ignorant.” He illustrated his reply by a brief exposition of the passage on which the Romanists found their doctrine of the mass; when the queen said that, though she was unable to answer him, if those were present whom she had heard, they would give him an answer. “Madam,” replied the Reformer, “would to God that the learnedest Papist in Europe, and he that you would best believe, were present with your Grace, to sustain [505] the argument, and that you would patiently hear the matter debated to an end; for then I doubt not, madam, you would know the vanity of the Papistical religion, and how little foundation it has in the Word of God.”

“Well,” said she, “you may perchance get that sooner than you believe.”

“Assuredly,” said Knox, “if I ever get it in my life I get it sooner than I believe; for the ignorant Papist cannot patiently reason, and the learned and crafty Papist will not come in your presence, madam, to have the, grounds of his belief searched out, for they know that they cannot sustain the argument unless fire and sword and their own laws be judges. When you shall let me see the contrary, I shall grant myself to have been deceived in that point.”

The dinner-hour was announced, and the argument ended. “I pray God, madam,” said Knox in parting, “that ye may be as blessed within the commonwealth of Scotland, as ever was Deborah in the commonwealth of Israel.”[6]

Luther before Charles V at Worms, Calvin before the Libertines in the Cathedral of St. Pierre, and Knox before Queen Mary in the Palace of Holyrood, are the three most dramatic points in the Reformation, and the three grandest passages in modern history. The victory in each of these three cases was won by one man, and was due solely to his faith. Luther, Calvin, Knox at these unspeakably critical moments stood alone; their friends could not or dared not show themselves; they were upheld only by the truth and greatness of their cause, and the aid of Him whose it was. A concession, a compromise, in either case would have ruined all; and Worms, St. Pierre, and Holyrood would have figured in history as the scenes of irretrievable disaster, over which nations would have had cause to weep. They are instead names of glorious victory; Marathon, Morat, and Bannockburn shine not with so pure a splendor, nor will they stir the hearts of men so long. The triumph of Luther at Worms secured the commencement of the Reformation, that of Calvin in St. Pierre its consummation, and that of Knox in Holyrood its preservation.

[6]Knox, History (Laing’s edition), vol. 2., pp. 277-286.

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Chapter 9: Trial of Knox for Treason

Distribution of Ecclesiastical Revenues—Inadequate Provision for the Protestant Ministry—First Book of Discipline—Mary Refuses to Ratify the Ecclesiastical Settlement of 1560—Faithlessness of the Nobles—Grief of Knox—His Sermon—Rebuke of the Protestant Nobles—Summoned to the Palace—Interview with the Queen—Knox’s Hardness—Mass at the Palace—Threatened Prosecution of Protestants—Knox’s Circular—Put upon his Trial for Treason—Maitland of Lethington—Debate between Maitland and Knox—Knox’s Defense on his Trial—His Acquittal—Joy of the Citizens—Consequences of his Acquittal—Knox’s Political Sentiments—His Services to the Liberties of Great Britain

Picture: Portrait and Autograph of John Knox.

In the room of a sacerdotal hierarchy there had been planted in Scotland a body of teaching pastors. The change had been accomplished with the sanction of Parliament, but no provision was made for the temporal support of the new ecclesiastical establishment. This was a point on which Knox was not unnaturally anxious, but on which he was doomed to experience a bitter disappointment. The Romish Church in Scotland had possessed a boundless affluence of houses, valuables, and lands. Her abbacies dotted the country, mountain and meadow, forest and cornfield, were hers; and all this wealth had been set free by the suppression of the priesthood, and ought to have been transferred, so far as it was needed, to the Protestant Church. But the nobles rushed in and appropriated nearly the whole of this vast spoil. Knox lifted up his voice to denounce a transaction which was alike damaging to the highest interests of the country, and the characters of those concerned in it: but he failed to ward off the covetous hands that were clutching this rich booty; and the only arrangement he succeeded in effecting was, that the revenues of the Popish Church should be divided into three parts, and that two of these should be given to the former incumbents, to revert at their death to the nobility, and. that the third part should be divided between the court and the Protestant ministers. The latter had till now been entirely dependent upon the benevolence of their hearers, or the hospitality of the noblemen in whose houses some of them continued to reside. When Knox beheld the revenues which would have sufficed to plant Scotland with churches, colleges, and schools, and suitably provide for the poor, thus swallowed up, he could not refrain from expressing his mortification and disgust. “Well,” exclaimed he, “if the end of this order be happy, my judgment fails me. I see two parts freely given to the devil, and the third must be divided between God and the devil. Who would have thought that when Joseph ruled in Egypt his brethren would have traveled for victuals, and would have returned with empty sacks to their families?” It was concern for his brethren’s interest that drew from the Reformer this stern denunciation, for his own stipend, appointed by the magistrates of Edinburgh, was an adequate one.

The same cause occasioned to Knox his second great disappointment. He had received from the Privy Council a commission, along with Winram, Spottiswood, Douglas, and Row, to draft a plan of ecclesiastical government. Comprehensive in outline and perfect in detail, incalculable, we have already seen, would have been the moral and literary benefits this plan would have conferred upon Scotland had it been fully carried out. But the nobles liked neither the moral rules it prescribed, nor the pecuniary burdens it imposed, and Knox failed to procure for it the ratification of the Privy Council. Many of the members of Council, however, subscribed it, and being approved by the first General Assembly, which met on the 20th of December, 1560,[1] it has, under the name of the “First Book of Discipline,” always held the rank of a standard in the Protestant Church of Scotland.[2]

A third and still more grievous disappointment awaited the Reformer. The Parliament of 1560, which had abolished the Papal jurisdiction, and accepted Protestantism as the national religion, had been held when the queen was absent from the kingdom, and the royal assent had never been given to its enactments, not only did Mary, under various pretexts, refuse to ratify its deeds while she resided in France, but even after her return to Scotland she still withheld her ratification, and repeatedly declared the Parliament of 1560 to be illegal. If so, the Protestant establishment it had set

[1]It consisted of forty members, only six of whom were ministers. It met in the Magdalene Chapel, Cowgate. This chapel still exists, and is the property of the Protestant Institute of Scotland.

[2]Dunlop, Collect. of Confession, vol. 2., p. 436. McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 2., pp. 4, 5.

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up was also illegal, and no man could doubt that it was the queen’s intention, so soon as she was able, to overthrow it and restore the Romish hierarchy. This was a state of matters which Knox deemed intolerable; but the Protestant lords, demoralized by the spoils of the fallen establishment and the blandishments of the court, took it very easily. The Parliament-the first since Mary’s arrival-was about to meet; and Knox fondly hoped that now the royal ratification would be given to the Protestant settlement of the country. He pressed the matter upon the nobles as one of vital importance. He pointed out to them that till such assent was given they had no law on their side; that they held their religion at the mere pleasure of their sovereign, that they might any day be commanded to go to mass, and that it was indispensable that these uncertainties and fears should be set at rest. The nobles, however, found the matter displeasing to the queen, and agreed not to press it. Knox learned their resolve with consternation. He could not have believed, unless he had seen it, that the men who had summoned him from Geneva, and carried their cause to the battle-field, and who had entered into a solemn bond, pledging themselves to God and to one another, to sacrifice goods and life in the cause if need were, could have so woefully declined in zeal and courage, and could so prefer the good-will of their sovereign and their own selfish interests to the defense of their religion, and the welfare of their country. This exhibition of faithlessness and servility well-nigh broke his heart, and would have made him abandon the cause in despair but for his faith in God. The Parliament had not yet ended, and in the pulpit of St. Giles’s, Knox poured out the sorrows that almost overwhelmed him in a strain of lofty and indignant, yet mournful eloquence. He reminded the nobles who, with some thousand of the citizens, were gathered before him, of the slavery of body, and the yet viler slavery of soul, in which they had been sunk; and now, when the merciful hand of God had delivered them, where was their gratitude? And then addressing himself in particular to the nobility, he continued, “In your most extreme dangers I have been with you; St. Johnston, Cupar-Moor, the Craigs of Edinburgh” (names that recalled past perils and terrors) “are yet fresh in my heart; yea, that dark and dolorous night wherein all ye, my lords, with shame and fear left this town, is yet in my mind, and God forbid that ever I forget it. What was, I say, my exhortation to you, and what has fallen in vain of all that ever God promised unto you by my mouth, ye yourselves are yet alive to testify. There is not one of you, against whom was death and destruction threatened, perished; and how many of your enemies has God plagued before your eyes! Shall this be the thankfulness that ye shall render unto your God? To betray his cause when you have it in your hands to establish it as you please?... Their religion had the authority of God, and was independent of human laws, but it was also accepted within this realm in public Parliament, and that Parliament he would maintain was as free and lawful as any that had ever assembled in the kingdom of Scotland.” He alluded, in fine, to the reports of the queen’s marriage, and bidding his audience mark his words, he warned the nobility what the consequences would be should they ever consent to their sovereign marrying a Papist.[3]

Knox himself tells us in his History that this plainness of speech gave offense to both Papists and Protestants. He had not expected, nor indeed intended, that his sermon should please the latter any more than the former. Men who were sinking their patriotism in cupidity, and their loyalty in sycophancy, would not be flattered by being told to their face that they were ruining their country. Another result followed, which had doubtless also been foreseen by the preacher. There were those in his audience who hurried off to the palace as soon as the sermon was ended, and reported his words to the queen, saying that he had preached against her marriage. Hardly had he finished his dinner when a messenger arrived from Holyrood, ordering his attendance at the palace. His attached friend, Lord Ochiltree, and some others, accompanied him, but only Erskine of Dun was permitted to go with him into the royal cabinet. The moment he entered, Mary burst into a passion, exclaiming that never had prince been vexed by subject as she had been by him; “I vow to God,” said she, “I shall once be revenged.” “And with these words, hardly could her page bring napkins enough to hold her tears.” Knox was beginning to state the paramount claims that governed him in the pulpit, when the queen demanded, “But what have you to do with my marriage?” He was going on to vindicate his allusion to that topic in the pulpit on the ground of its bearing on the welfare of the country, when she again broke in, “What have you to do with my marriage? or what are you in this commonwealth?” Posterity has answered that question, in terms that would have been less pleasing to Mary than was Knox’s own reply. “A subject born within the same, madam,” he at once said with a fine blending of courtesy and dignity: “a subject born within the same, madam, and albeit I be

[3]Knox, History (Laing’s edition), vol. 2., pp. 384-386.

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neither earl, lord, nor baron in it, yet has God made me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same; yes, madam, to me it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as may hurt it, if foresee them, than it doth to any of the nobility, for both my vocation and my conscience require plainness of me; and, therefore, madam, to yourself I say, that which I spake in public place-whensoever the nobility of this realm shall consent that ye be obedient to all unfaithful husband, they do as much as in them lieth to renounce Christ, to banish his truth from them, to betray the freedom of this realm, and perchance shall in the end do small comfort to yourself.” Mary’s reply to these words was a burst of tears.[4] Erskine of Dun stepped forward to soothe her, but with no great success. Knox stood silent till the queen had composed herself, and then said he was constrained, though unwillingly, to sustain her tears, rather than hurt his conscience and betray the commonwealth by his silence. This defense but the more incensed the queen; she ordered him to leave her presence and await in the ante-chamber the signification of her pleasure. There he was surrounded by numbers of his acquaintances and associates, but he stood “as one whom men had never seen.” Lord Ochiltree alone of all that dastardly crowd found courage to recognize him. Turning from the male, but not manly, courtiers, Knox addressed himself to the queen’s ladies. “O fair ladies,” said he, in a vein of raillery which the queen’s frown had not been able to extinguish, “how pleasing were this life of yours, if it should ever abide, and then, in the end, we might pass to heaven with all this gay gear! but fie upon that knave Death that will come whether we will or no.” Erskine now came to hint to say that the queen permitted him to go home for the day. Mary was bent on a prosecution of the Reformer, but her councilors refused to concur, and so, as Knox says, “this storm blew over in appearance, but not in heart.”[5]

Sternly, uncompromisingly, Knox pursues his course! Not an uncourteous, undignified, treasonable word does he utter; yet what iron inflexibility! He sacrifices friends, he incurs the mortal hatred of his sovereign, he restrains the yearnings of his own heart; the sacrifice is painful-painful to himself and to all about him, but it is the saving of his country. What hardness! exclaim many. We grant it; Knox is hard as the rock, stubborn as the nether millstone; but when men seek to erect a beacon that may save the mariner from the reef on which the tumultuous billows are about to pitch his vessel headlong, it is the rock, not the sand-heap, that they select as a foundation.

At last, as the queen thought, the Reformer had put himself in her power. Had it been as Mary believed, no long time would have elapsed till his head had fallen on the scaffold, and with it, in all human reckoning, would have fallen the Protestant Church of his native land. During the queen’s absence at Stirling, the same summer, mass was celebrated at Holyrood by her domestics with greater pomp than usual, and numbers of the citizens resorted to it. Some zealous Protestants of Edinburgh forced their way into the chapel, principally to see who of their fellow-citizens were present, and finding the priest attired for celebration, they asked him why he durst do these things in the queen’s absence. The chaplain and the French domestics, taking fright, raised a cry which made Comptroller Pitarrow hasten to their aid, who found no tumult, however, save what he brought with him. Information having been sent to the queen, she caused two of the Protestants to be indicted for “forethought felony, hamesucken, and invasion of the palace.” Fearing that it might go hard with the accused, the ministers urged Knox, agreeably to a commission he had received from the Church, to address a circular to the leading Protestants of the country, requesting their presence on the day of trial. A copy of this letter having been sent to the queen, she submitted it to the Privy Council; and the Council, to her great delight, pronounced it treasonable.

In December, 1563, an extraordinary meeting of Council was called, and Knox was put upon his trial. Mary took her seat at the head of the table with an affectation of great dignity, which she utterly spoiled by giving way to a fit of loud laughter, so great was her joy at seeing Knox standing uncovered at the foot of the table. “That man,” said she, “made me weep, and shed never a tear himself; I will now see if I can make him weep.” Secretary Maitland of Lethinton conducted the prosecution, and seemed almost as eager as Mary herself to obtain a conviction against the Reformer. Maitland was a formidable opponent, being one of the most accomplished dialecticians of the age. He had been a zealous Protestant, but caring little at heart for any religion, he had now cooled, and was trying to form a middle party, between the court and the Church. Nothing has a greater tendency to weaken the insight than the want of definite views and strong convictions, and

[4]“There are some of that sex,” says Randolph, wiring to Cecil, and narrating a similar exhibition, “who can weep for anger as well as grief.”

[5]Knox, History (Laing’s edition), vol. 2., pp. 386-389.

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so the secretary was laboring with all his might to realize his narrow and impracticable scheme, to the success of which, as he deemed, one thing only was wanting, namely, that Knox should be got rid of. The offense for which the Reformer was now made answerable was, “convening the lieges” by his circular; but the sting of his letter lay in the sentence which affirmed that the threatened prosecution “was doubtless to make preparation upon a few, that a door may be opened to execute cruelty upon a greater number.” Knox had offended mortally, for he had penetrated the designs of the court, and proclaimed, them to the nation.

The proceedings were commenced by the reading of the circular for which Knox had been indicted. “Heard you ever, my lords,” said Mary, looking round the Council, “a more spiteful and treasonable letter?” This was followed up by Maitland, who, turning to Knox, said, “Do you not repent that such a letter has passed your pen?” The Reformer avoided the trap, and made answer, “My lord secretary, before I repent I must be shown my offense.” “Offense!” exclaimed Maitland, in a tone of surprise; “if there were no more but the convocation of the queen’s lieges, the offense cannot be denied.” The Reformer took his stand on the plain common sense of the matter, that to convene the citizens for devotion, or for deliberation, was one thing, and to convene them with arms was another; and Maitland labored to confound the two, and attach a treasonable purpose to the convocation in question. “What is this?” interposed the queen, who was getting impatient; “methinks you trifle with him. Who gave him authority to make convocation of my lieges?. Is not that treason?” “No, madam,” replied Lord Ruthyen, whose Protestant spirit was roused-“no, madam, for he makes convocation of the people to hear prayers and sermon almost daily, and whatever your Grace or others will think thereof, we think it no treason.”

After a long and sharp debate between the Reformer and the secretary, the “cruelty upon a greater multitude,” for which the summons served on the two Protestants would, it was affirmed, prepare the way, came next under discussion. The queen insisted that she was the party against whom this allegation was directed; Knox contended that its application was general, and that it was warranted by the notorious persecutions of the Papacy to exterminate Protestants. He was enlarging on this topic, when the chancellor interrupted him. “You forget yourself,” said he; “you are not now in the pulpit.” “I am in the place,” replied the Reformer, “where I am demanded of conscience to speak the truth, and therefore the truth I speak, impugn it whose list.” At last Knox was withdrawn, and the queen having retired, in order that the judgment of the Council might be given, the lords unanimously voted that John Knox had been guilty of no violation of the laws. Secretary Maitland stormed, and the courtiers stood aghast. The queen was brought back, and took her place at the head of the table, and the votes were called over again in her presence. “What!” said the members, “shall the Laird of Lethington make us condemn an innocent man?” The Council pronounced a second unanimous acquittal. They then rose and departed. The issue had been waited for with intense anxiety by the Protestant citizens of Edinburgh, and during the sitting of Council a dense crowd filled the court of the palace, and occupied the stairs up to the very door of the council-chamber. That night no instruments of music were brought before the queen; the darkened and silent halls of Holyrood proclaimed the grief and anger of Mary Stuart. But if the palace mourned, the city rejoiced.[6]

We have missed the true character of this scene if we have failed to see, not Mary Stuart and Knox, but Rome and the Reformation struggling together in this chamber. Where would Scotland have been today if the vote of the Privy Council that night had consigned Knox to the Castle, thence to pass, in a few days, or in a few weeks, to a scaffold in the Grass Market? The execution of the Reformer would have been immediately followed by the suppression of the ecclesiastical and educational institutions which he had set up, and Scotland plunged again into Popery would have been, at this day, a second Ireland, with a soil less fertile, and a population even more pauperized. Nay, the disastrous consequences of the Reformer’s imprisonment or death would have extended far beyond his native land. Had Scotland been a Popish country at the time of the Armada, in all human probability the throne of Elizabeth would have been overturned. Nay, with Scotland Popish, it may be doubted whether the throne of Elizabeth would have stood till then. If Mary Stuart had succeeded in restoring the Papacy in Scotland, the country would, as an almost inevitable consequence, have fallen under the power of France, and would have become the door by which the Popish Powers would have entered England to suppress its Reformation, and place the Queen of the Scots upon its throne. Had Knox that night descended the stairs of the royal

[6]Knox, History (Laing’s edition), vol. 2., pp. 393-412. McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 2., p. 295.

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cabinet of Holyrood with a sentence of condemnation upon him, his countrymen would have had more cause to morn than himself, and England too would, in no long time, have learned the extent of the calamity which had befallen the great cause with which she had identified herself, when she saw the fall of the northern kingdom followed by the destruction of her own Protestant religion and liberties.

Even yet we hear at times echoed of the charge preferred against Knox at the council-table of the queen. Tried by the political creed of Mary Stuart, it must be confessed that his sentiments were disloyal. Mary held by the principle, to sovereigns a convenient one, of “the right divine of king to govern wrong;” Knox, on the contrary, held that “all power is founded on a compact expressed or understood between the rulers and the ruled, and that no one has either divine or human right to govern, save in accordance, with the will of the people and the law of God.” This is the amount of all that Knox advanced under that head in his various interviews with Queen Mary. His opinions may have sounded strange to one reared in a despotic court; and when the Reformer enunciated them with such emphasis in the Palace of Holyrood, they were before their time; but the world has since seen cause to ratify them, and States of no mean name have acted upon them. Holland embodied them in its famous declaration of independence twenty years afterwards; they received a signal triumph when the British nation adopted them at the Revolution of 1688; and they form, at this day, the basis of that glorious constitution under which it is now happiness to live. Branded as treason when first uttered beneath the royal roof of Holyrood, not a day now passes without our reading these same sentiments in a hundred journals. We hear them proclaimed in senates, we see them acted on in cabinets, and re-echoed from the throne itself. Let us not forget that the first openly to avow them on Scottish soil was John Knox.

Let it be remembered too, that there was then no free press, no free platform, no one organ of public sentiment but the pulpit; and had Knox been silent, the cause of liberty would have been irretrievably betrayed and lost. He had penetrated the design of Mary, inflexibly formed, and craftily yet steadily pursued, of overturning the Reformation of her native land. Knox was the one obstacle in Mary’s path to the accomplishment of that design. When nobles and burgesses were bowing down he stood erect, unshaken in his firm resolve, that come what might, and forsake it who would, he would stand by the cause of his country’s Reformation. He saw in the back-ground of Mary’s throne the dark phalanx of the Popish despots who were banded together to crush the Reformation of Christendom by making a beginning of their work in Scotland, and he stood forward to denounce and, if possible, prevent the perpetration of that gigantic crime. In that chamber of Holyrood, and in the pulpit of St. Giles’s, he fought the noblest battle ever waged upon Scottish soil, and defeated a more formidable foe than Wallace encountered at Stirling, or Bruce vanquished at Bannockburn. He broke the firm-knit league of Papal conspirators, plucked from their very teeth the little country of Scotland, [511] which they had made their prey, and, rescuing it from the vile uses to which they had destined it, made it one of the lights of the world, and, along with England, a mother of free nations. Through all the ages of the future, the foremost place among Scotsmen must belong to Knox.[7]

[7]One who is neither a Scotsman nor a Presbyterian says justly as generously: “The time has come when English history may do justice to one but for whom the Reformation would have been overthrown among ourselves; for the spirit which Knox created saved Scotland, and if Scotland had been Catholic again, neither the wisdom of Elizabeth’s ministers, nor the teaching of her bishops, nor her own chicaneries, would have preserved England from revolution.” (Froude, History of England, vol. x., pp. 193, 194; London, 1870).

Chapter 10: The Last Days of Queen Mary and John Knox

Prosperous Events—Ratification of the Protestant Establishment by Parliament—Culmination of Scottish Reformation—Knox Wishes to Retire?New Storms—Knox Retires to St. Andrews—Knox in the Pulpit—Tulchan Bishops—Knox’s Opposition to the Scheme? The St. Bartholomew Massacre?Knox’s Prediction—His Last Appearance in the Pulpit?Final End of Mary’s Crimes—Darnley—Rizzio—Kirk-of-Field—Marriage with Bothwell—Carberry Hill—Lochleven Castle—Battle of Langside—Flight to England—Execution—Mary the Last Survivor of her Partners in Crime—Last Illness of Knox?His Death—His Character

Picture: John Knox.

The dangerous crisis was now past, and a tide of prosperous events began to set in, in favor of the Scottish Reformation. The rising of the Earl of Huntly, in the north who, knowing the court to be secretly favorable, had unfurled the standard for Rome-was suppressed. The alienation which had parted Knox and Lord James Stuart, now Earl of Murray, for two years was healed; the Protestant spirit in the provinces was strengthened by the preaching tours undertaken by the Reformer; the jealousies between the court and the Church, though not removed, were abated; the abdication of the queen, which grew out of the deplorable occurrences that followed her marriage with Darnley, and to which our attention must briefly be given, seeing they were amongst the most powerful of the causes which turned the balance between Protestantism and Romanism, not in Scotland only, but over Europe; and, as a consequence of her abdication, the appointment, as regent of the kingdom, of the Earl of Murray, the intimate friend of Knox, and the great outstanding patriot and Reformer among the Scottish nobles?all tended in one direction, to the establishment, namely, of the Scottish Reformation. Accordingly, in 1567, the infant James being king, and Murray regent, the Parliament which met on the 15th of December ratified all the Acts that had been passed in 1560, abolishing the Papal jurisdiction, and accepting the Protestant faith as the religion of the nation. Valid legal securities were thus for the first time reared around the Protestant Church of Scotland. It was further enacted, “That no prince should afterwards be admitted to the exercise of authority in the kingdom, without taking an oath to maintain the Protestant religion; and that none but Protestants should be admitted to any office, with the exception of those that were hereditary, or held for life. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction, exercised by the Assemblies of the Church, was formally ratified, and commissioners appointed to define more exactly the causes which came within the sphere of their judgment.”[1]

The Scottish Reformation had now reached its culmination in that century, and from this point Knox could look back over the battles he had waged, and the toils he had borne, and contemplate with thankfulness their issue in the overthrow of the Papal tyranny, and the establishment of a Scriptural faith in Scotland. He had, too, received legal guarantees from the State that the abolished jurisdiction would not be restored, and that the Protestant Church would have liberty and protection given it in the exercise of its worship and the administration of its discipline. The two years that followed, 1568 and 1569, were perhaps the happiest in the Reformer’s life, and the most prosperous in the history of his country during that century. Under the energetic and patriotic administration of the “Good Regent” Scotland enjoyed quiet. The Reformed Church was enlarging her borders; all was going well; and that yearning for rest which often visits the breasts of those who have been long tossed by tempests, began to be felt by Knox. He remembered the quiet years at Geneva, the loving

[1]McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 2., pp. 158, 159.

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flock to whom he had there ministered the Word of Life, and he expressed a wish to return thither and spend the evening of his life, and lay his wearied body, it might be, by the side of greater dust in the Plainpalais.

But it was not to be so. Other storms were to roll over him and over his beloved Church before he should descend into his grave. The assassination of the Regent Murray, in January, 1570, was the forerunner of these evils. The tidings of his death occasioned to Knox the most poignant anguish, but great as was his own loss, he regarded it as nothing in comparison with the calamity which had befallen the country in the murder of this great patriot and able administrator. Under the Earl of Lennox, who succeeded Murray as regent, the former confusions returned, and they continued under Mar, by whom Lennox was succeeded. The nobles were divided into two factions, one in favor of Mary, while the other supported the cause of the young king. In the midst of these contentions the life of the Reformer came to be in so great danger that it was thought advisable that he should remove from Edinburgh, and take up his residence for some time at St. Andrews. Here he often preached, and though so feeble that he had to be lifted up into the pulpit, before the sermon had ended his earnestness and vehemence were such that, in the words of an eye-witness, “He was like to ding the pulpit in blads[2] and flie out of it.”

Weary of the world, and longing to depart, he had nevertheless to wage battle to the very close of his life. His last years were occupied in opposing the introduction into the Presbyterian Church of an order of bishops known only to Scotland, and termed Tulchan.[3] Several rich benefices had become vacant by the death of the incumbents, and other causes; and the nobles, coveting these rich living, entered into simoniacal bargains with the least worthy of the ministers, to the effect that they should fill the post, but that the patron should receive the richest portion of the income: hence the term Tulchan Bishops. Knox strongly objected to the institution of the new order of ecclesiastics-first, because he held it a robbery of the Church’s patrimony; and secondly, because it was an invasion on the Presbyterian equality which had been settled in the Scottish Kirk. His opposition delayed the completion of this disgraceful arrangement, which was not carried through till the year in which he died. In August, 1572,he returned to Edinburgh, and soon thereafter received the news of the St. Bartholomew Massacre. We need not say how deeply he was affected by a crime that drowned France in Protestant blood, including that of many of his own personal friends. Kindling into prophet-like fire, he foretold from the pulpit of St. Giles’s a future of revolutions as awaiting the royal house and throne of France; and his words, verily, have not fallen to the ground.

His last appearance in public was on the 9th of November, 1572, when he preached in the Tolbooth Church on occasion of the installation of Mr. Lawson as his colleague and successor. At the close of the service, as if he felt that no more should flock see their pastor, or pastor address his flock, he protested, in the presence of Him to whom he expected soon to give an account, that he had walked among them with a good conscience, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all sincerity, and he exhorted and charged them to adhere steadfastly to the faith which they had professed. The services at an end, he descended the pulpit-stairs, with exhausted yet cheerful look, and walked slowly down the High Street leaning on the arm of his servant, Richard Bannatyne; his congregation lining the way, reverently anxious to have their last look of their beloved pastor. He entered his house never again to pass over its threshold.[4] It was meet he should now depart, for the shadows were falling thickly, not around himself only, but around Christendom.

While the events we have so rapidly narrated were in progress, Mary Stuart, the other great figure of the time, was pursuing her career, and it is necessary that we should follow-not in their detail, for that is not necessary for our object, but in their outline and issue-a series of events of which she was the center, and which were acting with marked and lasting effect on both Romanism and Protestantism. We have repeatedly referred to the league of the three Papal Powers-France, Spain, and Rome

- to quench the new light which was then dawning on the nations, and bring back the night on the face of all the earth. We have also said that of this plot Mary Stuart had become the center, seeing the part assigned her was essential to its success. It is surely a most instructive fact, that the series of frightful crimes into which this prince as plunged was one of the main instrumentaries that Providence employed to bring this plot to nought. From the day that Mary Stuart put her hand to this bond of blood, the tide in her fortunes turned, and all things went against her. First came her sudden and ill-starred affection for

[2]i.e., break the pulpit in pieces. (James Melville, Autobiography.)

[3]A tulchan is calf’s skin stuffed with straw, set up to make the cow give her milk freely.

[4]McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 2., pp. 217, 218.

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Lord Darnley, the son of the Earl of Lennox; then followed her marriage with him, accomplished through treachery, and followed by civil war. The passion which Mary felt for Darnley, a weak, vain, and frivolous youth, and addicted to low company, soon gave place to disgust. Treated with neglect by her husband, Mary was thrown upon others, and then came her worse than unseemly intimacy with the low-born and low-bred Italian, David Rizzio. This awakened a fierce and revengeful jealousy in the breast of Darnley, which led to the midnight assassination in the palace. A band of vizored barons, with naked swords, suddenly appeared in the supper-chamber of the queen, and seizing her favorite, and loosening his grasp on the dress of his mistress, which he had clutched in despair, they dragged him out, and dispatched him in the ante-chamber, his screams ringing in the ears of the queen, who was held back by force from rescuing him. Then came the settled purpose of revenge in the heart of Mary Stuart against her husband, for his share in the murder of Rizzio. This purpose, concealed for a time under an affectation of tender love, the more effectually to lure the vain and confiding Lord Darnley into the snare she had set for him, was steadily and coolly pursued, till at last it was consummated in the horrible tragedy of the “Kirk-of-Field.” The lurid blaze which lighted the sky of Edinburgh that night, and the shock that roused its sleeping citizens from their beds, bring upon the stage new actors, and pave the way for outrages that startle the imagination and stupefy the moral sense. Darnley has disappeared, and now an infamous and bloody man starts up by the side of Mary Stuart. There comes next, her strange passion for Bothwell, a man without a single spark of chivalry or honour in him-coarse-minded, domineering, with an evil renown hanging about him for deeds of violence and blood, and whose gross features and badly-molded limbs did not furnish Mary with the poor apology of manly beauty for the almost insane passion for him to which she abandoned herself. Then, before the blood of her husband was dry, and the ruins of the Kirk-of-Field had ceased to smoke, came her marriage with Bothwell, whom the nation held to be the chief perpetrator of the cruel murder of her former husband. To take in marriage that hand which had spilt her husband’s blood was to confess in act what even she dared not confess in words. From this moment her fatuous career becomes more reckless, and she rushes onward with awful speed towards the goal. Aghast at such a career, and humiliated by being ruled over by such a sovereign, her subjects broke out in insurrection. The queen flew to arms; she was defeated on the field of Carberry Hill and brought as a captive to Edinburgh; thence sent to Lochleven Castle, where she endured a lonely imprisonment of some months. Escaping thence, she fled on horseback all night long, and at morning presented herself at the castle-gates of the Hamiltons. Here she rallied round her the supporters whom her defeat had scattered, and for the last time tried the fortune of arms against her subjects on the field of Langside, near Glasgow. The battle went against her, and she fled a second time, riding night and day across country towards the Border, where, fording the Solway, she bade adieu to Scottish soil, nevermore to return. She had left her country behind, not her evil genius, nor her ill-fortune; these, as a terrible Nemesis, accompany her into England. There, continuing to be the principal card in the game the Popish Powers were playing, she was drawn to conspire against the life and throne of Elizabeth. It was now that doom overtook her. On a dull winter morning, on the 8th of February, she who had dazzled all eyes by her beauty, all imaginations by her liveliness and gaiety, and who had won so many hearts by her fascinating address?the daughter of a king, the wife of a king, and the mother of a king, and who herself had sat on two thrones-laid her head, now discrowned, gray with sorrows, and stained with crimes, upon the block. At the very time that the Armada was being built in the dockyards of Spain, and an immense host was being collected in the Netherlands, with the view of making vacant Elizabeth’s throne, and elevating [514] Mary Stuart to it, the head of the latter princess fell on the scaffold.

It is noteworthy that Queen Mary survived all who had been actors along with her in the scenes of crime and blood in which she had so freely mingled. Before she herself mounted the scaffold, she had seen all who had sided with her in Scotland against Knox and the Reformation, die on the gallows or in the field. Before her last hour came the glory of the House of Hamilton had been tarnished, and the member of that house who fired the shot that deprived Scotland of her “Good Regent” had to seek asylum in France. Kirkaldy of Grange, who espoused Mary’s quarrel at the last hour, and held the Castle of Edinburgh in her behalf, was hanged at the Market Cross; and Maitland of Lethington, who had lent the aid of his powerful talents to the queen to bring Knox to the block, died, it is supposed, by his own hand, after living to witness the utter wreck of all Mary’s interests in Scotland. Bothwell, who had stained his life and conscience with so many horrid deeds to serve her, rotted for years in a foreign dungeon, and at last expired there. The same fatality attended all in other lands who took part with her or embarked in her schemes. Her co-conspirators in England came to violent ends. The Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland were executed. The Duke of Norfolk, the premier peer, was beheaded in the Tower. All concerned in the Babington plot were swept off by the ax. In France it was the same. Her uncles had died violent and bloody deaths; Charles IX expired, blood flowing from every opening in his body; Catherine de Medici, after all her crimes, trod the same road; and last of all Mary herself went to her great audit. As she stands this dark morning beside the block in Fotheringay Castle, it could hardly fail to put a double sting into death to reflect that she had seen the ruin of all her friends, and the utter overthrow of all her projects, while the Reformation against which she had so sorely combated was every year striking its roots deeper in her native land.

From this blood-stained block, with the headless corpse of a queen beside it, we turn to another death-scene, tragic too-not with horrors, as the other, but with triumph. We stand in a humble chamber at the foot of the High Street of Edinburgh. Here, on this bed, is laid that head over which so many storms had burst, to find at last the rest which, wearied with toil and anxiety, it had so earnestly sought. Noblemen, ministers, burgesses pour in to see how Knox will die. As he had lived so he dies, full of courage. From his dying bed he exhorted, warned, admonished all who approached him as he had done from the pulpit. His brethren in the ministry he adjured to “abide by the eternal truth of the Gospel.” Noblemen and statesmen he counseled to uphold the “Evangel” and not forsake the Church of their native land, if they would have God not to strip them of their riches and honors. He made Calvin’s sermons on the Ephesians be read to him, as if his spirit sought to commune once more on earth with that mightier spirit. But the Scriptures were the manna on which he mostly lived: “Turn,” said he to his wife, “to that passage where I first cast anchor, the seventeenth of the Gospel of John.” In the midst of these solemn scenes, a gleam of his wonted geniality breaks in. Two intimate friends come to see him, and he makes a cask of French wine which was in his cellar be pierced for their entertainment, and hospitably urges them to partake, saying that “he will not tarry till it be all drunk.” He was overheard breathing out short utterances in prayer: “Give peace to this afflicted commonwealth; raise up faithful pastors.” On the day before his death, being Sunday, after lying some time quiet, he suddenly broke out, “I have fought against spiritual wickedness in heavenly things,” referring to the troubled state of the Church, “and have prevailed; I have been in heaven and taken possession, I have tasted of the heavenly joys.” At eleven o’clock in the evening of the 24th of November, he heaved a deep sigh, and ejaculated, “Now it is come.” His friends desired of him a sign that he died in peace, whereupon, says the chronicler of his last hours, “As if he had received new strength in death, he lifted one of his hands towards heaven, and sighing twice, departed with the calmness of one fallen into sleep.”[5]

The two master-qualities of Knox were faith and courage. The fundamental quality was his faith, courage was the noble fruit that sprang from it. The words of Regent Morton, spoken over his dust, have become proverbial, “There lies one who never feared the face of man.” John Knox never feared man because he never mistrusted God. His faith taught him, first of all, a fearless submission of his understanding to the Word of God. To this profound submission to the Bible we can trace all the noble and rare qualities which he displayed in his life. To this was owing the simplicity, the clearness and the vigor of all his views, his uniform consistency, and that remarkable foresight which to his countrymen appeared to approach almost to prophecy. Looking along the lines of the Divine

[5]Smetoni Responsio, p. 123. McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 2., pp. 224, 232.

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government, as revealed in the Scriptures, he could foretell what would inevitably be the issue of a certain course of conduct or a certain train of events. It might come sooner or it might come later, but he no more doubted that it would ome than he doubted the uniformity and equity of God’s rule over men. To this too, namely, his submission to the Bible, was owing at once the solidity and the breadth of his Reform. Instead of trammelling himself by forms he threw himself fearlessly and broadly upon great principles. He spread his Reformation over the whole of society, going down till he had reached its deepest springs, and traveling outwards till he had regenerated his country in all departments of its action, and in all the spheres of its well-being. He was all advocate of constitutional government, and a friend, as we have seen, of the highest and widest intellectual culture. It is no proof of narrowness, surely, but of insight and breadth, that he discerned the true foundation on which to build in order that his Reformation might endure and extend itself, he placed it upon the Bible. His wide and patriotic views on public liberty and education, which he held and inculcated, we gratefully acknowledge; but the great service which he rendered to Scotland was the religious one-he gave it liberty by giving it the “Evangel.” It would have but little availed Scotsmen in the nineteenth century if Knox had wrought up their fathers to a little political enthusiasm, but had failed to lead them to the Bible, that great awakening of the human soul, and bulwark of the rights of conscience. If this had been all, the Scots, after a few abortive attempts, like those of misguided France, to reconcile political freedom with spiritual servitude, would assuredly have fallen back under the old yoke, and would have been lying at this day in the gulf of “Papistrie.” Discarding this narrow visionary project, Knox grasped the one eternal principle of liberty, the government of the human conscience by the Bible, and planting his Reformation upon this great foundation-stone, he endowed it with the attribute of durability. [516]

Chapter 11: Andrew Melville; the Tulchan Bishops

The Tulchan Bishops—Evils that grew out of this Arrangement—Supported by the Government—A Battle in Prospect—A Champion Wanting—Andrew Melville—His Parentage—Education—Studies Abroad—Goes to Geneva—Appointed Professor of Humanity in its Academy?Returns to Scotland in 1574—State of Scotland at his Arrival—War against the Tulchan Bishops—The General Assembly Abolishes the Order—Second Book of Discipline—Perfected Polity of the Presbyterian Kirk—The Spiritual Independence—Geneva and Scotland—A Great Struggle

Picture: The Deathwarrant of Mary Queen of Scots.

Picture: View of the Ruins of Blackfriars Chapel, St. Andrews

The same year (1572) which saw Knox descend into the grave beheld the rise of a system in Scotland, which was styled episcopacy, and yet was not episcopacy, for it possessed no authority and exercised no oversight. We have already indicated the motives which led to this invasion upon the Presbyterian equality which had till now prevailed in the Scottish Church, and the significant name borne by the men who filled the offices created under this arrangement. They were styled Tulchan bishops, being only the image or likeness of a bishop, set up as a convenient vehicle through which the fruits of the benefices might flow, not into the treasury of the Church, their rightful destination, but into the pockets of patrons and landlords. We have seen that Knox resisted this scheme, as stained with the double guilt of simony and robbery. He held it, moreover, to be a violation of one of the fundamental laws of the Presbyterian polity, so far as the new bishops might possess any real superiority of power or rank. This they hardly did as yet, for the real power of the Church lay in her courts, and the Tulchan bishops were subject to the jurisdiction of the Synods and Assemblies equally with their brethren; but the change was deemed ominous by all the more faithful ministers, as the commencement of a policy which seemed certain in the end to lay prostrate the Presbyterianism of the Church of Scotland, and with it the Reformed religion and the liberties of the country.

Meanwhile, numerous other evils grew out of this arrangement. The men who consented to be obtruded into these equivocal posts were mostly unqualified, some by their youth, others by their old age; some by inferior talents, others by [517] their blemished character. They were despised by the people as the tools of the court and the aristocracy. Hardly an Assembly met but it had to listen to complaints against them for neglect of duty, or irregularity of life, or tyrannical administration. The ministers, who felt that these abuses were debasing the purity and weakening the influence of the Church, sought means to correct them. But the Government took the side of the Tulchan dignitaries. The regent, Morton, declared the speeches against the new bishops to be seditious, threatened to deprive the Church of the liberty of her Assemblies, and advanced a claim to the same supremacy over ecclesiastical affairs which had been declared an inherent prerogative in the crown of England.[1] Into this complicated and confused state had matters now come in Scotland.

The man who had so largely contributed by his unwearied labours to rear the Scottish ecclesiastical establishment, and who had watched over it with such unslumbering vigilance, was now in his grave. Of those who remained, many were excellent men, and ardently attached to the principles of the Presbyterian Church; but there was no one who possessed Knox’s sagacity to devise, or his intrepidity to apply, the measures which the crisis demanded. They felt that the Tulchan episcopacy which had lifted up its head in the midst of them must be vigorously resisted if Presbyterianism was to live, but a champion was wanting to lead in the battle.

At last one not unworthy to succeed Knox came forward to fill the place where that great leader had stood. This man was Andrew Melville, who in 1574 returned from Geneva to Scotland. He was of the Melvilles of Baldovy, in the Mearns, and having been left an orphan at the age of four years, was received into the family of his elder brother, who, discovering his genius and taste for learning, resolved to give him the best education the country afforded. He acquired Latin in the grammar-school of Montrose, and Greek from Pierre de Marsilliers, a native of France, who taught in those parts; and when the young Melville entered the University of St. Andrews he read the original text of Aristotle, while his professors, unacquainted with the tongue of their oracle, commented

[1]Buik of Univ. Kirk, p. 58. McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., p. 154.

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upon his works from a Latin translation.[2] From St. Andrews, Melville went to prosecute his studies at that ancient seat of learning, the University of Paris. The Sorbonne was then rising into higher renown and attracting greater crowds of students than ever, Francis I, at the advice of the great scholar Budaeus, having just added to it three new chairs for Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. These unlocked the gates of the ancient world, and admitted the student to the philosophy of the Greek sages and the diviner knowledge of the Hebrew prophets. The Jesuits were at that time intriguing to obtain admission into the University of Paris, and to insinuate themselves into the education of youth, and the insight Melville obtained abroad into the character and designs of these zealots was useful to him in after-life, stimulating him as it did to put the colleges of his native land on such a footing that the youth of Scotland might have no need to seek instruction in foreign countries. From Paris, Melville repaired to Poictiers, where, during a residence of three years, he discharged the duties of regent in the College of St. Marceon, till he was compelled to quit it by the troubles of the civil war. Leaving Poictiers, he journeyed on foot to Geneva, his Hebrew Bible slung at his belt,[3] and in a few days after his arrival he was elected to fill the chair of Humanity, then vacant, in the famous academy which Calvin had founded ten years before, and which, as regards the fame of its masters and the number of its scholars, now rivaled the ancient universities of Europe.[4] His appointment brought him into daily intercourse with the scholars, ministers, and senators of Geneva, and if the Scotsman delighted in their urbanity and learning, they no less admired his candor, vivacity, and manifold acquirements. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew took place during Melville’s residence in Geneva, and that terrible event, by crowding Geneva with refugees, vastly enlarged his acquaintance with the Protestants of the Continent. There were at one time as many as 120 French ministers in that hospitable city, and among other learned strangers was Joseph Scaliger, the greatest scholar of his age, with whom Melville renewed an acquaintance which had been begun two years before. The horrors of this massacre, of which he had had so near a view, deepened the detestation he felt for tyranny, and helped to nerve him in the efforts he made in subsequent years for the liberties of his native land.

Surrounded with congenial friends and occupied in important labours, that land he had all but forgotten, till it was recalled to his heart by a visit from two of his countrymen, who, struck with his great capabilities, urged him to return to Scotland. Having obtained with difficulty permission from the Senate and Church of Geneva to return, he set out on his way homeward, with a letter from Beza, in which that illustrious man said that “the Church of Geneva could not have a stronger token of affection to her sister of Scotland than by despoiling herself of his services that the Church of Scotland might therewith be enriched.”[5] Passing through Paris on the very day that Charles IX died in the Louvre, he arrived in Edinburgh in July, 1574, after an absence of ten years from his native country. “He brought with him,” says James Melville, “an inexhaustible treasury of learning, a vast knowledge both of things human and divine, and, what was better still, an upright and fervent zeal for true religion, and a firm resolution to devote all his gifts, with unwearied painfulness, to the service of his Kirk and country without recompense or gain.”[6]

On his arrival in Scotland he found the battle against the Tulchan episcopate, so incongruously joined on to the Presbyterian Church, halting for one to lead. Impressed with the simple order which Calvin had established in Geneva, and ascribing in large degree to that cause the glory to which that Church had attained, and the purity with which religion flourished in it, and believing with Jerome that, agreeably to the interchangeable use of the words “bishop” and “presbyter” in the New Testament, all ministers of the Gospel were at first equal, Melville resolved not to rest till he had lopped off the unseemly addition which avaricious nobles and a tyrannical Government had made to the Church of his native land, and restored it to the simplicity of its first order. He began the battle in the General Assembly of 1575; he continued it in following Assemblies, and with such success that the General Assembly of 1580 came to a unanimous resolution, declaring “the office of a bishop, as then used and commonly understood, to be destitute of warrant from the Word of God, and a human invention, tending to the great injury of the Church, and ordained the bishops to demit their pretended office simpliciter, and to receive admission as ordinary pastors de novo, under pain of excommunication.”[7] Not a holder of a Tulchan mitre but bowed to the decision of the Assembly.

[2]James Melville, Autobiography and Diary, p. 39; Wodrow ed., 1842.

[3]Ibid., p. 41.

[4]Ibid., p. 41.

[5]James Melville, Autobiography, p. 42.

[6]Ibid., p. 44.

[7]McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., p. 162.

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While, on the one hand, this new episcopacy was being cast down, the Church was laboring, on the other, to build up and perfect her scheme of Presbyterian polity. A committee was appointed to prosecute this important matter, and in the course of a series of sittings it brought its work to completion, and its plan was sanctioned by the General Assembly which met in the Magdalene Chapel of Edinburgh, in 1578, under the presidency of Andrew Melville. “From this time,” says Dr. McCrie, “the Book of Policy, as it was then styled, or Second Book of Discipline, although not ratified by the Privy Council or Parliament, was regarded by the Church as exhibiting her authorized form of government, and the subsequent Assemblies took steps for carrying its arrangements into effect, by erecting presbyteries throughout the kingdom, and committing to them the oversight of all ecclesiastical affairs within their bounds, to the exclusion of bishops, superintendents, and visitors.”[8]

It may be well to pause and contemplate the Scottish ecclesiastical polity as now perfected. Never before had the limits of the civil and the ecclesiastical powers been drawn with so bold a hand as in this Second Book of Discipline. In none of the Confessions of the Reformation had the Church been so clearly set forth as a distinct and, in spiritual matters, independent society as it was in this one. The Second Book of Discipline declared that “Christ had appointed a government in his Church, distinct from civil government, which is to be executed in his name by such office-bearers as he has authorized, and not by civil magistrates or under their direction.” This marks a notable advance in the Protestant theory of Church power, which differs from the Popish theory, inasmuch as it is co-ordinate with, not superior to, the civil power, its claims to supremacy being strictly limited to things spiritual, and subject to the State in things temporal. Luther had grasped the idea of the essential distinction between the two powers, but he shrank from the difficulty of embodying his views in a Church organization. Calvin, after a great battle, had succeeded in vesting the Church of Geneva with a certain measure of spiritual independence; but the State there was a theocracy with two branch-the spiritual administration of the consistory, and the moral administration of the senate-and hence the impossibility of instituting definite boundaries between the two. But in Scotland there was more than a city; there were a kingdom, a Parliament, a monarch; and this not only permitted, but necessitated, a fuller development of the autonomy of the Church than was possible in Geneva. Hence the Scottish arrangement more nearly resembles that which obtained in France than that which was set up in Geneva; besides, Mary Stuart was Romish, and Knox could not give to a Popish sovereign the power which Calvin had given to the Protestant senate of Geneva. Still the First Book of Discipline was incomplete as regards its arrangements. It was compiled to meet an emergency, and many of its provisions were necessarily temporary. But the Second Book of Discipline contained a scheme of Church polity, developed from the root idea of the supernatural origin of the Church, and which alike in its general scope and its particular details was framed with the view of providing at once for the maintenance of the order, and the conservation of the liberty of the Church. The Parliament did not ratify the Second Book of Discipline till 1592; but that was a secondary matter with its compilers, for in their view the granting of such ratification could not add to, and the withholding of it could not take from, the inherent authority of the scheme of government, which had its binding power from the Scriptures or had no binding power whatever. Of what avail, then, was the ratification of Parliament. Simply this, that the State thereby pledged itself not to interfere with or overthrow this discipline; and, further, it might be held as the symbol of the nation’s acceptance of and submission to this discipline as a Scriptural one, which, however, the Church neither wished nor sought to enforce by civil penalties.

It was out of this completed settlement of the Presbyterian polity that that great struggle arose which ultimately involved both England and Scotland in civil war, and which, after an immense effusion of blood, in the southern kingdom on the battle-field, and in the northern on the scaffolds of its martyrs, issued in the Revolution of 1688, which placed the Protestant House of Orange on the throne of Great Britain, and secured, under the sanction of an oath, that the constitution and sovereigns of the realm should in all time coming be Protestant.

[8]Buik of Univ. Kirk, p. 73,74. McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., p. 165.

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Chapter 12: Battles for Presbyterianism and Liberty

James VI—His Evil Counselors—Love of Arbitrary Power and Hatred of Presbyterianism—State of Scotland—The Kirk its One Free Institution—The Presbyterian Ministers the Only Defenders of the Nation’s Liberties—The National Covenant—Tulchan Bishops—Robert Montgomery—His Excommunication—Melville before the King?Raid of Ruthyen—The Black Acts—Influence of the Spanish Armada on Scotland—Act of 1592 Ratifying Presbyterian Church Government—Return of Popish Lords—Interview between Melville and James VI at Falkland—Broken Promises—Prelacy set up—Importance of the Battle—James VI Ascends the Throne of England

Picture: George Buchanan.

Picture: Guy Fawkes Cellar.

In 1578, James VI, now twelve years of age, took the reins of government into his own hand. His preceptor, the illustrious Buchanan, had labored to inspire him with a taste for learning-the capacity he could not give him

- and to qualify him for his future duties as a sovereign by instructing him in the principles of civil and religious liberty. But unhappily the young king, at an early period of his reign, fell under the influence of two worthless and profligate courtiers, who strove but too successfully to make him forget all that Buchanan had taught him. These were Esme Stuart, a cousin of his father, who now arrived from France, and was afterwards created Earl of Lennox; and Captain James Stuart, a son of Lord Ochiltree, a man of profligate manners, whose unprincipled ambition was rewarded with the title and estates of the unfortunate Earl of Arran. The sum of what these men taught James was that there was neither power nor glory in a throne unless the monarch were absolute, and that as the jurisdiction of the Protestant Church of his native country was the great obstacle in the way of his governing according to his own arbitrary will, it behoved him above all things to sweep away the jurisdiction of Presbyterianism. An independent Kirk and an absolute throne could not co-exist in the same realm. These maxims accorded but too well with the traditions of his house and his own prepossessions not to be eagerly imbibed by the king. He proved an apt scholar, and the evil transformation wrought upon him by the counselors to whom he had surrendered himself was completed by his initiation into scenes of youthful debauchery.

The Popish politicians on the Continent foresaw, of course, that James VI would mount the throne of England; and there is reason to think that the mission of the polished and insinuating but unprincipled Esme Stuart had reference to that expectation. The Duke of Guise sent him to restore the broken link between Scotland and France; to fill James’s mind with exalted notions of his own prerogative; to inspire him with a detestation of Presbyterian Protestantism, the greatest foe of absolute power; and to lead him back to Rome, the great upholder of the Divine right of kings. Accordingly Esme Stuart did not come alone. He was in due time followed by Jesuits and seminary priests, and the secret influence of these men soon made itself manifest in the open defection of some who had hitherto professed the Protestant faith. In short, this was an off-shoot of that great plot which was in 1587 to be smitten on the scaffold in Fotheringay Castle, and to receive a yet heavier blow from the tempest that strewed the bottom of the North Sea with the hulks of the “Invincible Armada,” and lined the western shores of Ireland with the corpses of Spanish warriors.

The Presbyterian ministers took the alarm. This flocking of foul birds to the court, and this crowding of “men in masks” in the kingdom, fore-boded no good to that Protestant establishment which was the main bulwark of the country’s liberties. The alarm was deepened by intercepted letters from Rome granting a dispensation to Roman Catholics to profess the Protestant faith for a time, provided they cherished in their hearts a loyalty to Rome, and let slip no opportunity their disguise might offer them of advancing her interests.[1] Crisis was evidently approaching, and if the Scottish people were to hold possession of that important domain of liberty which they had conquered they must fight for it. Constitutional government had not indeed been set up as yet in full form in Scotland; but Buchanan, Knox, and now Melville were the advocates of its principles; thus the germs of that form of government had been planted in the country, and its working initiated by

[1]McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., p. 262. See also note AA, ed. 1819. Spottiswood, p. 308. Strype, Annals, vol. 2., pp. 630, 631.

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the erection of the Presbyterian Church Courts; limits had been put upon the arbitrary will of the monarch by the exclusion of the royal power from the most important of all departments of human liberty and rights; and the great body of the people were inflamed with the resolution of maintaining these great acquisitions, now menaced by both the secret and the open emissaries of the Guises and Rome. But there were none to rally the people to the defense of the public liberties but the ministers. The Parliament in Scotland was the tool of the court; the courts of justice had their decisions dictated by letters from the king; there was yet no free press; there was no organ through which the public sentiment could find expression, or shape itself into action, but the Kirk. It alone possessed anything like liberty, or had courage to oppose the arbitrary measures of the Government. The Kirk therefore must come to the front, and give expression to the national voice, if that voice was to be heard at all; and the Kirk must put its machinery in action to defend at once its own independence and the independence of the nation, both of which were threatened by the same blow. Accordingly, on this occasion, as so often afterwards, the leaders of the opposition were ecclesiastical men, and the measures they adopted were on their outer sides ecclesiastical also. The circumstances of the country made this a necessity. But whatever the forms and names employed in the conflict, the question at issue was, shall the king govern by his own arbitrary irresponsible will, or shall the power of the throne be limited by the chartered rights of the people?

This led to the swearing of the National Covenant. It is only ignorance of the great conflict of the sixteenth century that would represent this as a mere Scottish peculiarity. We have already met with repeated instances, in the course of our history, in which this expedient for cementing union and strengthening confidence amongst the friends of Protestantism was had recourse to. The Lutheran princes repeatedly subscribed not unsimilar bonds. The Waldenses assembled beneath the rocks of Bobbio, and with uplifted hands swore to rekindle their “ancient lamp” or die in the attempt. The citizens of Geneva, twice over, met in their great Church of St. Peter, and swore to the Eternal to resist the duke, and maintain their evangelical confession. The capitals of other cantons also hallowed their struggle for the Gospel by an oath. The Hungarian Protestants followed this example. In 1561 the nobles, citizens, and troops in Erlau bound themselves by oath not to forsake the truth, and circulated their Covenant in the neighboring parishes, where also it was subscribed.[2] The Covenant from which the Protestants of Scotland sought to draw strength and confidence has attracted more notice than any of the above instances, from this circumstance, that the Covenanters were not a party but a nation, and the Covenant of Scotland, like its Reformation, was national. The Covenanters swore in brief to resist Popery, and to maintain Protestantism and constitutional monarchy. They first of all explicitly abjured the Romish tenets, they promised to adhere to and defend the doctrine and the government of the Reformed Church of Scotland, and finally they engaged under the same oath to defend the person and authority of the king, “with our goods, bodies, and lives, in the defense of Christ’s Evangel, liberties of our country, ministration of justice, and punishment of iniquity, against all enemies within this realm and without.” It was subscribed (1581) by the king and his household and by all ranks in the country. The arrangement with Rome made the subscription of the courtiers almost a matter of course; even Esme Stuart, now Earl of Lennox, seeing how the tide was flowing, professed to be a convert to the Protestant faith.[3]

The national enthusiasm in behalf of the Reformed Church was greatly strengthened by this solemn transaction, but the intrigues against it at court went on all the same. The battle was begun by the appointment of a Tulchan bishop for Glasgow. The person preferred to this questionable dignity was Robert Montgomery, minister of Stirling, who, said the people, “had the title, but my Lord of Lennox (Esme Stuart) had the milk.” The General Assembly of 1582 were proceeding to suspend the new-made bishop from the exercise of his office, when a messenger-at-arms entered, and charged the moderator and members, “under pain of rebellion and putting them to the horn,” to stop procedure. The Assembly, so far from complying, pronounced the heavier sentence of excommunication on Montgomery; and the sentence was publicly intimated in Edinburgh and Glasgow, in spite of Esme Stuart, who, furious with rage, threatened to poignard the preacher. It shows how strongly the popular feeling was in favor of the Assembly, and against the court, that when Montgomery came soon after to pay a visit to his patron Lennox, the inhabitants of Edinburgh rose in a body, demanding that the town should not be polluted with his presence, and literally chased him out of it. Nor was he, with all

[2]This document is preserved in Presburg, in the library of George Adonys. (History Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 78; London. 1854).

[3]Buik of Univ. Kirk, pp. 96-99. McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., p. 262.

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his speed, about to escape a few “buffets in the neck” as he hastily made his exit at the wicket-gate of the Potter Row.

The matter did not end with the ignominious expulsion of Montgomery from the capital. The next General Assembly adopted a spirited remonstrance to the king, setting forth that the authority of the Church had been invaded, her sentences disannulled, and her ministers obstructed in the discharge of their duty, and begging redress of these grievances. Andrew Melville with others was appointed to present the paper to the king in council; having obtained audience, the commissioners read the remonstrance. The reading finished, Arran looked round with a wrathful countenance, and demanded, “Who dares subscribe these treasonable articles?” “We dare,” replied Melville, and, advancing to the table, he took the pen and subscribed. The other commissioners came forward, one after another, and appended their signatures. Even the insolent Arran was abashed; and Melville and his brethren were peaceably dismissed. Protection from noble or from other quarter the ministers had none; their courage was their only shield.[4]

There followed some chequered years; the nobles roused by the courageous bearing of the ministers, made all attempt to free themselves and the country from the ignominious tyranny of the unworthy favorites, who were trampling upon their liberties. But their attempt, known as the “Raid of Ruthven,” was ill-advised, and very unlike the calm and constitutional opposition of the ministers. The nobles took possession of the king’s person, and compelled the Frenchmen to leave the country. The year’s

[4]James Melville, Autobiography, pp. 129, 133. McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 1., p. 273.

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peace which this violence procured for the Church was dearly purchased, for the tide of oppression immediately returned with all the greater force. Andrew Melville had to retire into England, and that intrepid champion off the scene, the Parliament (1584) overturned the independence of the Church. It enacted that no ecclesiastical Assembly should meet without the king’s leave; that no one should decline the judgment of the king and Privy Council on any matter whatever, under peril of treason, and that all ministers should acknowledge the bishops as their ecclesiastical superiors. These decrees were termed the Black Acts. Their effect was to lay at the feet of the king that whole machinery of ecclesiastical courts which, as matters then stood, was the only organ of public sentiment, and the only bulwark of the nation’s liberties. The General Assembly could not meet unless the king willed, and thus he held in his hands the whole power of the Church. This was in violation of repeated Acts of Parliament, which had vested the Church with the power of convoking and dissolving her Assemblies, without which her liberties were an illusion.

The Reformed Church of Scotland was lying in what seemed ruin, when it was lifted up by an event that at first threatened destruction to it and to the whole Protestantism of Britain. It was at this time that the storm-cloud of the Armada gathered, burst, and passed away, but not without rousing the spirit of liberty, in Scotland. The Scots [524] resolved to set their house in order, lest a second Armada should approach their shores, intercepted letters having made them aware that Huntly and the Popish lords of the north were urging Philip II of Spain to make another attempt, and promising to second his efforts with soldiers who would not only place Scotland at his feet, but would aid him to subjugate England.[5] Even James VI paused in the road he was traveling towards that oldest and staunchest friend of despotic princes, the Church of Rome, seeing his kingdom about to depart from him. His ardour had been cooled, too, by the many difficulties he had encountered in his attempts to impose upon his subjects a hierarchy to which they were repugnant; and either through that fickleness and inconstancy which were a part of his nature, or through that incurable craft which characterized him as it had done all his race, he became for the time a zealous Presbyterian. Nay, he “praised God that he was born in such a place as to be king in such a Kirk, the purest Kirk in the world. I, forsooth,” he concluded, “as long as I brook my life and crown shall maintain the same against all deadly.”[6] Andrew Melville had returned from London after a year’s absence, and his first care was to resuscitate the Protestant liberties which lay buried under the late Parliamentary enactments. Nor were his labours in vain. In 1592, Parliament restored the Presbyterian Church as it had formerly existed, ratifying its government by Kirk-sessions, Presbyteries, Provincial Synods, and National Assemblies. This Act has ever been held to be the grand charter of Presbyterianism in Scotland.[7] It was hailed with joy, not as adding a particle of inherent authority to the system it recognized-the basis of that authority the Church had already laid down in her Books of Discipline-but because it gave the Church a legal pledge that the jurisdiction of the Romish Church would not be restored, and by consequence, that of the Reformed Church not overthrown.[8] This Act gave the Church of Scotland a legal ground on which to fight her future battles.

But James VI was incapable of being long of one mind, or persevering steadily in one course. In 1596 the Popish lords, who had left the country on the suppression of their rebellion, returned to Scotland. Notwithstanding that they had risen in arms against the king, and had continued their plots while they lived abroad, James was willing to receive and reinstate these conspirators. His Council were of the same mind with himself. Not so the country and the Church, which saw new conspiracies and wars in prospect, should these inveterate plotters be taken back. Without loss of time, a deputation of ministers, appointed at a convention held at Cupar, proceeded to Falkland to remonstrate with the king on the proposed recall of those who had shown themselves the enemies of his throne and the disturbers of his realm. The ministers were admitted into the palace. It had been agreed that James Melville, the nephew of Andrew, for whom the king entertained great respect, being a man of courteous address, should be their spokesman. He had only uttered a few words when the king violently interrupted him, denouncing him and his associates as seditious stirrers up of the people. The nephew would soon have succumbed to the tempest of the royal anger if the uncle had not stepped forward. James VI and Andrew Melville stood once more face to face. For a few seconds there was a conflict between the kingly authority of the sovereign and the moral majesty of the patriot. But soon the king yielded himself to Melville. Taking James by the sleeve, and calling him “God’s sillie vassal,” he proceeded, says McCrie, “to address him in the following strain, perhaps the most singular, in point of freedom, that ever saluted royal ears, or that ever proceeded from the mouth of loyal subject, who would have spilt his blood in defense of the person and honour of his prince:—“Sir,” said Melville, “we will always humbly reverence your Majesty in public, but since we have this occasion to be with your Majesty in private, and since you are brought into extreme danger both of your life and crown, and along with you the country and the Church of God are like to go to wreck, for not telling you the truth and bring you faithful counsel, we must discharge our duty or else be traitors, both to Christ and you. Therefore, sir, as divers times before I have told you, so now again I must tell you, there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland: there is Christ Jesus the King of the Church, whose subject King James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member... We will yield to you your place, and give you all due obedience; but again I say, you are not the head of the Church; you cannot give us that eternal life which even in this world we seek for, and you cannot deprive us of it. Permit us then freely to meet in the name of Christ, and to attend to the interests of that Church of which you are the chief member. Sir, when you were in your swaddling-clothes, Christ

[5]See copy of letters, with the cipher in which they were written, and its key, in Calderwood, History, vol. v., p. 7 et seq.

[6]Calderwood, History, vol. v., p. 106.

[7]Act James 6:1592.

[8]Calderwood, History, vol. 5., pp. 160-166.

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Jesus reigned freely in this land, in spite of all his enemies; his officers and ministers convened for the ruling and the welfare of his Church, which was ever for your welfare, defense, and preservation, when these same enemies were seeking your destruction and cutting off. And now, when there is more than extreme necessity for the continuance of that duty, will you hinder and dishearten Christ’s servants, and your most faithful subjects, quarreling them for their convening, when you should rather commend and countenance them as the godly kings and emperors did?”[9] The storm, which had risen with so great and sudden a violence at the mild words of the nephew, went down before the energy and honesty of the uncle, and the deputation was dismissed with assurances that no favor should be shown the Popish lords, and no march stolen upon the liberties of the Church.

But hardly were the ministers gone when steps were taken for restoring the insurgent nobles, and undermining the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The policy adopted for accomplishing this was singularly subtle, and reveals the hand of the Jesuits, of whom there were then numbers in the country. First of all, the king preferred the apparently innocent request that a certain number of ministers should be appointed as assessors, with whom he might advise in “all affairs concerning the weal of the Church.” Fourteen ministers were appointed: “the very needle,” says James Melville, “which drew in the episcopal thread.” The second step was to declare by Act of Parliament that Prelacy was the third Estate of the Realm, and that those ministers whom the king chose to raise to that dignity should be entitled to sit or vote in Parliament. The third step was to enact that the Church should be represented in Parliament, and that the fourteen assessors already chosen should form that representation. The matter having reached this hopeful stage, the king adventured on the fourth and last step, which was to nominate David Lindsay, Peter Blackburn, and George Gladstanes to the vacant bishoprics of Ross, Aberdeen, and Caithness. The new-made bishops took their seats in the next Parliament. The art and finesse of the king and his counselors had triumphed; but his victory was not yet complete, for the General Assembly still continued to manage, although with diminished authority and freedom, the affairs of the Church.

The war we have been contemplating was waged within a small area, but its issue was world-wide. The ecclesiastical names and forms that appear on its surface may make this struggle repulsive in the eyes of some. Waged in the Palace of Falkland, and on the floor of the General Assembly, these contests are apt to be set down as having no higher origin than clerical ambition, and no wider object than ecclesiastical supremacy. But this, in the present instance at least, would be a most superficial and erroneous judgment. We see in these conflicts infant Liberty struggling with the old hydra of Despotism. The independence and freedom of Scotland were here as really in question as on the fields waged by Wallace and Bruce, and the men who fought in the contests which have been passing before us braved death as really as those do who meet mailed antagonists on the battle-field. Nay, more, Scotland and its Kirk had at this time become the key-stone in the arch of European liberty; and the unceasing efforts of the Pope, the King of Spain, and the Guises were directed to the displacing of that keystone, that the arch which it upheld might be destroyed. They were sending their agents into the country, they were fomenting rebellions, they were flattering the weak conceit of wisdom and of arbitrary power in James: not that they cared for the conquest of Scotland in itself so much as they coveted a door by which to enter England, and suppress its Reformation, which they regarded as the one thing wanting to complete the success of their schemes for the total extermination of Protestantism. With servile Parliaments and a spiritless nobility, the public liberties as well as the Protestantism of Scotland would have perished but for the vigilance, and intrepidity of the Presbyterian ministers, and, above all, the incorruptible, the dauntless and unflinching courage and patriotism of Andrew Melville. These men may have been rough in speech; they may have permitted their temper to be ruffled, and their indignation to be set on fire, in exposing craft and withstanding tyranny; but that man’s understanding must be as narrow as his heart is cold, who would think for a moment of weighing such things in the balance against the priceless blessing of a nation’s liberties.

The death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, called James VI to London, and the center of the conflict, which widens as the years advance, changes with the monarch to England.

[9]McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. 2., pp. 62-65.

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Chapter 13: James in England—The Gunpowder Plot

Steps to Hinder a Protestant Successor to Elizabeth—Bulls of Clement VIII—Application to Philip II—English Jesuits thrown on their own Resources—The Gunpowder Plot Proposed—Catesby?Percy?Preparations to Blow up the Parliament—Pacific Professions of Romanists the while—Proofs that the Plot was Known to the Roman Catholic Authorities—The Spanish Match—Disgraceful Treaty—Growing Troubles

Picture: Guy Fawkes and the Chief Conspirators

Picture: View of Holyrood Palace.

When it became known at Rome that the reign of Elizabeth was drawing to a close, steps were immediately taken to prevent any one mounting her throne save a prince whose attachment to Roman Catholicism could not be doubted, and on whom sure hopes could be built that he would restore the Papacy in England. The doubtful Protestantism of the Scottish king had, as we have already said, been somewhat strengthened by the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It was further steadied by the representations made to him by Elizabeth and her wise ministers, to the effect that he could not hope to succeed to the throne of England unless he should put his attachment to the Protestant interests beyond suspicion; and that the nobility and gentry of England had too much honour and spirit ever again to bow the neck to the tyranny of the Church of Rome. These representations and warnings weighed with the monarch, the summit of whose wishes was to ascend the throne of the southern kingdom, and who was ready to protest or even swear to maintain any set of maxims, political or religious, which the necessity of the hour made advisable, seeing that his principles of kingcraft permitted the adoption of a new policy whenever a new emergency arose or a stronger temptation crossed his path. Accordingly we find James, in the instructions sent to Hamilton, his agent in England in 1600, bidding him “assure honest men, on the princely word of a Christian king, that as I have ever without swerving maintained the same religion within my kingdom, so, as soon as it shall please God lawfully to possess me of the crown of that kingdom, I shall not only maintain the profession of the Gospel there, but withal not suffer any other religion to be professed within the bounds of that kingdom.” This strong assurance, doubtless, quieted the fears of the English statesmen, but in the same degree it awakened the fears of the Roman Catholics.

They began to despair of the King of the Scots-prematurely, we think; but they were naturally more impatient than James, seeing the restoration of their Church was with them the first object, whereas with James it was only the second, and the English crown was the first. The conspirators in England, whose hopes had been much dashed by the strong declaration of the Scottish king, applied to Pope Clement VIII to put a bar in the way of his mounting the throne. Clement was not hard to be persuaded in the matter. He sent over to Garnet, Provincial of the Jesuits in England, two bulls of his apostolical authority—one addressed to the Romish clergy, the other to the nobility and laity, and both of the same tenor. The bulls enjoined those to whom they were directed, in virtue of their obedience, at whatever time “that miserable woman,”[1] for so he called Elizabeth, should depart this life, to permit no one to ascend her throne, how near so ever in blood, unless he swore, according to the example of the former monarchs of England, not only to tolerate the Roman Catholic faith, but to the utmost of his power uphold and advance it. Armed with this authoritative document, the Romish faction in the kingdom waited till Elizabeth should breathe her last.

On the death of the queen, in March, 1603, they instantly dispatched a messenger to announce the fact to Winter, their agent at the Court of Spain. They charged him to represent to his most Catholic Majesty that his co-religionists in England were likely to be as grievously oppressed under the new king as they had been under the late sovereign, that in this emergency they turned their eyes to one whose zeal was as undoubted as his arm was powerful, and they prayed him to interpose in their behalf. The disaster of the Armada was too fresh in Philip’s memory, the void it had made in his treasury, and which was not yet replenished, was too great, and the effects of the terrible blow on the national spirit were too depressing, to permit his responding to this appeal of the English Catholics by arms. Besides, he had opened negotiations for peace with the new king, and these must be ended one way or the other before he could take any step to prevent James mounting the throne,

[1]“Miseram illam foeminam.”

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or to dispossess him of it after he had ascended it. Thus, the English Jesuits were left with the two bulls of Clement VIII, and the good wishes of Philip II, as their only weapons for carrying out their great enterprise of restoring their Church to its former supremacy in England. They did not despair, however. Thrown on their own resources, they considered the means by which they might give triumph to their cause.

The Order of Jesus is never more formidable than when it appears to be least so. It is when the Jesuits are stripped of all external means of doing harm that they devise the vastest schemes, and execute them with the most daring courage. Extremity but compels them to retreat yet deeper into the darkness, and arm themselves with those terrible powers wherein their great strength lies, and the full unsparing application of which they reserve for the conflicts of mightiest moment. The Jesuits in England now began to meditate a great blow. They had delivered an astounding stroke at sea but a few years before; they would signalize the present emergency by a nearly as astounding stroke on land. They would prepare an Armada in the heart of the kingdom, which would inflict on England a ruin sudden, strange, and terrible, like that which Philip’s fleet would have inflicted had not the “winds become Lutheran,” as Medina Sidonia said with an oath, and in their sectarian fury sent his ships to the bottom.

In September, 1603, it would seem that the first meeting of the leading spirits of the party was held to talk over the course the new king was pursuing, and the measures to be adopted. Catesby, a gentleman of an ancient family, began by recounting the grievances under which the Roman Catholics of England groaned. His words kindling the anger of Percy, a descendant of the House of Northumberland, he observed that nothing was left them but to kill the king. “That,” said Catesby, “is to run a great risk, and accomplish little,” and he proceeded to unfold to Percy a much grander design, which could be executed with greater safety, and would be followed by far greater consequences. “You have,” he continued, “taken off the king; but his children remain, who will succeed to his throne. Suppose you destroy the whole royal family, there will still remain the nobility, the gentry, the Parliament. All these we must sweep away with one stroke; and when our enemies have sunk in a common ruin, then may we restore the Church of Rome in England.” In short, he proposed to blow up the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder, when the king and the Estates of the Realm should be there assembled.

The manner in which this plot was proceeded with is too well known, and the details are too accessible in the ordinary histories, to require that we should here dwell upon them. The contemplated destruction was on so great a scale that some of the conspirators, when it was first explained to them, shrunk from the perpetration of a wickedness so awful. To satisfy the more scrupulous of the party they resolved to consult their spiritual advisers. “Is it lawful,” they asked of Garnet, Tesmond, and Gerard, “to do this thing?” These Fathers assured them that they might go on with a good conscience and do the deed, seeing that those on whom the destruction would fall were heretics and excommunicated persons. “But,” it was replied, “some Catholics will perish with the Protestants: is it lawful to destroy the righteous with the wicked?” It was answered, “Yes, for it is expedient that the few should die for the good of the many.”

The point of conscience having been resolved, and the way made clear, the next step was an oath of secrecy, to inspire them with mutual confidence: the conspirators swore to one another by the Blessed Trinity and by the Sacrament not to disclose the matter, directly or indirectly, and never to desist from the execution of it, unless released by mutual consent. To add to the solemnity of the oath, they retired into an inner chamber, where they heard mass, and received the Sacrament from Gerard. They had sanctified themselves as the executioners of the vengeance of Heaven upon an apostate nation.

They set to work; they ran a mine under the Houses of Parliament; and now they learned by accident that with less ado they might compass their end. The vault under the House of Lords, commonly used as a coal-cellar, was to be let. They hired it, placed in it thirty-six barrels of gun, powder, and strewing plenteously over them billets, fagots, stones, and iron bars, threw open the doors that all might see how harmless were the materials with which the vault was stored. The plot had been brewing for a year and a half; it had been entrusted to some twenty persons, and not a whisper had been uttered by way of divulging the terrible secret.

The billets, fagots, and iron bars that concealed the gunpowder in the vault were not the only means by which it was sought to hide from the people all knowledge of the terrible catastrophe which was in preparation. “The Lay Catholic Petition” was at this time published, in which they supplicated the king for toleration, protesting their fidelity and unfeigned love for his Majesty, and offering to be bound life for life with good sureties for their loyal behavior. When the plot approached [528] execution, Father Garnet began to talk much of bulls and mandates from the Pope to charge all the priests and their flocks in England to carry themselves with profound peace and quiet. Garnet sent Fawkes to Rome with a letter to Clement, supplicating that “commandment might come from his Holiness, or else from Aquaviva, the General of the Jesuits, for staying of all commotions of the Catholics in England.” So anxious were they not to hurt a Protestant, or disturb the peace of the kingdom, or shake his Majesty’s throne. The sky is clearing, said the Protestants, deceived by these arts; the winter of Catholic discontent is past, and all the clouds that lowered upon the land in the days of Elizabeth are buried in the “deep sea” of mutual conciliation. They knew not that the men from whom those loud protestations of loyalty and brotherly concord came were all the while storing gunpowder in the vault underneath the House of Lords, laying the train, and counting the hours when they should fire it, and shake down the pillars of the State, and dissolve the whole frame of the realm. The way in which this hideous crime was prevented, and England saved-namely, by a letter addressed to Lord Monteagle by one of the conspirators, whose heart would seem to have failed him at the last moment, leading to a search below the House of Lords, followed by the discovery of the astounding plot?we need not relate.

There is evidence for believing that the projected iniquity was not the affair of a few desperate men in England only, but that the authorities of the Popish world knew of it, sanctioned it, and lent it all the help they dared. Del Rio, in a treatise printed in 1600, puts a supposititious case in the confessional: “as if,” says Dr. Kennet, “he had already looked into the mine and cellars, and had surveyed the barrels of powder in them, and had heard the whole confession of Fawkes and Catesby.”[2] The answer to the supposed case, which is that of the Gunpowder Plot, the names of the actors left out, forbade the divulging of such secrets, on the ground that the seal of the confessional must not be violated. This treatise, published at so short a distance from England as Louvain, and so near the time when the train was being laid, shows, as Bishop Burnet remarks, that the plot was then in their minds. In Sully’s Memoirs there is oftener than once a reference to a “sudden blow” which was intended in England about this time; and King James was warned by a letter from the court of Henry IV to beware of the fate of Henry III; and in the oration pronounced at Rome in praise of Ravaillac, the assassin of Henry IV, it was said that he (Henry IV) was not only an enemy to the Catholic religion in his heart, but that he had obstructed the glorious enterprise of those who would have restored it in

[2]Dr. Kennet, Sermon, Nov. 5, 1715.

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England, and had caused them to be crowned with martyrdom. It is not easy to see to what this can refer if it be not to the Gunpowder Plot, and the execution of the conspirators by which it was followed. The proof of knowledge beforehand on the part of the Popish authorities seemed to be completed by the action of Pope Paul V, who appointed a jubilee for the year 1605-the year when the plot was to be executed for the purpose of “praying for help in emergent necessities,” and among reasons assigned by the Pontiff for fixing on the year 1605, was that it was to witness “the rooting out of all the impious errors of the heretics.[3] Copely says that “he could never meet with any one Jesuit who blamed it.”[4] Two of the Jesuit conspirators who made their escape to Rome were rewarded; one being made penitentiary to the Pope, and the other a confessor in St. Peter’s. Garnet, who was executed as a traitor, is styled by Bellarmin a martyr; and Misson tells us that he saw his portrait among the martyrs in the hall of the Jesuit College at Rome, and by his side an angel who shows him the open gates of heaven.[5]

That the Romanists should thus plot against the religion and liberties of England was only what might be expected, but James himself became a plotter towards the same end. Instead of being warned off from so dangerous neighbors, he began industriously to court alliances with the Popish Powers. In these proceedings he laid the foundation of all the miseries which afterwards overtook his house and his kingdom. His first step was to send the Earl of Bristol to Spain, to negotiate a marriage with the Infanta for his son Prince Charles. He afterwards dispatched Buckingham with the prince himself on the same errand to the Spanish Court-a proceeding that surprised everybody, and which no one but the “English Solomon” could have been capable of. It gave fresh life to Romanism in England, greatly emboldened the Popish recusants, and was the subject (1621) of a remonstrance of the

[3]“Impios hereticorum errores undique evellere.” (Bennet, Memorial of the Reformation, p. 130.)

[4]Copely, Reas. of Conversion, p. 23. Burnet, Sermon, 5th Nov., 1710.

[5]Misson, Travels in Italy, vol. 2., part 1, p. 173. Misson adds, in a marginal note, “Some travelers have told me lately hat this picture has been taken away.

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Commons to the king. The same man who had endeavored to stamp out the infant constitutional liberties of Scotland began to plot the overthrow of the more ancient franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of England.

While the prince was in Spain all arts were employed to bring him within the pale of the Roman Church. An interchange of letters took place between him and the Pope, in which the Pontiff expresses his hope that “the Prince of the Apostles would be put in possession of his [the prince’s] most noble island, and that he and his royal father might be styled the deliverers and restorers of the ancient paternal religion of Great Britain.” The prince replies by expressing his ardent wishes “for an alliance with one that hath the same apprehension of the true religion with myself.”[6] A Papal dispensation was granted; the marriage was agreed upon; the terms of the treaty were that no laws enacted against Roman Catholics should ever after be put in execution, that no new laws should ever hereafter be made against them, and that the prince should endeavor to the utmost of his power to procure the ratification by Parliament of these articles; and that, further, the Parliament “should approve and ratify all and singular articles in favor of Roman Catholics capitulated by the most renowned kings.” The marriage came to nothing; nevertheless, the consequences of the treaty were most disastrous to both the king and England. It filled the land with Popish priests and Jesuits; it brought over the titular Bishop of Chalcedon to exercise Episcopal jurisdiction; it lost King James the love of his subjects; it exposed him to the contempt of his enemies; and in addition it cost him the loss of his honour and the sacrifice of Sir Walter Raleigh. Extending beyond the bounds of England, the evil effects of this treaty were felt in foreign countries. For the sake of his alliance with the House of Austria, James sacrificed the interests of his son-in-law: he lost the Palatinate, and became the immediate cause, as we have seen in a previous part of this history, of the overthrow of Protestantism in Bohemia.

James VI did not grow wiser as he advanced in years. Troubles continued to embitter his life, evils to encompass his throne, contempt to wait upon his person, and calamity and distraction to darken his realm. These manifold miseries grew out of his rooted aversion to the religion of his native land, and an incurable leaning towards Romanism which led him to truckle to the Popish Powers, whose tool and dupe he became, and to cherish a reverence for the Church of Rome, which courted him only that she might rob him of his kingdom. And the same man who made himself so small and contemptible to all the world abroad was, by his invasion of the laws, his love of arbitrary power, and his unconstitutional acts, the tyrant of his Parliament and the oppressor of his people at home.

[6]The King of Scotland’s Negotiations at Rome for Assistance against the Commonwealth of England. Published to satisfy as many as are not willing to be deceived. By Authority. London, printed by William Dugard, 1650. In this pamphlet the letters are given in full in French and English. They are also published in Rushworth’s Collections.

Chapter 14: Death of James VI, and Spiritual Awakening in Scotland

The Nations Dead—Protestantism made them Live—Examples—Scotland—James VI?Pursues his Scheme on the Throne of England—His Arts—Compliance of the Ministers—The Prelates—High Commission Court—Visit of James to Scotland—The Five Articles of Perth—“Black Saturday”—James’s Triumph a Defeat—His Death—A Great Spiritual Awakening in Scotland—Moral Transformations—David Dickson and the Awakening at Stewarton—Market-day at Irvine—John Livingstone and the Kirk of Shotts—The Scottish Vine Visited and Strengthened

Picture: Family Worship in a Cavalier Household.

The first part of the mighty task which awaited Protestantism in the sixteenth century was to breathe life into the nations. It found Christendom a vast sepulcher in which its several peoples were laid out in the sleep of death, and it said to them, “Live.” Arms, arts, political constitutions, cannot quicken the ashes of nations, and call them from their tomb: the mighty voice of the Scriptures alone can do this. Conscience is the life, and the Bible awoke the conscience.

The second part of the great task of Protestantism [531] was to make the nations free. It first gave them life, it next gave them freedom. We have seen this order attempted to be reversed in some modern instances, but the result has shown how impossible it is to give liberty to the dead. The amplest measure of political freedom cannot profit nations when the conscience continues to slumber. It is like clothing a dead knight in the armor of a living warrior. He reposes proudly in helmet and coat of mail, but the pulse throbs not in the limbs which these cover. Of all the nations of Christendom there was not one in so torpid a state as Scotland. When the sixteenth century dawned, it was twice dead: it was dead in a dominant Romanism, and it was dead in an equally dominant feudalism; and for this reason perhaps it was selected as the best example in the entire circle of the European nations to exhibit the power of the vitalizing principle. The slow, silent, and deep permeation of the nation by the Bible dissolved the fetters of this double slavery, and conscience was emancipated. An emancipated conscience, by the first law of nature-self-preservation-immediately set to work to trace the boundary lines around that domain in which she felt that she must be sole and exclusive mistress. Thus arose the spiritual jurisdiction-in other words, the Church. Scotland had thus come into possession of one of her liberties, the religious. A citadel of freedom had been reared in the heart of the nation, and from that inner fortress religious liberty went forth to conquer the surrounding territory for its yoke?fellow, civil liberty; and that kingdom which had so lately been the most enslaved of all the European States was now the freest in Christendom.

Thus in Scotland the Church is older than the modern State. It was the Church that called the modern, that is, the free State, into existence. It watched over it in its cradle; it fought for it in its youth; and it crowned its manhood with a perfect liberty. It was not the State in Scotland that gave freedom to the Church: it was the Church that gave freedom to the State. There is no other philosophy of liberty than this; and nations that have yet their liberty to establish might find it useful to study this model.

The demise of Elizabeth called James away before he had completed his scheme of rearing the fabric of arbitrary power on the ruins of the one independent and liberal institution which Scotland possessed. But he prosecuted on the throne of England the grand object of his ambition. We cannot go into a detail of the chicaneries by which he overreached some, the threats with which he terrified others, and the violence with which he assailed those whom his craft could not deceive, nor his power bend. Melville was summoned to London, thrown into the Tower, and when, after an imprisonment of four years, he was liberated, it was not to return to his native land, but to retire to France, where he ended his days. The faithful ministers were silenced, imprisoned, or banished. Those who lent themselves to the measures of the court shrunk from no perfidy to deceive the people, in order to secure the honors which they so eagerly coveted. Gladstanes and others pursued the downward road, renewing the while their subscription to the National Covenant, “promising and swearing by the great name of the Lord our God that we shall continue in the obedience of the doctrine and discipline of this Kirk, and shall defend the same according to our vocation and power all the days of our lives, under the pains contained in the law, and danger both of body and soul in the day of God’s fearful judgment.” At length, in a packed assembly which met in Glasgow in 1610, James succeeded in carrying his measure-prelacy was set up. The bishops acted as perpetual moderators, and had dioceses assigned them, within which they performed the ordinary functions of bishops. Alongside of them the Presbyterian courts continued to meet: not indeed the General Assembly-this court was suspended?but Kirk sessions, presbyteries, and synods were held, and transacted the business of the Church in something like the old fashion. This was a state of matters pleasing to neither party, and least of all to the court, and accordingly the tribunal of High Commission was set up to give more power to the king’s bishops; but it failed to procure for the men in whose interests it existed more obedience from the ministers, or more respect from the people; and the sentiment of the country was still too strong to permit it putting forth all those despotic and unconstitutional powers with which it was armed. Making a virtue of necessity, the new dignitaries, it must be confessed, wore their honors with commendable humility; and this state of matters, which conjoined in the same Church lawn robes and Geneva cloaks, mitred apostles and plain presbyters, continued until 1618, when yet another stage of this affair was reached.

Seated on the throne of England, the courtly divines and the famed statesmen of the southern kingdom bowing before him, and offering continual increase to his “wisdom,” his “scholarship,” and his “theological erudition,” though inwardly they must have felt no little disgust at that curious mixture of pertness, pedantry, and profanity that [532] made up James VI-with so much to please him, we say, one would have thought that the monarch would have left in peace the little kingdom from which he had come, and permitted its sturdy plainspoken theologians to go their own way. So far from this, he was more intent than ever on consummating the transformation of the northern Church. He purposed a visit to his native land,[1] having, as he expressed it with characteristic coarseness, “a natural and salmon-like affection to see the place of his breeding,” and he ordered the Scottish bishops to have the kingdom put in due ecclesiastical order before his arrival. These obedient men did the best in their power. The ancient chapel of Holyrood was adorned with statues of the twelve apostles, finely gilded. An altar was set up in it, on which lay two closed Bibles, and on either side of them an unlighted candle and an empty basin. The citizens of Edinburgh had no difficulty in perceiving the “substance” of which these things were the “shadow.” Every parish church was expected to arrange itself on the model of the Royal Chapel. These innovations were followed next year (1618) by the Five Articles of Perth, so called from having been agreed upon at a meeting of the clergy in that city. These articles were:

1st, Kneeling at the Communion;

2nd, The observance of certain holidays;

3rd, Episcopal confirmation;

4th, Private baptism;

5th, Private communion.

A beacon-light may be white or it may be red, the color in itself is a matter of not the smallest consequence; but if the one color should draw the mariner upon the rock, and the other warn him past it, it is surely important that he should know the significance of each, and guide himself accordingly. The color is no longer a trifling affair; on the contrary, the one is life, the other is death. It is so with rites and symbols. They may be in themselves of not the least importance; their good or evil lies wholly in whether they guide the man who practices them to safety or to ruin. The symbols set up in the Chapel Royal of Holyrood, and the five ordinances of Perth, were of this description. The Scots looked upon them as sign-posts which seduced the traveller’s feet, not into the path of safety, but into the road of destruction; they regarded them as false lights hung out to lure the vessel of their commonwealth upon the rocks of Popery and of arbitrary government. They refused to sail by these lights. Their determination was strengthened by the omens, as they accounted them, which accompanied their enactment by Parliament in July, 1621. On the day on which they were to be sanctioned, a heavy cloud had hung above Edinburgh since morning; that cloud waxed ever the darker as the hour approached when the articles were to be ratified, till at last it filled the Parliament Hall with the gloom of almost night. The moment the Marquis of Hamilton, the commissioner, rose and touched the Act with the royal scepter, the cloud burst in a terrific storm right over the Parliament House. Three lurid gleams, darting in at the large window, flashed their vivid fires in the commissioner’s face. Then came terrible peals of thunder, which were succeeded by torrents of rain and hail, that inundated the streets, and made it difficult for the members to reach their homes. The day was long remembered in Scotland by the name of “Black Saturday.”[2]

The king, and those ministers who from cowardice or selfishness had furthered his measures, had now triumphed; but that triumph was discomfiture.

[1]“King James, this time, was returning northward to visit poor old Scotland again, to get his Pretended-Bishops set into activity, if he could. It is well known that he could not, to any satisfactory extent, neither now nor afterwards: his Pretended-Bishops, whom by cunning means he did get instituted, had the name of Bishops, but next to none of the authority, of the respect, or, alas, even of the cash, suitable to the reality of that office. They were by the Scotch People derisively called Tulchan Bishops. Did the reader ever see, or fancy in his mind, a Tulchan? A Tulchan is, or rather was, for the thing is long since obsolete, a calf-skin stuffed into the rude similitude of a calf, similar enough to deceive the imperfect perceptive organs of a cow. At milking-time the Tulchan, with head duly bent, was set as if to suck; the fond cow looking round fancied that her calf was busy, and that all was right, and so gave her milk freely, which the cunning maid was straining in white abundance into her pail all te while! The Scotch milkmaids in those days cried, ‘Where is the Tulchan; is the Tulchan ready?’ So of the Bishops. Scotch Lairds were eager enough to ‘ milk’ the Church Lands and Tithes, to get the rents out of them freely, which was not always easy. They were glad to construct a form of Bishops to please the King and Church, and make the milk come without disturbances. The reader now knows what a Tulchan Bishop was. A piece of mechanism constructed not without difficulty, in Parliament and King’s Council, among the Scots; and torn asunder afterwards with dreadful clamor, and scattered to the four winds, so soon as the cow became awake to it!” (Carlyle, Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, vol. 1., p. 36; People’s Ed., 1871.)

[2]“Just as the scepter was laying to the cursed act, says Row, “the loudest thunder-clap that ever Scotland heard was just over the Parliament House, whilk made them all quake for fear, looking for nothing less than that the house should have been thrown down by thunderbolts.” (History, ann. 1621.) This storm was the more noticeable that a similar one had burst over Perth in 1618, when the Five Articles were first concluded in the Assembly. “Some scoffers,” says Calderwood, said that “as the law was given by fire from Mount Sinai, so did these fires confirm their laws.” (History, vol. 7., p. 505.)

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In the really Protestant parts of Scotland-for the Scotland of that day had its cities and shires in which flourished a pure and vigorous Protestantism, while there were remote and rural parts where, thanks to that rapacity which had created a wealthy nobility and an impoverished clergy, the old ignorance and superstition still lingered-the really Protestant people of Scotland, we say, were as inflexibly bent as ever on repudiating a form of Church government which they knew was meant to pave the way for tyranny in the State, and a ritualistic worship, which they held to be of the nature of idolatry; and of all his labor in the matter the king reaped nothing save disappointment, vexation, and trouble, which accompanied him till he sank into his grave in 1625. Never would Scottish monarch have reigned so happily as James VI would have done, had he possessed but a tithe of that wisdom to which he laid claim. The Reformation had given him an independent clergy and an intelligent middle class, which he so much needed to balance the turbulence and power of his barons; but James fell into the egregious blunder of believing the religion of his subjects to be the weakness, instead of the strength, of his throne, and so he labored to destroy it. He blasted his reputation for kingly honour, laid up a store of misfortunes and sorrows for his son, and alienated from his house a nation which had ever borne a chivalrous loyalty to his ancestors, despite their many and great faults.

The year of the king’s death was rendered memorable by the rise of a remarkable influence of a spiritual kind in Scotland, which continued for years to act upon its population. This invisible but mighty agent moved to and fro, appearing now in this district and now in that, but no man could discover the law that regulated its course, or foretell the spot where it would next make its presence known. It turned as it listed, even as do the winds, and was quite as much above man’s control, who could neither say to it, “Come,” nor bid it depart. Wherever it passed, its track was marked, as is that of the rain-cloud across the burned-up wilderness, by a shining line of moral and spiritual verdure. Preachers had found no new Gospel, nor had they become suddenly clothed with a new eloquence; yet their words had a power they had formerly lacked; they went deeper into the hearts of their hearers, who were impressed by them in a way they had never been before. Truths they had heard a hundred times over, of which they had grown weary, acquired a freshness, a novelty, and a power that made them feel as if they heard them now for the first time. They felt inexpressible delight in that which aforetime had caused them no joy, and trembled under what till that moment had awakened no fear. Notorious profligates, men who had braved the brand of public opinion, or defied the penalties of the law, were under this influence bowed down, and melted into penitential tears. Thieves, drunkards, loose livers, and profane swearers suddenly awoke to a sense of the sin and shame of the courses they had been leading, condemned themselves as the chief of transgressors, trembled under the apprehension of a judgment to come, and uttered loud cries for forgiveness. Some who had lived years of miserable and helpless bondage to evil habits and flagrant vices, as if inspired by a sudden and supernatural force, rent their fetters, and rose at once to purity and virtue. Some of these converts fell back into their old courses, but in the case of the majority the change was lasting; and thousands who, but for this sudden transformation, would have been lost to themselves and to society, were redeemed to virtue, and lived lives which were not less profitable than beautiful. This influence was as calm as it was strong; those on whom it fell did not vent their feelings in enthusiastic expressions; the change was accompanied by a modesty and delicacy which for the time forbade disclosure; it was the judgment, not the passions, that was moved; it was the conscience, not the imagination, that was called into action; and as the stricken deer retires from the herd into some shady part of the forest, so these persons went apart, there to weep till the arrow had been plucked out, and a healing balm poured into the wound.

Even the men of the world were impressed with these tokens of the working of a supernatural influence. They could not resist the impression, even when they refused to avow it, that a Visitant whose dwelling, was not with men had come down to the earth, and was moving about in the midst of them. The moral character of whole towns, villages, and parishes was being suddenly changed; now it was on a solitary individual, and now on hundreds at once, that this mysterious influence made its power manifest; plain it was that in some region or other of the universe an Influence was resident, which had only to be unlocked, and to go forth among the dwellings of men, and human wickedness and oppression would dissolve and disappear as the winter’s ice melts at the approach of spring, and joy and singing would break forth as do blossoms and verdure when the summer’s sun calls them from their chambers in the earth.

One thing we must not pass over in connection with this movement: in at least its two chief centers [534] it was distinctly traceable to those ministers who had suffered persecution for their faithfulness under James VI. The locality where this revival first appeared was in Ayrshire, the particular spot being the well-watered valley of Stewarton, along which it spread from house to house for many miles. But it began not with the minister of the parish, an excellent man, but with Mr. Dickson, who was minister of the neighboring parish of Irvine. Mr. Dickson had zealously opposed the passing of the Articles of Perth; this drew upon him the displeasure of the prelates and the king; he was banished to the north of Scotland, and lived there some years, in no congenial society. On his return to his parish, a remarkable power accompanied his sermons; he never preached without effecting the conversion of one or, it might be, of scores. The market-day in the town of Irvine, where he was minister, was Monday; he began a weekly lecture on that day, that the country people might have an opportunity of hearing the Gospel. At the hour of sermon the market was forsaken, and the church was crowded; hundreds whom the morning had seen solely occupied with the merchandise of earth, before evening had become possessors of the heavenly treasure, and returned home to tell their families and neighbors what riches they had found, and invite them to repair to the same market, where they might buy wares of exceeding price “without money.” Thus the movement extended from day to day.[3]

The other center of this spiritual awakening was a hundred miles, or thereabout, away from Stewarton. It was Shorts, a high-lying spot, midway between the two cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Here, too, the movement took its rise with those who had been subjected to persecution for opposing the measures of the court. A very common-place occurrence originated that train of events which resulted in consequences so truly beneficial for Shorts and its neighborhood. The Marchioness of Hamilton and some ladies of rank happening to travel that road, their carriage broke down near the manse of the parish. The minister, Mr. Home, invited them to rest in his house till it should be repaired, when they could proceed on their journey. This gave them an opportunity of observing the dilapidated state of the manse, and in return for the hospitality they had experienced within its walls, they arranged for the building, at their own expense, of a new manse for the minister. He waited on the Marchioness of Hamilton to express his thanks, and to ask if there was anything he could do by which he might testify his gratitude. The marchioness asked only that she might be permitted to name the ministers who should assist him at the approaching celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Leave was joyfully given, and the marchioness named some of the more eminent of the ministers who had been sufferers, and for whose character and cause she herself cherished a deep sympathy. The first was the Venerable Robert Bruce, of Kinnaird, a man of aristocratic birth, majestic figure, and noble and fervid eloquence; the second was Mr. David Dickson, of whom we have already spoken; and the third was a young man, whose name, then unknown, was destined to be famous in the ecclesiastical annals of his country-Mr. John Livingstone. The rumor spread that these men were to preach at the Kirk of Shorts on occasion of the Communion, and when the day came thousands flocked from the surrounding country to hear them. So great was the impression produced on Sunday that the strangers who had assembled, instead of returning to their homes, formed themselves into little companies and passed the night on the spot in singing psalms and offering prayers. When morning broke and the multitude were still there, lingering around the church where yesterday they had been fed on heavenly bread, and seeming, by their unwillingness to depart, to seek yet again to eat of that bread, the ministers agreed that one of their number should preach to them. It had not before been customary to have a sermon on the Monday after the Communion. The minister to whom it fell to preach was taken suddenly ill; and the youngest minister present, Mr. John Livingstone, was appointed to take his place. Fain would he have declined the task; the thought of his youth, his unpreparedness, for he had spent the night in prayer and converse with some friends, the sight of the great multitude which had assembled in the churchyard, for no edifice could contain them, and the desires and expectations which he knew the people entertained, made him tremble as he stood up to address the assembly. He discoursed for an hour and a half on the taking away of the “heart of stone,” and the giving of a “heart of flesh,” and then he purposed to make an end; but that moment there came such a rush of ideas into his mind, and he felt so great a melting of the heart, that for a whole hour longer he ran on in a strain of fervent and solemn exhortation.[4]

Five hundred persons attributed their conversion to that sermon, the vast majority of whom, on the testimony of contemporary witnesses, continued

[3]Wodrow, Life of Dickson, Gillies, History Collections, book iii., chapter 2, pp. 182, 183; Kelso, 1845.

[4]Life of John Livingstone, i. 138, 139; Wodrow Society.

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steadfastly to their lives’ end in the profession of the truth; and seed was scattered throughout Clydesdale which bore much good fruit in after-years.[5] In memory of this event a thanksgiving service has ever since been observed in Scotland on the Monday after a Communion Sunday.

Thus the Scottish Vine, smitten by the tyranny of the monarch who had now gone to the grave, was visited and revived by a secret dew. From the high places of the State came edicts to blight it; from the chambers of the sky came a “plenteous rain” to water it. It struck its roots deeper, and spread its branches yet more widely over a land which it did not as yet wholly cover. Other and fiercer tempests were soon to pass over that goodly tree, and this strengthening from above was given beforehand, that when the great winds should blow, the tree, though shaken, might not be overturned.

[5]Select Biographies, vol. 1., p. 348; Wodrow Society.

Chapter 15: Charles I and Archbishop Laud; Religious Innovations

Basilicon Doron—A Defense of Arbitrary Government—Character of Charles I—His French Marriage—He Dissolves his Parliament—Imposes Taxes by his Prerogative—A Popish Hierarchy in England—Tonnage and Poundage—Ship-money—Archbishop Laud—His Character—His Consecration of St. Catherine Cree Church—His Innovations—The Protestant Press Gagged—Bishop Williams—The Puritans Exiled, etc—Preaching Restricted—The Book of Sports—Alarm and Gloom

Along with his crown, James VI bequeathed one other gift to his son, Charles I. As in the ancient story, this last was the fatal addition which turned all the other parts of the brilliant inheritance to evil. We refer to the Basilicon Doron. This work was composed by its royal author to supply the prince with a model on which to mold his character, and a set of maxims by which to govern when he came to the throne.

The two leading doctrines of the Basilicon Doron are,

1st, the Divine right of kings; and,

2nd, the anarchical and destructive nature of Presbyterianism.

The consequences that flow from these two fundamental propositions are deduced and stated with a fearless logic. “Monarchy,” says James, “is the true pattern of the Divinity; kings sit upon God’s throne on the earth; their subjects are not permitted to make any resistance but by flight, as we may see by the example of brute beasts and unreasonable creatures.” In support of his doctrine he cites the case of Elias, who under “the tyranny of Ahab made no rebellion, but fled into the wilderness;” and of Samuel, who, when showing the Israelites that their future king would spoil and oppress them, and lead them with all manner of burdens, gave them nevertheless no right to rebel, or even to murmur. In short, the work is an elaborate defense of arbitrary government, and its correlative, passive obedience.[1]

Under the head of Presbyterianism, the king’s doctrine is equally explicit. It is a form of Church government, he assures the prince, utterly repugnant to monarchy, and destructive of the good order of States, and only to be rooted up. “Parity?” he exclaims, “the mother of confusion, and enemy to unity.” “Take heed therefore, my son, to such Puritans, very pests in the Church and commonweal, whom no deserts can oblige, neither oaths or promises bind; breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason, and making their own imaginations, without any warrant of the Word, the square of their conscience. I protest before the great God, and since I am here as upon my testament it is no place for me to be in, that ye shall never find with any Highland or Border thieves greater ingratitude, and more lies and vile perjuries, than with these fanatic spirits; and suffer not the principals of them to brook your land, if ye like to sit at rest, except you would keep them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an evil wife.”[2] Such were the ethical and political creeds with which James VI descended into the grave, and Charles I mounted the throne. These maxims were more dangerous things in the

[1]The True Law of Free Monarchies; or, the Reciprock and Mutual Duty betwixt a Free King and his Natural Subjects. (No paging.) Edinburgh: printed by Robert Waldegrabe, printer to the King’s Majesty, 1603.

[2]Basilicon Doron, or, His Majesty’s Institutes to his dearest Son, Henry the Prince, pp. 41, 42. Edinburgh: printed by Robert Waldgrave, printer to the King’s Majesty, 1603.

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case of the son than in that of the father. Charles I had a stronger nature, and whatever was grafted upon it shot up more vigorously. His convictions went deeper, and were more stubbornly carried out. He had not around him the lets and poises that curbed James. There was no Andrew Melville among the prelates of the court of Charles I When baffled, he would cover his retreat under a dissimulation so natural and perfect that it looked like truth, and again he would return to his former design. His private character was purer and more respectable than that of his father, and his deportment more dignified, but his notions of his own prerogative were as exalted as his father’s had been. In this respect, the Basilicon Doron was his Bible. Kings were gods. All Parliaments, laws, charters, privileges, and rights had their being from the prince, and might at his good pleasure be put out of existence; and to deny this doctrine, or withstand its practical application, was the highest crime of which a subject could be guilty. There was but one man in all the three kingdoms who could plead right or conscience-namely, himself. Charles had not Presbyterianism to fight against in England, as his father had in Scotland, but he had another opponent to combat, even that liberty which lay at the core of Presbyterianism, and he pursued his conflict with it through a succession of tyrannies, doublings, blunders, and battle-fields, until he arrived at the scaffold.

We can touch upon the incidents of his reign only so far as they bear upon that Protestantism which was marching on through the plots of Jesuits, the armies of kings, the calamities of nations, and the scaffolds of martyrs, to seat itself upon a throne already great, and to become yet greater. The first error of Charles was his French marriage. This match was concluded on much the same conditions which his father had consented to when the Spanish marriage was in prospect. It allied Charles with a daughter of France and Rome; it admitted him, in a sense, within the circle of Popish sovereigns; it introduced a dominating Popish element into his councils, send into the education of his children. “The king’s marriage with Popery and France,” says Dr. Kennet, “was a more inauspicious omen than the great plague that signalised the first year of his reign.” His second error followed fast upon the first: it was the dissolution of his Parliament because it insisted upon a redress of grievances before it would vote him a supply of money. This spread discontent through the nation, and made Charles be distrusted by all his future Parliaments. His second Parliament was equally summarily dismissed, and for the same reason; it would vote no money till first it had obtained redress of grievances. Advancing from one great error to a yet greater, Charles proceeded to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. He exacted loans of such citizens as were wealthy, or were believed to be so, and many who opposed these unconstitutional imposts were thrown into prison. “The lord may tax his villain high or low,” said Sir Edward Coke, “but it is against the franchises of the land for freemen to be taxed but by their consent in Parliament.”

The nation next came to see that its religion was in as great danger as its liberty. In a third Parliament summoned at this time, the indignant feelings of the members found vent. In a conference between the Lords and Commons, Coke called the attention of the members to a Popish hierarchy which had been established in competition with the national Church. “They have,” says he, “a bishop consecrated by the Pope. This bishop hath his subaltern officers of all kinds; as vicars-general, arch-deans, rural-deans, etc. Neither are these titular officers, but they all execute their jurisdictions, and make their ordinary visitations through the kingdom, keep courts, and determine ecclesiastical causes; and, which is an argument of more consequence, they keep ordinary intelligence by their agents in Rome, and hold correspondence with the nuncios and cardinals, both in Brussels and in France. Neither are the seculars alone grown to this height, but the regulars are more active and dangerous, and have taken deep root. The have already planted their colleges and societies of both sexes. They have settled revenues, houses, libraries, vestments, and all other necessary provisions to travel or stay at home. They intend to hold a concurrent assembly with this Parliament.” This Parliament, like its predecessors, was speedily dissolved, and a hint was dropped that, seeing Parliaments understood so in the cardinal virtue of obedience, no more assemblies of that kind would be held.

Tyranny loves simplicity in the instrumentalities with which it works: such are swift and sure. Taking leave of his Parliaments, Charles governed by the prerogative alone. He could now tax his subjects whenever, and to whatever extent, it suited him. “Many unjust and scandalous projects, all very grievous,” says Clarendon, “were set on foot, the reproach of which came to the king, the profit to other men.”[3] Tonnage and poundage were imposed upon merchandise; new and heavy duties lettered trade; obsolete laws were revived-among

[3]History of the Rebellion, book 1., p. 67.

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others, that by which every man with 40 pounds of yearly rent was obliged to come and receive the order of knighthood; and one other device, specially vexatious, was hit upon, that of enlarging the royal forests beyond their ancient bounds, and fining the neighboring land-owners on pretense that they had encroached upon the royal domains, although their families had been in quiet possession for hundreds of years.

But the most odious and oppressive of these imposts was the project of “ship-money.” This tax was laid upon the port towns and the adjoining counties, which were required to furnish one or more fully equipped warships for his Majesty’s use. The City of London was required to furnish twenty ships, with sails, stores, ammunition, and guns, which, however, the citizens might commute into money; and seeing that what the king wanted was not so much ships to go to sea, as gold Caroli to fill his empty exchequer, the tax was more acceptable in the latter form than in the former. One injustice must be supported by another, and very commonly a greater. The Star Chamber and the High Commission Court followed, to enforce these exactions and protect the agents employed in them, whose work made them odious. These courts were a sort of Inquisition, into which the most loyal of the nation were dragged to be fleeced and tortured. Those who sat in them, to use the words applied by Thucydides to the Athenians, “held for honorable that which pleased, and for just that which profited.” The authority of religion was called in to sanction this civil tyranny. Sibthorpe and Mainwaring preached sermons at Whitehall, in which they advanced the doctrine that the king is not bound to observe the laws of the realm, and that his royal command makes loans and taxes, without consent of Parliament, obligatory upon the subject’s conscience upon pain of eternal damnation.[4]

The history of all nations justifies the remark that civil tyranny cannot maintain itself alongside religious liberty, and whenever it finds itself in the proximity of freedom of conscience, it must either extinguish that right, or suffer itself to be extinguished by it. So was it now. There presided at this time over the diocese of London a man of very remarkable character, destined to precipitate the crisis to which the king and nation were advancing. This was Laud, Bishop of London. Of austere manners, industrious habits, and violent zeal, and esteeming forms of so much the more value by how much they were in themselves insignificant, this ecclesiastic acquired a complete ascendancy in the councils of Charles. “If the king was greater on the throne than Laud,” remarks Bennet, “yet according to the word of Laud were the people ruled,” The extravagance of his folly at the consecration (January 16, 1630-31) of St. Catherine Cree Church, in Leadenhall Street, London, is thoroughly characteristic of the man. “At the bishop’s approach,” says Rushworth, “to the west door of the church, some that were prepared for it cried with a loud voice, ‘Open, open, ye everlasting doors, that the king of glory may come in.’ And presently the doors were opened, and the bishop, with three doctors, and many other principal men, went in, and immediately falling down upon his knees, with his eyes lifted up, and his arms spread abroad, uttered these words: ‘This place is holy, this ground is holy: in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy.’ Then he took up some of the dust and threw it up into the air several times in his going up towards the church. When they approached near to the rail and Communion table, the bishop bowed towards it several times, and returning they went round the church in procession, saying the Hundredth Psalm, after that the Nineteenth Psalm, and then said a form of prayer, ‘The Lord Jesus Christ,’ etc., and concluding, ‘We consecrate this church, and separate it to thee as holy ground, not to be profaned any more to common use.’ After this, the bishop, being near the Communion table, and taking a written book in his hand, pronounced curses upon those that should afterwards profane that holy place by musters of soldiers, or keeping profane law-courts, or carrying burdens through it; and at the end of every curse he bowed toward the east, and said, ‘Let all the people say, Amen.’ When the curses were ended, he pronounced a number of blessings upon all those that had any hand in framing and building of that sacred church, and those that had given, or should hereafter give, chalices, plate, ornaments, or utensils; and at the end of every blessing he bowed towards the east, saying, ‘Let all the people say, Amen,’ After this followed the sermon, which being ended, the bishop consecrated and administered the Sacrament in manner following. As he approached the Communion table he made several lowly bowings, and coming up to the side of the table where the bread and wine were covered, he bowed seven times. And then, after the reading of many prayers, he came near the bread, and gently lifted up the corner of the napkin wherein the bread was laid; and when he beheld the bread, he laid it down again, flew back a step or two, bowed three several times towards it; then he drew near again,

[4]Rushworth, vol. 1., p. 422. Hume, History, chapter 50. Bennet, Memorial, p. 154.

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and opened the napkin, and bowed as before. Then he laid his hand on the cup, which was full of wine, with a cover upon it, which he let go again, went back, and bowed thrice towards it. Then he came near again, and lifting up the cover of the cup, looked into it, and seeing the wine, he let fall the cover again, retired back, and bowed as before; then he received the Sacrament, and gave it to some principal men; after which, many prayers being said, the solemnity of the consecration ended.”[5]

Laud bent his whole energies to mold the religion and worship of England according to the views he entertained of what religion and worship ought to be, and these were significantly set forth in the scene we have just described. The bishop aimed, in short, at rescuing Christianity from the Gothicism of the Reformation, and bringing back the ancient splendors which had encompassed worship in the Greek and Roman temples. When Archbishop of Canterbury, he proceeded to reform his diocese, but not after the manner of Cranmer. He erected a rail around the Communion table, and issued peremptory orders that the prebends and chapter, as they came in and out of the choir, “should worship towards the altar.” He provided candlesticks, tapers, and copes for the administration of the Sacrament. He set up a large crucifix above “the high altar,” and filled the window of the chapel with a picture representing God the Father, with a glory round his head.

Such of the clergy as refused to fall into his humor, and imitate his fancies, he prosecuted as guilty of schism, and rebels against ecclesiastical government. Those who spoke against images and crucifixes were made answerable in the Star Chamber, as persons ill-affected towards the discipline of the Church of England and were fined, suspended, and imprisoned. He made use of forms of prayer taken from the Mass-book and Roman Pontifical; “as if he wished,” says one, “to try how much of a Papist might be brought in without Popery.” There were some who said that the archbishop was at no great pains to make any wide distinction between the two; and if distinction there was, it was so very small that they were unable to see it at Rome; for, as Laud himself tells us in his Diary, the Pope twice over made him the offer of a red hat.

It added to the confusion in men’s minds to find that, while the Protestants were severely handled in the Star Chamber and High Commission Court, Papists were treated with the utmost tenderness. While the former were being fined and imprisoned, favors and caresses were showered on the latter. It was forbidden to write against Popery. The Protestant press was gagged. Fox’s Book of Martyrs could not appear; the noble defenses of Jewell and Willet were refused license; Mr. Gillabrand, professor of mathematics in Gresham College, was prosecuted for inserting in his Almanack the names of the Protestant martyrs out of Fox, instead of those of the Roman calendar; while the archbishop’s chaplain licensed a book in which the first Reformers, who had died at the stake, were stigmatized as traitors and rebels.

Dr. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, had been the warmest and most powerful of Laud’s patrons; but all his past services were forgotten when Williams wrote a book against the archbishop’s innovations. The solid learning and sound logic of the book were offence greater than could be condoned by all the favors conferred on Laud in former years; the good bishop had to pay a fine of 10,000 pounds to the king, was suspended by the Court of High Commission from all his dignities, offices, and functions, and sentenced to imprisonment during the king’s pleasure. The Puritans were compelled to transport themselves beyond seas, and seek in America the toleration denied them in England. The Dutch and French Protestant congregations, which had flourished in the nation since the days of Edward VI, had their liberties all but entirely swept away. Such of their members, within the diocese of Canterbury, as had been born abroad, were permitted to retain their own form of worship, but all of them who had been born in England were commanded to repair to their own parish churches, and preparation was made for the ultimate extinction of their communities by the injunction to bring up their children in the use of the English Liturgy, which for that end was now translated into French and Dutch.

The scaffold was not yet set up, but short of this every severity was employed which might compel the nation to worship according to the form prescribed by the king and the archbishop. Prynne, a member of the bar; Bastwick, a physician; and Burton, a divine, were sentenced in the Star Chamber to stand in the pillory, to lose their ears at Palace Yard, Westminster, to pay a fine of 500 pounds each to the king, and to be imprisoned during life. The physician had written a book which was thought to reflect upon the hierarchy of the Church; the clergyman had attacked the innovations in a sermon which he preached on the 5th of November; and the lawyer, who was held the arch-offender, had sharply reprobated stage-plays, to which the queen was said to be greatly addicted.

[5]Rushworth, vol. 2., pp. 76,77. Welwood, p. 275.

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One sermon each Sunday was held to be sufficient for the instruction of the people; and afternoon and evening preaching was stringently forbidden. That the parishioners might fill up the vacant time, and forget as speedily as possible what they had heard in church, the “Book of Sports” put forth by King James was re-enacted, and every Sunday turned into a wake. James had enjoined that “his good people be not let from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, etc., though none must have this indulgence that abstain from coming to church.” And Charles “out of the like pious care for the service of God,” it was said, “and for suppressing of any humors that oppose truth, doth ratify and publish this his blessed father’s declaration.” All ministers were enjoined to read this edict from the pulpit during the time of Divine service, and several were visited with suspension for refusing obedience.

Alarm and discontent, with a smoldering spirit of insurrection, the consequences of this policy, pervaded all England. The more the position of the country was considered, the greater the peril was seen to be. Slavish principles were being disseminated in the nation; the ancient laws of England were being subverted by the edicts of arbitrary power; privileges and rights conveyed by charter, and hallowed by long custom, were being buried under unconstitutional exactions; the spirit of the people was broken by cruel and shameful punishments; superstitious rites were displacing the pure and Scriptural forms which the Reformation had introduced; and a civil and ecclesiastical tyranny was rearing its head in the land. Nor was the darkness of the outlook relieved by the prospect of any one, sufficiently powerful, rising up to rally the nation around him, and rescue it from the abyss into which it appeared to be descending. It was at this moment that an occurrence took place in Scotland which turned the tide in affairs, and brought deliverance to both kingdoms. This recalls us to the northern country. [541]

Chapter 16: The National Covenant and Assembly of 1638

Preparations in Scotland for introducing Prelacy—The King’s Commission to Archbishop Laud?The Book of Canons sent down to Scotland—The New Liturgy—Indignation in Scotland—The First Reading of the Liturgy—Tumult—The Dean Assailed in the Pulpit—He Flees—The Bishop Mobbed—Charles’s Resolve to Force the Canons and Liturgy upon the Scots—Their Resistance—The Four Tables—The National Covenant Framed—Its Provisions—Sworn in the Grayfriars’ Church—Solemnity of the Scene—Alarm of the Bishops and the Court—The General Assembly at Glasgow, 1638—The Assembly Overthrows Prelacy

Picture: Archbishop Laud.

Picture: Janet Geddes Flinging her Stool at the Dean of Edinburgh

We have noted the several steps by which James VI advanced his cherished project of planting prelacy in Scotland. First came an order of Tulchan bishops. These men were without jurisdiction, and, we may add, without stipend; their main use being to convey the Church’s patrimony to their patrons. In 1610 the Tulchan bishop disappeared, and the bishop ordinary took his place. Under cover of a pretended Assembly which met that year in Glasgow, diocesans with jurisdiction were introduced into the Church of Scotland; and a Court of High Commission was set up for ordering causes ecclesiastical. In 1618 some conclusions agreeable to the English Church were passed at Perth. In 1617 an Act was passed in Parliament to this effect, “That whatever his Majesty should determine in the external government of the Church, with the advice of the archbishop, bishops, and a competent [542] number of the ministry, should have the strength of a law.” James VI had made a beginning, Charles I with the help of his primate purposed to make an end. It is necessary, in order to a true insight into the struggle that followed, to bear in mind what we have already explained, that with their form of Church government were bound up the civil rights of the Scots, since, owing to the recent redemption of the nation from feudalism, the conservator of its liberties was not the Parliament as in England, but the Kirk.

The Scottish bishops, in a letter to Laud, expressed a wish for a nearer conformity with the Church of England, adding for the primate’s satisfaction that their countrymen shared with them in this wish. If they really believed what they now affirmed, they were grievously mistaken. The flower of their ministers banished, and their places filled by men who possessed neither learning nor piety, the Scottish people cherished mournfully the memory of former times, and only the more disliked, the longer they knew it, the prelacy which was being thrust upon them. But the wishes of the people, one way or other, counted for little with the king. His Grace of Canterbury was bidden try his hand at framing canons for the government of the Scottish Church, and a Liturgy for her worship. The primate, nothing loth, addressed himself to the congenial task. The Book of Canons was the first-fruits of his labours. Its key-note was the unlimited power and supremacy of the king. It laid the ax at the root of liberty, both in Chuch and State. Next came the Liturgy, of which every minister was enjoined to provide himself with four copies for the use of his church on pain of deprivation. When the Liturgy was examined it was found to be alarmingly near to the Popish breviary, and in some points, particularly the Communion Service, it borrowed the very words of the Mass Book.[1] The 23rd of July, 1637, was fixed on for beginning the use of the new Service Book.

As the day approached it began to be seen that it would not pass without a tempest. This summons to fall down and worship as the king should direct, roused into indignation the sons of the men who had listened to Knox, and who saw the system being again set up which their fathers, under the leading of their great Reformer, had cast down. Some of the bishops were alarmed at these manifestations, well knowing the spirit of their countrymen, and counseled the king, with a tempest in the air, not to think of rearing his new edifice, but to wait the return of calmer times. The headstrong monarch, urged on by his self-willed primate, would not listen to this prudent advice. The Liturgy must be enforced.

The day arrived. On the morning of Sunday, the 23rd July, about eight of the clock, the reader appeared in the desk of St. Giles’s and went over the usual prayers, and having ended, said, with tears in his eyes, “Adieu, good people, for I think this is the last time I shall ever read prayers in this church.” The friends of the new service heard in this last reading the requiem of the Protestant worship. At the stated hour, the Dean of Edinburgh, clad in canonicals, appeared to begin the new service. A vast crowd had assembled, both within and without the church, and as the dean, Liturgy in hand, elbowed his way, and mounted the stairs to the desk, the scene was more animated than edifying. He had hardly begun to read when a frightful clamor of voices rose round him. His tones were drowned and his composure shaken. Presently he was startled by the whizz of a missile passing dangerously near his ear, launched, as tradition says, by Janet Geddes, who kept a stall in the High Street, and who, finding nothing more convenient, flung her stool at the dean, with the objurgation, “Villain, dost thou say mass at my lug?” The dean shut the obnoxious book, hastily threw off the surplice, which had helped to draw the tempest upon him, and fled with all speed. The Bishop of Edinburgh, who was present, thinking, perhaps, that the greater dignity of his office would procure him more reverence from the crowd, ascended the pulpit, and exerted himself to pacify the tumult, and continue the service. His appearance was the signal for a renewal of the tempest, which grew fiercer than ever. He was saluted with cries of “A Pope-a Pope-Antichrist! Pull him down!” He managed to escape from the pulpit so his coach, the magistrates escorting him home to defend him from the fury of the crowd, which was composed mostly of the baser sort.

If the hatred which the Scottish people entertained of the Liturgy had found vent only in unpremeditated tumults, the king would have triumphed in the end; but along with this effervescence on the surface there was a strong and steady current flowing underneath; and the intelligent determination which pervaded all ranks shaped itself into well-considered measures. The Privy Council of Scotland, pausing before the firm attitude assumed by the nation, sent a representation to the king of the true state of feeling in Scotland. The reply of Charles was more insolent

[1]The Books of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other parts of Divine Service, for the use of the Church of Scotland. Edinburgh, 1637.

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than ever: the new Liturgy must be brought into use; and another proclamation was issued to that effect, branding with treason all who opposed it. This was all that was needed thoroughly to rouse the spirit of the Scots, which had slumbered these thirty years, and to band them together in the most resolute resistance to a tyranny that seemed bent on the utter destruction of their liberties. Noblemen, gentlemen, and burgesses flocked from all the cities and shires of the Lowlands to Edinburgh, to concert united action. Four committees, termed “Tables,” were formed?one for the nobility, one for the barons, a third for the boroughs, and a fourth for the Church. These submitted proposals to a General Table, which consisted of commissioners from the other four, and decided finally on the measures to be adopted. The issue of their deliberations was a unanimous resolution to renew the National Covenant of Scotland. This expedient had been adopted at two former crises, and on both occasions it had greatly helped to promote union and confidence among the friends of liberty, and to disconcert its enemies; and the like effects were expected to follow it at this not less momentous crisis. The Covenant was re-cast, adapted to the present juncture, and subscribed with great solemnity in the Grayfriars’ Church at Edinburgh, on the 1st of March, 1638.

The “underscribed” noblemen, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers, and commons promised and swore, “all the days of our life constantly to adhere unto and to defend the true religion;” and to labor by all means lawful to recover the purity and liberty of the Gospel as it was established and professed” before the introduction of the late innovations; and that we shall defend the same, and resist all these contrary errors and corruption, according to our vocation, and to the utmost of that power which God hath put into our hands, all the days of our life.” The Covenant further pledged its swearers to support “the king’s majesty,” and one another, in the defense and preservation of the aforesaid true religion, liberties, and laws of the kingdom.”

It will not be denied that nations are bound to defend their religion and liberties; and surely, if they see cause, they may add to the force of this duty the higher sanctions of vows and oaths. In doing so they invest the cause of patriotism with the sacredness of religion. This was what the Scots did on this occasion, which is one of the great events of their history. From the Grampian chain, which shut out the Popish north, to the Tweed, which parts on the south their country from England, the nation assembled in the metropolis, one sentiment animating the whole mighty multitude, and moving them all towards one object, and that object the highest and holiest conceivable. For, great and sacred as liberty is, liberty in this case was but the means to an end still loftier and more sacred, namely the pure service of the Eternal King. This added unspeakable solemnity to the transaction. God was not merely a witness, as in other oaths. He was a party. On the one side was the Scottish nation; on the other was the Sovereign of heaven and earth: the mortal entered into a covenant with the Eternal: the finite allied itself with the Infinite. So did the Scots regard it. They stood on the steps of the Divine throne as they lifted up their hands to swear to the Lord, the everlasting God.” A scene like this stamps, as with photographic stroke, the impress of its grandeur upon a nation’s character, and the memory of it abides as a creative influence in after-generations.

Let us view the scene a little more nearly. The hour was yet early when a stream of persons began to flow towards the Church of the Gray Friars. No one fabric could contain a nation, and the multitude overflowed and covered the churchyard. All ranks and ages were commingled in that assembly?the noble and the peasant, the patriarch and the stripling. One fire burned in all hearts, and the glow of one enthusiasm lighted up all faces. The proceedings of the day were opened with a confession of national sins. Then followed a sermon. The Covenant was then read by Sir Archibald Johnston, afterwards Lord Warriston. He it was who had drafted the bond, and few then living could have taught Scotland so fittingly the words in which to bind herself to the service of the God of heaven. There was breathless silence in the great assembly while the Covenant, so reverent in spirit, and so compendious and appropriate in phraseology, was being read. Next the Earl of London, considered the most eloquent man of his age, rose, and with sweet and persuasive voice exhorted the people to steadfastness in the oath. Alexander Henderson, who not unworthy filled the place which Andrew Melville had held among the ministers, led the devotions of the assembly. With solemn awe and rapt emotion did he address “the high and lofty One” with whom the Scottish nation essayed to enter into covenant, “the vessels of clay with the Almighty Potter.” The prayer ended, there was again a pause. The profound stillness lasted for a minute or two, when the Earl of Sutherland was seen to rise and step forward to the table. Lifting up his right hand, he swore the oath; and taking the pen, the first of all the Scottish nation, he affixed his name to the Covenant. Noble followed noble, [544] swearing with uplifted hand, and subscribing. The barons, the ministers, the burgesses, thousands of every age and rank subscribed and swore. The vast sheet was filled with names on both sides, and subscribers at last could find room for only their initials. The solemn enthusiasm tht filled the assembled thousands found varied expression: some wept aloud, others shouted as on a field of battle, and others opened their veins and subscribed with their blood.

This transaction, which took place in the Gray-friars’ Churchyard at Edinburgh, on the 1st of March, 16313, was the opening scene of a struggle that drew into its vortex both kingdoms, that lasted fifty years, and that did not end till the Stuarts had been driven from the throne, and William of Orange raised to it. It was this that closed all the great conflicts of the sixteenth century. By the stable political position to which it elevated Protestantism, and the manifold influences of development and propagation with which it surrounded it, this conflict may be said to have crowned as well as closed all the struggles that went before it.

“To this much-vilified bond,” says a historic writer, “every true Scotsman ought to look back with as much reverence as Englishmen do to Magna Charta.”[2] It is known by all who are acquainted with this country,” say the nobility, etc., in their Remonstrance, “that almost the whole kingdom standeth to the defense of this cause, and that the chiefest of the nobles, barons, and burgesses [the subscribers] are honoured in the places where they live for religion, wisdom, power, and wealth, answerable to the condition of this kingdom.”[3] The opposing party were few in numbers, they were weak in all the elements of influence and power, and the only thing that gave them the least importance was their having the king on their side. The prelates were thunderstruck by the bold measure of the Covenanters. When Spottiswood, Archbishop of St. Andrews, heard that the National Covenant had been sworn, he exclaimed in despair, “Now all that we have been doing these thirty years byepast is at once thrown down.” Nor was the court less startled when the news reached it. Charles saw all his visions of arbitrary power vanishing. “So long as this Covenant is in force,” said the king to Hamilton, “I have no more power in Scotland than a Duke of Venice.”[4] Promises, concessions, threats, were tried by turns to break the phalanx of Scottish patriots which had been formed in the Gray Friars’ Churchyard, but it refused to dissolve.[5] Their Covenant bound them to be loyal to the king, but only while he governed according to law. Charles placed himself above the law, and was at that moment making preparations to carry out by force of arms the extravagant notions he entertained of his prerogative. To this tyranny the Scots were resolved not to yield. “We know no other bands between a king and his subjects,” said the Earl of London to the royal commissioner, “but those of religion and the laws. If these are broken, men’s lives are not dear to them.” It was not long till the echoes of these bold words came back in thunder from all parts of Scotland.

The king at last found himself obliged to convoke a free General Assembly, which was summoned to meet at Glasgow on the 21st of November, 1638. It was the first free Assembly which had met for forty years; the Marquis of Hamilton was sent down as commissioner, he came with secret instructions which, had he been able to carry them out, would have made the meeting of the Assembly of no avail as regarded the vindication of the national liberties. Hamilton was instructed to take care of the bishops and see that their dignities and powers were not curtailed, and generally so to manage as that the Assembly should do only what might be agreeable to the king, and if it should show itself otherwise minded it was to be dissolved. The battle between the king and the Assembly turned mainly on the question of the bishops. Had the Assembly power to depose from office an order of men disallowed by the Presbyterian Church, and imposed on it by an extrinsic authority? It decided that it had. That was to sweep away the king’s claim to ecclesiastical supremacy, and along with it the agents by whom he hoped to establish both ecclesiastical and civil supremacy in Scotland. Hamilton strenuously resisted this decision. He was met by the firmness, tact, and eloquence of the moderator, Alexander Henderson. The commissioner promised, protested, and at last shed tears. All was in vain; the Assembly, unmoved, proceeded to depose the bishops.

[2]Aikman, History of Scotland, vol. 3., p. 453; Glasglow, 1848.

[3]Remonstance of the Nobility, Barons, etc., February 27, 1639, p. 14.

[4]Burnet, Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton, p. 60.

[5]Prince Bismarck, in a letter now before us, of date February 21, 1875, addressed to Messrs. Fair and Smith, Edinburgh, who had sent his Excellency a copy of the National Covenant, says: “From my earliest reading of history, I well remember that one of these events that more particularly affected my feelings used to be the Covenant?the spectacle of a loyal people united with their king in a solemn bond to resist the same ambitions of foreign priesthood we have to fight at the present day.”

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To avert the blow, so fatal to the king’s projects, Hamilton rose, and in the king’s name, as head of the Church, dissolved the Assembly, and discharged its further proceedings.

The crisis was a great one; for the question at issue was not merely whether Scotland should have free Assemblies, but whether it should have free Parliaments, free laws, and free subjects, or whether all these should give way and the king’s sole and arbitrary prerogative should come in their room. The king’s act dissolving the Assembly was illegal; for neither the constitution nor the law of Scotland gave him supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs; and had the Assembly broken up, the king’s claim would have been acknowledged, and the liberties of the country laid at the feet of the tyrant.

The commissioner took his leave; but hardly had his retreating figure vanished at the door of the Assembly, when the officer entered with lights, and a protest, which had been prepared beforehand, was read, in which the Assembly declared that “sitting in the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only head and monarch of his Church, it could not dissolve.” The members went on with their business as if nothing had occurred. They proceeded to try the bishops, fourteen in number, who were charged with not a few moral as well as ecclesiastical delinquencies. The two archbishops and six bishops were excommunicated?four deposed and two suspended. Thus the fabric of prelacy, which had been thirty years a-building, was overturned, and the Church of Scotland restored to the purity and rigor of her early days.

When its thorough and memorable work was finished, the Assembly was dismissed by the moderator with these remarkable words: “We have now cast down the walls of Jericho; let him that rebuildeth them beware of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite!”

The Reformed Church of Scotland uprose in new power; the schemes of tyrants who had hoped to plant arbitrary power upon its ruins were baffled; and the nation hailed its recovered liberties with a shout of joy.

Chapter 17: Civil War—Solemn League—Westminster Assembly

War with the Scots—Charles sends a Fleet and Army—The Scots March to the Border—Treaty of Peace—Violated by the King—Second War with the Scots—Charles Defeated—Makes Peace—Church of Scotland has Rest—The Long Parliament—Grievances—Concessions of Charles—Irish Massacre—Suspected Complicity of the King—Execution of Strafford and Laud—Civil War in England—Scotland Joins England—Solemn League—Summary of its Principles—Sworn to by the Parliament of England—The Westminster Assembly—Its General Appearance—Its Individual Members—Frames a Form of Church Government and Confession of Faith—Influence of these Documents

Picture: The Swearing and Subscribing of the National Covenant in Greyfriars’ Churchyard, Edinburgh

The Scots had initiated their rebellion by swearing the National Covenant, and they crowned it by continuing to sit in Assembly after the royal commissioner had ordered them to dissolve. In the opinion of Charles I nothing remained to him but the last resort of kings? the sword. In April, 1640, the king summoned a Parliament to vote him supplies for a war with the Scots. But the Lords and Commons, having but little heart for a war of Laud’s kindling, and knowing moreover that to suppress the rights of Scotland was to throw down one of the main ramparts around their own liberties, refused the money which the king asked for. Charles had recourse to his prerogative, and called upon the bishops to furnish the help which the laity withheld. Less lukewarm than the Parliament, the clergy raised considerable sums in the various dioceses. The queen addressed a letter to the Roman Catholics, who were far from being indifferent spectators of the quarrel between the king and his northern subjects. They willingly contributed to the war, and as the result of the joint subsidy Charles raised an army, and marched to the Scottish Border; he ordered a fleet to blockade the Frith of Forth, and he sent the Marquis of Hamilton with a body of troops to co-operate with Huntly, who had unfurled the standard on the king’s side in the North.

The Scots were not taken unawares by the king’s advance. They knew that he was preparing to invade them. They had sworn their Covenant, and they were as ready to shed their blood in fulfillment [546] of their oath as they had been to subscribe their names. Thirty thousand able-bodied yeomen offered themselves for the service of their country. They were marshaled and drilled by General Leslie, a veteran soldier, who had acquired skill and won renown in the wars of Gustavus Adolphus. Hardly had their preparations been completed when the bonfire, which was to announce the arrival of the invading force, summoned them to battle. Charles’s fleet appeared at the mouth of the Forth; but the Scots mustered in such numbers on the shore that not a man, could land. The main body of the army, under Leslie, in their uniforms of olive or gray plaiden, with a knot of blue ribbons in their bonnets, had meanwhile marched to the Border. Their progress was a victorious one, for it was the flower of the Scots that were in arms, whereas the English soldiers had little heart for fighting. Negotiations were opened between the king and the Scots at Dunse Law, a pyramidal hill that rises near the town of that name, on the north of the Tweed. A treaty of peace was concluded, and, though its terms were neither clear nor ample, the Scots in the excess of their loyalty accepted it. They fought for neither lands nor laurels, but for the peaceable practice of their religion and the quiet enjoyment of their civil rights, under the scepter of their native prince. “Had our throne been void,” says an eye-witness, “and our voices sought for the filling of Fergus’ chair, we would have died ere any one had sitten down on that fatal marble but Charles alone.”[1]

This devoted loyalty on the one side was repaid with persistent perfidy on the other. Next year (1640) Charles anew denounced the Scots as rebels, and prepared to invade them. Not waiting this time till the king’s army should be on the Border, the Scots at once unfurled the blue banner of the Covenant, entered England, encountered the king’s forces at Newburn on the Tyne, and discomfited them, almost without striking a blow. The victors took possession of the towns of Newcastle and Durham, and levied contributions from the whole of Northumberland. Meanwhile the king lay at York; his army was dispirited, his nobles were lukewarm; he was daily receiving letters from London, urging him to make peace with the Scots, and he was persuaded at last to attempt extricating himself from the labyrinth into which his rashness and treachery had brought him, by opening negotiations with the Scots at Ripon. The treaty was afterwards transferred to London. Thus had the king brought the fire into England.

The Church of Scotland had rest for twenty years (1640-1660). The Scots had repelled the edicts and the soldiers of an arbitrary monarch, for though chivalrously loyal to their kings, they would give them no obedience but such as it was meet for freemen to render; and Scotland being again mistress of herself, her General Assemblies continued to meet, her Presbyterian Church government was administered, her flocks were supplied with faithful and diligent pastors, some of whom were distinguished by learning and genius, and vital Christianity flourished. The only drawback to the prosperity of the country was the raids of Montrose, who, professing a zeal for the king’s interests, stained indelibly his own character for humanity and honour, by ravaging many parts of his native land with fire and sword. All the while there raged a great storm in England, and the northern country was too near the scene of strife not to feel the swell of the tempest. Nor could Scotland regard her own rights as secure so long as those of England were in question. It was her own quarrel mainly which had been transferred into the sister kingdom, and she felt called upon to contribute what help she could, by mediation or by arms, to bring the controversy between the king and the Parliament to a right issue. The poise of the conflict was in the hands of the Scots; for, balanced as parties then were in England, whichever side the Scots should espouse would be almost certain of victory. Could they hesitate to say whether Popery or Protestantism should be established in England, when by the triumph of the latter a bulwark would be raised against the advancing tide of despotism which was then threatening all Europe? A strange concurrence of events had thrown the decision of that question into the hands of the Scots; how they decided it, we shall see immediately.

In November, 1640, a Parliament met at Westminster. It is known in history as the Long Parliament. The grievances under which the nation groaned were boldly discussed in it. The laws were infringed; religion was being changed, and evil counselors surrounded the throne; such were the complaints loudly urged in this assembly. Wisdom, eloquence, patriotism, were not lacking to that Parliament; it included the great names of Hyde and Falkland, and Digby, and others; but all this could not prevent a rupture between the king and the people, which widened every day till at last the breach was irreparable. The king’s two favorites, Strafford and Laud, were impeached and brought to the block. The Star Chamber and High Commission Court were abolished. Ship-money,

[1]Baillie, Letters, vol., i., p. 215.

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and other illegal imposts, the growth of recent years of despotism, were swept away; and the spirit of reform seemed even to have reached the throne, and made a convert of the king. In his speech on the 25th of January, 1641, the king said, “I will willingly and cheerfully concur with you for the reformation of all abuses, both in Church and commonwealth, for my intention is to reduce all things to the best and purest times, as they were in the days of Queen Elizabeth.” The olive-branch was held out to even the Presbyterians of Scotland. Charles paid a visit at this time to his ancient kingdom, for the end, as he assured his Parliament of Scotland, “of quieting the distractions of his kingdom;” for, said he, “I can do nothing with more cheerfulness than to give my people a general satisfaction.” And, by way of seconding these promises with deeds, he ratified the National Covenant which had been sworn in 1638, and made it law. The black clouds of war seemed to be roiling away; the winds of faction were going down in both countries; the biting breath of tyranny had become sweet, and the monarch who had proved false a score of times was now almost trusted by his rejoicing subjects.

The two kingdoms were now, as a speaker in the English Parliament expressed it, “on the vertical point.” The scales of national destiny hung evenly poised between remedy and ruin. It was at this moment that terrible tidings arrived from Ireland, by which these fair prospects were all at once overcast. We refer to the Irish Massacre. This butchery was only less horrible than that of St. Bartholomew, if indeed it did not equal it. The slaughter of the Protestants by the Roman Catholics commenced on the 23rd of October, 1641, and continued for several months; forty thousand, on the lowest estimate, were murdered; many writers say from two hundred to three hundred thousand. The northern parts of Ireland were nearly depopulated; and the slaughter was accompanied by all those disgusting and harrowing cruelties which marked similar butcheries in the Waldensian valleys. The persons concerned in this atrocity pleaded the king’s authority, and produced Charles’s commission with his broad seal attached to it. There is but too much ground for the dark suspicion that the king was privy to this fearful massacre;[2] but what it concerns us to note here is that this massacre, occurring at this juncture, powerfully and fatally influenced the future course of affairs, revived the former suspicions of the king’s sincerity, kindled into a fiercer flame the passions that had seemed expiring, and hurried the king and the nation onwards at accelerated speed to a terrible catastrophe.

Charles, on his return to England, was immediately presented with the famous Petition and Remonstrance of the State of the Nation. This was no agreeable welcome home. Dark rumors began to circulate that the court was tampering with the army in the North, with a view to bringing it to London to suppress the Parliament. The House provided a guard for its safety. These the king dismissed, and appointed his own train-bands in their room. The members felt that they were not legislators, but prisoners. The king next denounced five of the leading members of Parliament as traitors, and went in person to the House with an armed following to apprehend them. Happily, the five members had left before the king’s arrival, otherwise the civil war might have broken out there and then. The House voted that a great breach of privilege had been committed. Immediately London bristled with mobs, and the precincts of Whitehall resounded with cries for justice. These tumults, said the king, “were not like a storm at sea, which yet wants not its terror, but like an earthquake, shaking the very foundation of all, than which nothing in the world hath more of horror.”[3] The king withdrew to Hampton Court.

Confidence was now at an end between Charles and the Parliament; and the Jesuits, who were plentifully scattered through England, by inflaming the passions on both sides, took care that it should not be restored. After some time spent in remonstrances, messages, and answers, the king marched to Hull, where was store of all kinds of arms, the place having been made a magazine in the war against the Scots. At the gates, Charles was refused entrance by the governor, Sir John Hotham, who held the city for the Parliament. Pronouncing him a traitor, the king turned away and directed his course to Nottingham.[4] There on the 22nd of August, 1642, Charles set up his standard, which, as Lord Clarendon takes note, was blown down the same night, nor could it be replaced till two days thereafter, from the violence of the storm then blowing. It was a worse omen that comparatively few assembled to that standard. The king now issued his summons to the gentlemen of the North

[2]The facts on this head given in Bennet’s Memorial, pp. 194, 195; Calamy’s Life of Baxter, p. 143; and Reid’s History of Presb. Church in Ireland, vol. 2., p. 303, leave little doubt that the king and the Irish Roman Catholics understood one another.

[3]Eikon Basilike; the Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings. Page 15. London, 1649.

[4]Ibid., p. 42.

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to meet him at York. The word, “To your tents, O Israel,” had gone forth; the civil war had commenced.

This recalls us once more to Scotland. The two kingdoms were at that moment threatened with a common peril, and this summoned them to a common duty. That duty was to unite for their mutual defense. They looked around them for a basis on which they might combine, each feeling that to let the other sink was to betray its own safety. The ground ultimately chosen was partly civil and partly religious, and necessarily so, seeing that the quarrel conjoined inseparably the two interests. The bond of alliance finally adopted was the Solemn League and Covenant. Whether we approve or disapprove of its form, it was in its substance undeniably lawful and even necessary, being for the defense of religion and liberty; and in its issue it saved the liberties of Great Britain.

There is a prevalent idea that the Solemn League and Covenant was a merely religious bond, the device of an exclusive and sour Presbyterianism

- a propagandist measure, promoted mainly by propagandist zealots. Nothing could be farther from the truth of history. The Solemn League was the matured and compendious deliverance of the people of England and Scotland on the great question of civil and religious liberty, as it stood in that age; and it put into shape the practical steps which it behoved the two nations to take, if they would retain the blessings of a free Government and a Protestant Church. This bond was framed with much care by the Scottish Parliament and the General Assembly of the Scottish Church, with the concurrence and assistance of the English commissioners who were sent down for that purpose. It was heartily accepted by the ablest statesmen, the most learned divines, and by the whole body of the Protestant people in both England and Scotland. The analysis which Hallam has given of this famous document is remarkably concise and eminently fair. We quote the yet more compendious statement of its provisions by another historical writer, who says: “Looking at both Covenants [the National and the Solemn League], and treating them as one document, the principles therein embodied were the following -

1. 1. Defense of Reformed Presbyterian religion in Scotland.

2. 2. Promotion of uniformity among the Churches of the three kingdoms.

3. 3. Extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, and all unsound forms of religion.

4. 4. Preservation of Parliaments, and of the liberties of the people.

5. 5. Defense of the sovereign in his maintaining the Reformed religion, the Parliaments, and the liberties of the people.

6. 6. Discovery and punishment of malignants, and disturbers of the peace and welfare of the nations.

7. 7. Mutual defense and protection of each individually, and of all jointly, who were within the bonds of the Covenant.

8. 8. Sincere and earnest endeavor to set an example before the world of public, personal, and domestic virtue and godliness.[5]

The signing of the Solemn League by the Scottish Convention of Estates and the General Assembly recalled the memorable scene transacted in the Grayfriars’ Churchyard in 1638. Tears rolled down the face of the aged as they took the pen to subscribe, while the younger testified by their shouts or their animated looks to the joy with which they entered into the bond. In the City of London the spectacle was scarcely less impressive, but more novel. On the 25th of September, 1643, the two Houses of Parliament, with the Assembly of Divines, including the Scottish Commissioners, now sitting at Westminster, met in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, and after sermon the Solemn League was read, article by article, the members standing uncovered, and swearing to it with uplifted hands. Afterwards, Alexander Henderson, who presided over the famous assembly at Glasgow, delivered an address ending with these words-“Did the Pope at Rome know what is this day transacting in England, and were this Covenant written on the plaster of the wall over against him, where he sitteth, Belshazzar-like, in his sacrilegious pomp, it would make his heart to tremble, his countenance to change, his head and mitre to shake, his joints to loose, and all his cardinals and prelates to be astonished.” The Scots followed up their Covenant by sending an army into England to assist the Parliament against the royal forces. While the controversy is finding its way to an issue through the bloody fields of the civil war, we must turn for a little space to a more peaceful scene.

These civil convulsions, which owed their origin in so large a degree to the innovations and ceremonies of Laud, led many in England to ask whether the National Church had been placed under the best form of government, and whether something more simple than the lordly and complicated regime enacted by Elizabeth might not be more conservative of the purity of the Church and the liberties of the nation? Might it not, they said, be better to complete our Reformation more on the model of the other Protestant Churches of

[5]Dodds, The Fifty Years’’ Struggle; or, the Scottish Covenanters. Pages 41,42. London, 1868.

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Christendom? The Scots, too, in their negotiations with them in 1640 and 1641, had represented to them how much a “nearer conformity” in worship and discipline would tend to cement the union between the two kingdoms. If the Reformation had brought the two nations together, a yet greater accord in ecclesiastical matters would make their union still stronger, and more lasting. There was profound policy in these views in an age when nations were so powerfully influenced by the principle of religion. From this and other causes the question of Church government was being very anxiously discussed in England; pamphlets were daily issuing from the press upon it; the great body of the Puritans had become Presbyterians; and in 1642, when the royal standard was set up at Nottingham, and the king unsheathed the sword of civil war, the Parliament passed an Act abolishing prelacy; and now came the question, what was to be put in its room?

On the 1st of July, 1643, the Lords and Commons passed an ordinance “for the calling of an Assembly of learned and godly divines and others, to be consulted with by the Parliament for the settling of the government and Liturgy of the Church of England, and for vindicating and clearing of the doctrines of the said Church from false aspersions and interpretations.” To this Assembly 121 divines were summoned, with thirty lay assessors, of whom ten were Lords and twenty Commoners. The divines were mostly clergymen of the Church of England, and several of them were of Episcopal rank. It would be hard to find in the annals of the Church, council or synod in which there were so many men of great talents, ripe scholarship, mature theological knowledge, sober judgment, and sincere piety as in the Assembly which now met at Westminster. The works of many of them, which have descended to our day, attest the range of their acquirements and the strength of their genius. Hallam admits their “learning and good sense” and Richard Baxter, who must be allowed to be an impartial judge, says, “Being not worthy to be one of them myself, I may the more freely speak that truth which I know, even in the face of malice and envy-that the Christian world had never a synod of more excellent divines (taking one thing with another) than this synod and the synod of Dort.” At the request of the English Parliament, seven commissioners from Scotland sat in the Assembly-three noblemen and four ministers. The names of the four ministers the best proof of whose superiority and worth is that they are household words in Scotland to this day-were Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, Robert Baillie, and George Gillespie. The elders associated with them were the Earl of Cassilis, Lord Maitland, and Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston. They met in Henry VII’s Chapel, and on the approach of winter they retired to the Jerusalem Chamber. They were presided over by Dr. William Twiss, the prolocutor-“a venerable man verging on seventy years of age, with a long pale countenance, an imposing beard, lofty brow, and meditative eye, the whole contour indicating a life spent in severe and painful study.”[6] More the scholar than the man of business, he was succeeded in the chair, after a year’s occupancy, by Mr. Charles Herle-“one,” says Fuller, “so much Christian, scholar, gentleman, that he can unite in affection with those who are disjoined in judgment from him.”[7] At the prolocutor’s table sat his two assessors-Dr. Cornelius Burgess, active and intrepid, and Mr. John White, the “Patriarch of Dorchester.” On either hand of the prolocutor ran rows of benches for the members. There they sat calm, grave, dignified, with mustache, and peak beard, and double Elizabethan ruff, dressed not in canonicals, but black coats and bands, as imposing an Assembly as one could wish to look upon. There with pale, gracious face, sat Herbert Palmer, one of the most scholarly and eloquent men of the day. There was Stephen Marshall, the powerful popular declaimer, who made his voice be heard, in pulpit, in Parliament, in the Assembly, all through these stormy times; there was Edmund Calamy, the grandfather of the yet more celebrated man of that name; there was Edward Reynolds, the scholar, orator, and theologian; there were Arrowsmith and Tuckhey, to whom we mainly owe the Larger and Shorter Catechisms; there were Vines, and Staunton, and Hoyle; there were Ashe, Whitaker, Caryl, Sedgwick, and many others, all giving their speeches and votes for Presbyterian government.

On the Erastian side there were the learned Light-foot, the pious Coleman, and the celebrated John Selden, a man of prodigious erudition, who was deputed as a lay assessor by the House of Commons. His model of Church and State was the Jewish theocracy; “Parliament,” he said, “is the Church.”[8] Apart there sat a little party; they amounted to ten or eleven divines, the most distinguished of whom were Philip Nye and Thomas Goodwin, whom Wood, in his Athenae, styles “the Atlases and patriarchs of independency.” On the right hand of the prolocutor, occupying the front bench, sat the

[6]McCrie, Annals of English Presbytery, p. 145.

[7]Fuller, Church History, vol. 3., p. 467.

[8]Baillie, Letters, vol. 2., p. 268.

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Scottish commissioners. A large share in the debate on all questions fell to them; and their dialectic skill and theological learning, having just come from the long and earnest discussion of the same questions in their own country, enabled them to influence powerfully the issue.

Each proposition was first considered in committee. There it was long and anxiously debated. It was next discussed sentence by sentence and word by word in the Assembly. Into these discussions it is unnecessary for us to enter. Laboriously and patiently, during the slow process of more than five years, did the builders toil in the rearing of their edifice. They sought to the best of their knowledge and power to build it on the rock of the Scriptures. They meant to rear a temple in which three nations might worship; to erect a citadel within which three kingdoms might entrust their independence and liberties. We need not analyze, we need only name the documents they framed. These were the Confession of Faith, the Form of Church Government, the Directory for Public Worship, and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, all of which were voted by an overwhelming majority of the Assembly. “It would be difficult to fix upon any Point of doctrine,” says an ecclesiastical writer who labours under no bias in favor of Presbytery, “in which the Confession of Faith materially differs from the [Thirty-nine] Articles. It has more system... The majority of the ministers of the Assembly were willing to set aside episcopacy, though there were some who wished to retain it. The majority were also willing to set up Presbytery in its place, though there were a few who preferred the Independent or Congregational government. On one subject they were all united, and that was in their adherence to the doctrines of Calvin.”[9]

There will be various opinions on the system of doctrine exhibited in the four documents mentioned above, compendiously styled the “Westminster Standards.” There will be only one opinion respecting the logical fearlessness and power, the theological comprehensiveness, and the intellectual grandeur of these monuments. The collected genius and piety of the age-if we may not call it the first, yet hardly inferior to the first age of England’s Protestantism-were brought to the construction of them. They have influenced less the country in which they had their birth than they have done other lands. During the succeeding years they have been molding the opinions of individuals, and inspiring the creed of Churches, in all palaces of the world. They are felt as plastic agencies wherever the English scepter is swayed or the English tongue is spoken; nor are there yet any decided signs that their supremacy is about to pass away.

[9]Hunt, Religious Thought in England, p. 199; London, 1870.

Chapter 18: Parliament Triumphs, and the King is Betrayed

Scotland Receives the Westminster Standards—England becomes Presbyterian—The Civil War—Army of the King—Army of the Parliament—Morale of each—Battle of Marston Moor?Military Equipment?The King Surrenders to the Scots—Given up to the English?Cromwell—The Army takes Possession of the King?Pride Purges Parliament—Charles Attainted and Condemned—The King’s Execution?Close of a Cycle—Thirty Years’ Plots and Wars?Overthrow of the Popish Projects

Picture: Charles I.

In 1647 the “Westminster Standards” were received by the Church of Scotland as a part of the uniformity of religion to which the three kingdoms had become bound in the Solemn League. These Acts were afterwards ratified by the Estates in Parliament, and sworn to by all ranks and classes in the kingdom. Scotland laid aside her simple creed, and accepted in its room an elaborate “Confession of Faith,” composed by an Assembly of English divines. She put her rudimental catechisms on the shelf, and began to use those of the “Larger and Shorter” which had first seen the light in Henry VII’s Chapel! Her “Book of Common Order” no longer regulated her public worship, which was now conducted according to a “Directory,” also framed on English soil and by English minds. Her old Psalter, whose chants had been so often heard in days of sorrow and in hours of triumph, she exchanged for a new Psalm book, [552] executed by Mr. Francis Rous, an Independent of the Long Parliament. The discarded documents had been in use for nearly a century, Scotland had received them from the most venerated Fathers of her Church, but she would suffer no national predilection to stand in the way of her honorable fulfillment of her great engagement with England. She wished to be thoroughly united in heart with the sister kingdom, that the two might stand up together, at this great crisis, for the cause of civil and religious liberty. England on her part made greater concessions than Scotland had dared to hope. Though the English Parliament does not appear ever to have ratified the scheme of doctrine and government drawn up, at its own request, by the Westminster Assembly, the Church and nation nevertheless adopted it, and for some time acted upon it. Episcopacy was abandoned, the Liturgy was laid aside, and worship conducted according to the “Directory for the Public Worship of God.” The country was divided into Provinces; each Province was subdivided into Presbyteries; and so many delegates from each Presbytery were to form a National Assembly. England was Presbyterian-it is an almost forgotten chapter in its history-and its Presbyterianism was not borrowed from either Geneva or Scotland: it had its birth in the Chapel of Henry VII, and was set up at the wish of its own clergy. And although it flourished only for a brief space in the land where it arose, it has left its mark on Scotland, where it modified the Presbyterianism of John Knox, and stamped it with the impress of that of Westminster.

From that unique transaction, which, as we have seen, had assembled two nations before one altar, where they swore to combat together for religion, for law, and for liberty, we turn to the battle-field. Fierce and bloody were these fields, as ever happens in a civil war, where the hates and passions of rival factions contend together with a bitterness and fury unknown to foreign strife. The two armies first met at Edgehill, Warwickshire. The hard-contested field was claimed by both sides. To either victory could not be other than mournful, for the blood that moistened the dust of the battle-field was that of brother shed by the hand of brother. The campaign thus opened, the tide of battle flowed hither and thither through England, bringing in its train more than the usual miseries attendant on war. The citizens were dragged away from their quiet industries, and the peasants from their peaceful agricultural labours, to live in camps, to endure the exhausting toil of marches and sieges, to perish on the battle-field, and be flung at last into the trenches, instead of sleeping with ancestral dust in the churchyards of their native village or parish. It was a terrible chastisement that was now inflicted on England. The Royalists had at first the superiority in arms; their soldiers were well disciplined, and they were led by commanders who had learned the art of war on the battle-fields of the Continent. To these trained combatants the Parliament at the outset could oppose only raw and undisciplined levies; but as time wore on, these new recruits acquired skill and experience, and then the fortune of battle began to turn. As the armies came to be finally constituted, the one was brave from principle: the consciousness of a just and noble cause inspired it with ardour and courage, while the want of any such inspiriting and ennobling conviction on the other side was felt to be an element of weakness, and sometimes of cowardice. The longer the war lasted, this moral disparity made itself but the more manifest, and at last victory settled unchangeably with the one side, and defeat as unchangeably with the other. The gay and dissolute youths, who drank so deeply and swore so loudly, and who in the end were almost the only persons that assembled to the standard of the king, were on the day of battle trodden down like the mire of the streets by the terrible Ironsides of Cromwell, who resumed their enthusiasm for the fight and not for the revel, and who, bowing their heads before God, lifted them up before the enemy.

The day of Marston Moor, 1st of July, 1644, virtually decided the fate of the war. It was here the Scottish army, 9,000 strong, first took their place alongside the soldiers of the Parliament, in pursuance of their compact with England, and their union was sealed by a great victory. This field, on which were assembled larger masses of armed men than perhaps had met in hostile array on English soil since the wars of the Roses, was a triangle, of which the base was the road running east and west from York to Wetherby, and the two sides were the rivers Nidd and Ouse, the junction of which formed the apex.[1] Here it was covered with gorse, there with crops of wheat and rye. Forests of spears-for the bayonet had not yet been invented-marked the positions taken up by the pikemen in their steel morions, their corsets and proof-cuirasses. On either flank of their squares were the musketeers, similarly armed, with their bandoliers thrown over their shoulders, holding a dozen charges. They were supported by the cavalry: the cuirassiers in casque, cuirass, gauntlet, and greave; the carbineers and dragoons

[1]Markham, Life of Lord Fairfax, p. 56; London, 1870.

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in their buff coats, and armed with sword, pistols, and short musket. Then came the artillery, with their culverins and falconets.[2] The Royalist forces appeared late on the field; the Scots, to beguile the time, began to sing psalms. Their general, Leslie, now Earl of Leven, had mingled, as we have already said, in many of the bloody scenes of the Thirty Years’ War, and so bravely acquitted himself that he was the favorite field-marshal of Gustavus Adolphus. Altogether there were

[2]Life of Lord Fairfax, pp. 60, 61.

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close on 50,000 men on that memorable field, now waiting for the signal to join battle. The sun had sunk low-it was seven of the evening, but the day was a midsummer one-ere the signal was given, and the two armies closed. A bloody struggle of two hours ended in the total rout of the king’s forces. Upwards of 4,000 corpses covered the field: the wounded were in proportion. Besides the slaughter of the battle, great numbers of the Royalists were cut down in the flight. The allies captured many thousand stand of arms, and some hundred colors. One eye-witness writes that they took colors enough, had they only been white, to make surplices for all the cathedrals in England.[3]

From this day the king’s fortunes steadily declined. He was worsted on every battle-field; and in the spring of 1646, his affairs having come to extremity, Charles I threw himself into the arms of the Scots. In the Parliament of England the Independent party, with Cromwell at its head, had attained the supremacy over the Presbyterian, and the king’s choice having to be made between the two, turned in favor of the Presbyterians, whose loyalty was far in excess of the deserts of the man on whom it was lavished. This was an acquisition the Scots had not expected, and which certainly they did not wish, seeing it placed them in a very embarrassing position. Though loyal-loyal to a weakness, if not to a fault-the Scots were yet mindful of the oath they had sworn with England, and refused to admit Charles into Scotland, and place him again upon its throne, till he had signed the terms for which Scotland and England were then in arms. Any other course would have been a violation of the confederacy which was sealed by oath, and would have involved them in a war with England.[4] But Charles refused his consent to the conditions required of him, and the Scots had now to think how the monarch should finally be disposed of. They came ultimately to the resolution of delivering him up to the English Parliament, on receiving assurance of his safety and honour. The disposal of the king’s person, they held, did not belong to one, but to both, of the kingdoms. The assurance which the Scots asked was given, but in words that implied a tacit reproof of the suspicions which the Scots had cherished of the honorable intentions of the English Parliament; for, “as all the world doth know,” said they, “this kingdom hath at all times shown as great affection for their kings as any other nation.”[5]

But the Parliament soon ceased to be master of itself, and the terrible catastrophe was quickly reached. The king being now a prisoner, England came under a dual directorate, one half of which was a body of debating civilians, and the other a conquering army. It was very easy to see that this state of matters could not long continue, and as easy to divine how it would end. The army, its pride fanned by the victories that it was daily winning, aspired to govern the country which it believed its valor was saving. Lord Fairfax was the nominal head of the army, but its real ruler and animating spirit was Cromwell. A man of indomitable resolution and vast designs, with a style of oratory singularly tangled, labyrinthic, and hazy, but with clear and practical conceptions, and a fearless courage that led him right to the execution of his purposes, Cromwell put himself at the head of affairs, and soon there came an end to debates, protestations, and delays. Colonel Joyce was sent to Holmby House, where Charles was confined, to demand the surrender of the king, and he showed such good authority-an armed force, namely-that Charles was immediately given up. Colonel Pride was next sent to the House of Commons, and taking his stand at the door, with a regiment of soldiers, he admitted only such as could be relied on with reference to the measures in prospect. The numbers to which Parliament was reduced by “Colonel Pride’s

[3]Life of Lord Fairfax, pp. 170-175. Two Letters, etc., in King’s Pamphlet, No. 164.

[4]Alexander Henderson was appointed to confer with the king. A series of papers passed between them at Newcastle on the subject of Church government, but the discussion was resultless. The king pleaded that his coronation oath bound him to uphold prelacy. Henderson replied that the Parliament and nation were willing to release him from this part of the oath. Charles denied that the Houses of Parliament had this power, and we find him maintaining this by the following extraordinary argument: “I am confident,” says he, “to make it clearly appear to you that this Church never did submit, nor was subordinate to them the Houses of Parliament, and that it was only the king and clergy who made the Reformation, the Paliament merely serving to help to give the civil sanction, All this being proved (of which I make no question), it must necessarily follow that it is only the Church of England (in whose favor I took this oath) that can release me from it. Wherefore when the Church of England (being lawfully assembled) shall declare that I am free, then, and not before, I shall esteem myself so.” (The Papers which passed at New Castle betwixt His Sacred Majesty and Mr. Alexander Henderson, concerning the change of Church Government, Anne Dom. 1646. London, 1649. His Majesties Second Paper,p. 20.)

[5]The Eikon Basilike (p. 1830) first propagated the ridiculous calumny that the Scots sold their king. It has since been abundantly proved that the 400,000 pounds paid to the Scots were due to them for service in the campaign. and for delivery of the fortresses which they held on the Border, and that this matter was arranged five months before the question of the disposal of the king’s person was decided, with which indeed it had no connection.

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purge,” as it was called, did not exceed fifty or sixty, and these were mostly Independents. This body, termed the Rump Parliament, voted that no further application should be made to the king; and soon thereafter drew up an ordinance for attainting Charles Stuart of high treason. They appointed commissioners to form a High Court of Justice, and Charles, upon being brought before this tribunal, and declining its jurisdiction, was condemned as a traitor, and sentenced to be beheaded. The scaffold was erected in front of Whitehall, on the 30th of January, 1649. An immense crowd filled the spacious street before the palace, and all the avenues leading to it, on which shotted cannon were turned, that no tumult or rising might interrupt the tragedy about to be enacted. The citizens gazed awed and horror-struck; so suddenly had the spectacle risen, that it seemed a horrid dream through which they were passing. A black scaffold before the royal palace, about to be wetted with their sovereign’s blood, was a tragedy unknown in the history of England; the nation could scarcely believe even yet that the terrible drama would go on to an end. They took it “for a pageantry,” says Burnet, “to strike a terror.” At the appointed hour the king stepped out upon the scaffold. The monarch bore himself at that awful moment with calmness and dignity. “He died greater than he had lived,” says Burnet.[6] He bent to the block; the ax fell, and as the executioner held up the bleeding head in presence of the spectators, a deep and universal groan burst forth from the multitude, and its echoes came back in an indignant protest from all parts of England and Scotland.

From this scaffold in front of Whitehall, with the unwonted and horrid spectacle of a royal corpse upon it, let us turn to the wider drama with which the death of Charles I stands connected, and inquire what were the bearings of the king’s fall on the higher interests of human progress. In his execution we behold the close of a cycle of thirty years’ duration, spent in plotting and warring against the Reformation. That cycle opened with a scaffold, and it closed with a scaffold. It commenced with the execution of the martyrs of Prague in 1618, recorded in preceding chapters of this history, and it closed at Whitehall on the scaffold of Charles I in 1649. Between these two points what a multitude of battles, sieges, and tragedies

- the work of the Popish Powers in their attempt to overthrow that great movement that was brining with it a temporal and spiritual emancipation to the human race! Who can count the number of martyrs that had been called to die during the currency of that dark cycle! No history records even a tithe of their names. What oceans of blood had watered the Bohemian and Hungarian plains, what massacres and devastation had overthrown their cities and villages! These nations, Protestant when this cycle began, were forced back and trodden down again into Popish superstition and slavery when it had come to an end. This period is that of the Thirty Years’ War, which continued to sweep with triumphant force over all the Protestant kingdoms of Germany till a great champion was summoned from Sweden to roll it back. After Gustavus Adolphus had gone to his grave, the Roman Catholic reaction seemed to gather fresh force, and again threatened to overflow, with its devastating arms and its debasing doctrines, all the German countries. But by this time the area of Protestantism had been enlarged, and England and Scotland had become more important theaters than even Germany. The Reformation had drawn its forces to a head in Britain, and the unceasing aims of the Popish Powers were directed with the view of destroying it there. While abroad Ferdinand of Austria was endeavoring to waste it with armies, the Jesuits were intriguing to corrupt it in Great Britain, and thereby recover to the obedience of Rome those two nations where Protestantism had entrenched itself with such power, and without which their triumphs in other parts of Christendom would have but little availed. Their efforts were being attended with an ominous success. James VI and Charles I seemed instruments fashioned on purpose for their hands. Filled with an unconquerable lust of arbitrary power, constitutionally gloomy, superstitious, and crafty, nowhere could better tools have been found. The Jesuits began by throwing the two countries into convulsions-their established mode of proceeding; they marked out for special attack the Presbyterianism of the northern kingdom; they succeeded in grafting prelacy upon it, which, although it did not exterminate it, greatly emasculated and crippled it; they took from the Church the freedom of her Assemblies, the only organ of public sentiment then in Scotland, and the one bulwark of its liberties. In England they managed to marry the king to a Popish princess; they flooded the kingdom with Romish emissaries; they overlaid the Protestant worship with Popish rites; and the laws of England they were replacing with the tribunals of despotism. Their design seemed on the very eve of being crowned with complete success, when suddenly the terrible apparition of a royal scaffold arose

[6]History of his own Time, vol. 1., p. 55; London, 1815.

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before the Palace of Whitehall. It was only a few months before this that the Thirty Years’ War had been ended by the Peace of Westphalia, which gave greatly enlarged liberties to Protestantism, and now the western branch of the great plot was brought to nought. So sudden a collapse had overtaken the schemings and plottings of thirty years! The sky of Europe changed in almost a single day; and that great wave of Popish reaction which had rolled over all Germany, and dashed itself against the shores of Britain, threatening at one time to submerge all the Protestant States of Christendom, felt the check of an unseen Hand, and subsided and retired at the scaffold of Charles I.

Chapter 19: Restoration of Charles II, and St. Bartholomew Day, 1662

The Struggle to be Renewed—The Commonwealth—Cromwell’s Rule—Charles II Restored—His Welcome—Enthusiasm of Scotland—Character of Charles II—Attempted Union between the Anglican and Presbyterian Parties—Presbyterian Proposals—Things to be Rectified—Conference at the Savoy—Act of Uniformity—The 24th of August,1662—A Second St. Bartholomew—Secession of 2,000 Ministers from the Church of England—Grandeur of their Sacrifice—It Saves the Reformation in England

Picture: View of the Old Market Cross, Edinburgh.

Picture: Richard Baxter.

This long cycle, which had seen so many flourishing Protestant Churches exterminated, so many martyrs lay down their lives, and so many fair lands covered with ruins, had ended, as we have seen, in the overthrow of the Popish projects, and the elevation of Protestantism to a higher platform than it had ever before attained. Nevertheless, the end was not yet: the victory was not assured and complete, and the defeat of the Popish Powers was not a final one. The struggle was to be renewed once more, and another crisis had to be passed through before Protestantism should be able to surround itself with such political bulwarks as would assure it against a repetition of those armed attacks to which it had been perpetually subject from the Vatican and its vassal kings, and be left in peace to pursue its evangelical labours.

The fall of the Monarchy in England was succeeded by a Commonwealth. The Commonwealth soon passed into a military Dictatorship. The nation felt that the constitutional liberty for which it had contended on the battle-field had escaped it, and that it had again fallen under that arbitrary government which many hoped had received its mortal wound when the head of Charles rolled on the scaffold. Both England and Scotland felt the heavy weight of that strong hand which, putting away the crown, had so firmly grasped the scepter. Perhaps England, swarming with Royalists and Republicans, with factions and sectaries, was not yet fit for freedom, and had to return for a little while longer into bonds. But if the forms of the rule under which she was now placed were despotic, the spirit of liberty was there; her air had been purified from the stifling fog of a foreign slavery; and her people could more freely breathe. If Cromwell was a tyrant, he was so after a very different pattern from that of Charles I; it was to evildoers at home and despots abroad that he was a terror. England, under his government, suddenly bounded up out of the gulf of contempt and weakness into which the reigns of the two Stuarts had sunk her. Rapidly mounted upward the prestige of England’s arms, and brightly blazed forth the splendor of her intellect. She again became a power in Christendom, and was feared by all who had evil designs on hand. The Duke of Savoy at the bidding of the Lord Protector stayed his massacres in the Waldensian Valleys, Cardinal Mazarin is said to have changed countenance when he heard his name mentioned, and even the Pope trembled in the Vatican when Oliver threatened to make his fleet visit the Eternal City. He said he should make “the name of an Englishman as great as ever that of a Roman had been.” At home his severe countenance scared the persecutor back into his cell, and the streets of the capital were cleansed from the horrible sights, but too common in the days of Charles and Laud, of men standing in the pillory to have their noses slit, their ears cropped off, and their cheeks branded with red-hot irons, for no offense save that of being unable to practice the ceremonies that formed the king’s and the archbishop’s religion. His death in 1658 was followed by the Protectorate of his son Richard, who finding the burden, which even the Atlantean [557] shoulders of his father had borne uneasily, insupportable to him, speedily resigned it, and retired into private life.[1]

Weary of the confusions and alarms that prevailed under the “Committee of Safety” that was now formed to guide the State, the nation as one man turned their eyes to the son of their former sovereign. They sent a deputation to him at Breda, inviting him to take possession of the throne of his ancestors. The Scottish Presbyterians were among the most forward in this matter; indeed they had proclaimed Charles as king upon first receiving tidings of his father’s execution, and had crowned him at Scone on the 1st January, 1651. We reflect with astonishment on the fact that, despite all the blood which the two nations had shed in resistance of arbitrary power, Charles II was now received back without conditions, unless a vague declaration issued from Breda should be considered as such. The nation was stupefied by an excess of joy at the thought that the king was returning.

From Dover, where Charles II landed on the 26th May, 1660, all the way to London his progress was like that of a conqueror returning from a campaign in which his victorious arms had saved his country. Gay pageantries lined the way, while the ringing of bells, the thunder of cannon, the shouts of frantic people, and at night the blaze of bonfires, proclaimed the ecstasy into which the nation had been thrown.[2] A like enthusiasm was displayed in Scotland on occasion of the return of the royal exile. The 19th of June was appointed to be observed as a thanksgiving for the king’s restoration, and after sermon on that day the magistrates assembled at the Cross of Edinburgh, where was set a table with wine and sweetmeats. Glasses were broken, trumpets were sounded, drums were beat; the church-bells sent forth their merriest peals, and in the evening a great fire, in which was burned the effigy of Cromwell, blazed on the Castle-hill.[3]

Charles was crowned at London on the 29th of May, a truly fatal day, which was followed by a flood of profanity and vice in England, and a torrent of righteous blood in Scotland. This had been foreseen by some whose feelings were not so perturbed as to be incapable of observing the true character of Charles. Mr. John Livingstone, one of the Scottish ministers sent to accompany the king from Holland, is said to have remarked, when stepping on board the ship with Charles, “that they were bringing God’s heavy wrath to Britain.”[4]

For all who approached him Charles II had a smiling face, and a profusion of pleasant words. He was as yet only thirty years of age, but he was already a veteran in vice. He was a consummate dissembler. The school of adversity, which strengthens the virtues of other men, had only perfected Charles Stuart in the arts of hypocrisy and falsehood. The English Presbyterians sent over some of their number-among others Reynolds, Manton, and Calamy-to wait on him in Holland; and he so regaled them with pious discourse, after the manner of his grandfather, that they thought they were getting for their king an experienced and matured Christian. “He knew how to bewail the sins of his father’s house, and could talk of the power of godliness as fluently as if he had been pupil all his days to a Puritan.”[5] When seated on the throne he took several of the Presbyterian ministers into the number of his chaplains, and even heard Richard Baxter preach. Charles II had returned to England with his mind made up touching the from of Church government which was to be established in the kingdom, but the time was not yet ripe for carrying his project into execution. There were two things that Charles lacked notwithstanding his merry countenance and his pious talk; the one was conscience, and the other was a heart. He was the coldest of mankind. He was a tyrant, not from ambition, and certainly not from that sort of ambition which is “the last infirmity of noble minds,” but from the cold, cruel selfishness of the voluptuary; and he prized his throne for no object of glory or honour, the stirrings of which he never felt, but because it enabled him to wallow in low, bestial pleasures. From that throne, as from an overspreading Upas, distilled the poison of moral death all over the kingdom. He restored to England in the seventeenth century one of those royal sties which had disgraced pagan Rome in the first. His minister was Clarendon, on whom, as Asiatic Sultan on vizier, Charles devolved all the care and toil of government, that he might pass his hours less interruptedly in his seraglio.

The first measure after Charles’s restoration was an attempted union between the Anglican and the Presbyterian parties, the latter being the chief promoters of the project. Having as yet free access to the king, the Presbyterians brought in their proposals. The things of which they complained were

[1]For a full and able account of ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland during Cromwell’s administration, see History of the Church of Scotland during the Commonwealth, by the Rev. James Beattie: Edinburgh, 1842.

[2]Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, vol. 7., p. 505.

[3]Wodrow, History of Church of Scotland, vol. 1., p. 62; Glasglow, 1828.

[4]Bennet, Memorial, p. 241.

[5]Ibid.

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mainly these-the great extent of the dioceses, the performance of the bishop’s duty by deputy, his assuming the whole power of ordination and jurisdiction, the imposition of new ceremonies, and the arbitrary suspension of ministers. For reforming these evils they proposed that “Bishop Usher’s reduction of episcopacy to the form of synodical government, received in the ancient Church, should be the ground-work of an accommodation.” They proposed that suffragans should be chosen by the respective synods; that the ministers should be under no oaths or promises of obedience to their bishops; and that the bishops should govern according to the canons and constitutions to be ratified and established by Parliament. As to ceremonies, they humbly represented that the worship of God was perfect without them: that they had been fruitful in disputes, schisms, and the silencing of pious pastors in the past; and being, on the confession of their advocates, in themselves matters of indifference, they prayed to be released from kneeling at the Sacrament, wearing of sacerdotal vestments, making the sign of the cross in baptism, and bowing at the name of Jesus. They also craved a slight revision of the Liturgy.

The answer returned by those with whom they were negotiating, and whom they had not yet been permitted to meet in conference, though desirous of doing so, was not such as to inspire them with sanguine hopes. Some little while after, the king put forth a declaration, containing some concessions which came nearer what the Presbyterians thought might form a basis of union.[6] But neither did this please the Royalist and prelatic party. All it led to was a conference between a certain number of ministers of both parties, who met at the Savoy. The Presbyterian ministers were invited to conference, and encouraged to unbosom themselves, in the way of revealing all their difficulties and scruples. But for what end? That their scruples might be removed, said the prelates; though in truth the real object of the opposite party was that, being masters of the sentiments of the Presbyterians, they might the more easily overreach them. It was a foregone conclusion that no union should be formed; but that, on the contrary, the Puritan element should once for all be purged out of the Church of England.

[6]The main provisions of the royal declaration are given in Bennet’s Memorial, ppp. 246-248.

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The king and prelates now knew how far the Puritans would yield, and on what points they would make no compromise, and so they were able to frame their contemplated Act of Uniformity, so as to place the Puritan ministers between the alternative, as they phrased it, of proving knaves or becoming martyrs. On the 19th May, 1662, was passed the following famous Act-“That all who had not received Episcopal ordination should be re-ordained by bishops: that every minister should, on or before the 24th of August following, being the feast of St. Bartholomew, declare his unfeigned assent and consent to everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer, on pain of being ipso facto deprived of his benefice; that he should also abjure the Solemn League and Covenant as an unlawful oath, and swear the oath of supremacy and allegiance; and declare it to be unlawful, under any pretext whatsoever, to take up arms against the sovereign.”[7]

Under this Act, equally remarkable for what it tolerated as well as for what it stringently prohibited, it was lawful to preach another gospel than that which Paul preached, but it was a crime to preach at all without a surplice. Under this Act it was lawful to believe in baptismal regeneration, but a crime to administer baptism without the sign of the cross. Under this Act it was lawful to profane God’s name every hour of the day, but it was a crime to mention the name of Jesus without lifting one’s hat. Some have distinguished between principles and points; in this controversy all the principles were on one side, and all the points on the other; for the men enforcing the latter admitted that for these rites there was no foundation in the Word of God, and that they were matters of indifference.

A space for deliberation was allowed. The 24th of August was fixed upon as the term when they must express their submission to the Act, or abide the consequences. That day had already been marked by a horror unspeakably great, for on the 24th of August, 1572, had been enacted one of the most terrible crimes of all history-the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

With very different feelings was that day waited for in the halls of the voluptuous court of Charles II, in the conclave of a tyrannical hierarchy, and in the parsonages and homes of the godly ministers and people of England. Issues of tremendous magnitude hung on the part which the Puritan party should act on that day. If they should succumb, farewell to the Reformation in England: it would be laid in its grave, and a great stone rolled to the mouth of its sepulcher. The day arrived, and the sacrifice it witnessed saved the realm of England, by preserving the Protestant element in the nation, which, had the Puritans conformed, would have utterly perished. On the 24th of August, two thousand ministers, rather than submit to the Act of Uniformity, surrendered their livings, and left their sanctuaries and parsonages. They went out each man alone. The England of their day was no free country in which they were at liberty to organize and carry on their Church in a state of secession. They had no great leader to march before them in their exodus; they had no generous press to proclaim their wrongs, and challenge the admiration of their country for their sacrifice; they went forth as Abraham did, at the call of God, “not knowing whither they went,” not knowing where they should find the next meal, or where they should lay their head at night. They were ordered to remove to a distance of twenty miles from their own parish. It was farther enjoined on the ejected ministers to fix their residence not nearer than six miles to a cathedral town, nor nearer than three miles to a royal burgh; and it was made unlawful for any two of them to live in the same place. What a glory this army of confessors shed on England! What a victory for Protestantism! The world thought they were defeated. No, it was the king whom this spectacle startled amid his revels; it was the prelates whom

[7]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 1., pp. 182, 183; London, 1724.

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this noble sacrifice at the shrine of conscience rebuked and terrified; it was a godless generation, whom this sight for a moment roused from its indifference, that was conquered.

These men were the strength and glory of the Church of England. The author of The Reformed Pastor, surely a fair judge of ministerial qualifications, says of them: “I do not believe that ever England had as faithful and able a ministry, since it was a nation, as it hath at this day; and I fear few nations on earth, if any, have the like.” “It raised a grievous cry over the nation,” writes Bishop Burner; “for here were many men much valued, and distinguished by their abilities and zeal, cast out ignominiously, reduced to great poverty, and provoked by spiteful usage.” “Worthy, learned, pious, orthodox divines,” says the philosophic Locke, “who did not throw themselves out of service, but were forcibly ejected.”

St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1662, is one of the great outstanding epochs in the long combat of conscience against power. But it is well to bear in mind that the victories of conscience must always, from the very nature of the case, as indeed the St. Bartholomew and all similar days teach us, bear outwardly the guise of defeat, and the checks and discomfitures of power must come in the garb of victory; and thus it is through seeming triumph that error marches to ruin, and thus it is, too, through apparent defeat that truth advances to dominion.

Chapter 20: Scotland—Middleton’s Tyranny—Act Recissory

Extravagant Loyalty of the Scots—A Schism in the Ranks of the Scottish Presbyterians—Resolutioners and Protesters—Charles’s Purpose to Restore Prelacy—Clarendon—Maitland—James Sharp—The “Judas of the Kirk of Scotland”—The Scottish Parliament of 1661—Decline of the Scottish Presbyterians—Acts passed in Parliament—Act of Supremacy—Lays the Scottish Kirk at the King’s Feet—The Oath of Allegiance—The Act Recissory—Tyranny and Revolution—Sudden Destruction of Scottish Liberties—Legislation and Drunkenness

The Jesuits had anew betaken themselves to spinning that same thread which had been so suddenly and rudely severed on the scaffold which the 30th of January, 1649, saw erected before the Palace of Whitehall. There had been a pause in their scheming during the administration of Cromwell, but no sooner had the head of that great ruler been laid in the grave, and a Stuart again seen on the throne of England, than the Fathers knew that their hour was come, and straightway resumed their plots against the religion and liberties of Great Britain. We have seen the first outburst; of that cloud that descended upon England with the advent of Charles II in the expulsion of the 2,000 Nonconformists; but it was on the northern kingdom that the tempest was destined to break in greatest fury, and to rage the longest. We return to Scotland.

We have seen the extravagant joy with which the king’s return was hailed in Scotland. This ecstasy had its source in two causes, and a brief explanation of these will help to make clearer the course which events took afterwards. The first cause was the almost idolatrous loyalty which the Scots bore to the House of Stuart, and from which all their dire experience of the meanness, fickleness, and perfidy which had characterized the recent sovereigns of that house had not been able to wean them. The second was a decay of that spirit of pure patriotism that had animated the Scots in the days of Alexander Henderson, and the immediate consequence of which was a deplorable disunion in their ranks at a time when it behoved them above all things to be united. The schism to which we refer is that known in history as the Resolutioners and the Protesters, which had arisen in 1651. The question between the two parties into which the once united band was now split, had its first rise in the suspicions of the sincerity of Charles II, that began to be entertained by some of the ministers, who blamed their brethren for admitting him to make solemn professions which all they knew of his conduct and character belied. This led to the formation of a Royalist party in the Church; and the breach between them and their brethren was widened by what soon thereafter took place. Cromwell invaded Scotland with his army, and the question was raised, shall the whole fencible population be enrolled to resist him, or shall those only who are the known friends [561] of the Reformation be permitted to bear arms? It was resolved to admit all sorts into the army, and the Parliament proceeded to fill up some of the highest military commands, and some of the most dignified and influential offices in the Civil Service, from among those who were the avowed and bitter enemies both of the Presbyterian Church and the civil liberties of the kingdom. The General Assembly of 1651 was divided on the question; a majority supported the action of Parliament, and were termed Resolutioners; the minority protested against it, and were known as the Protesters. The latter were headed by James Guthrie, who was afterwards martyred. Many plausible arguments were pleaded on both sides; in the ordinary state of affairs the course approved by the Resolutioners was the natural one; but in the circumstances in which Scotland then was, it was, to say the least, inexpedient, and in the end it proved most fatal. It cleft the Protestant phalanx in twain, it embittered the minds of men by the sharp contention to which it led, and above the brutal violence of Middleton, and the dark craft of Sharp, two men of whom we are about to speak, it paved the way for the fall of Presbyterianism and the triumph of Charles II.

Hardly had Charles mounted the throne, when he resumed the work of his father and grandfather in Scotland. His sure instincts taught him that there was no greater obstacle to his cherished object of arbitrary government than the Scottish Kirk watching jealously over the popular liberties, and by the working of its courts reading daily lessons to the people on liberty in the best of all ways, that of teaching them to use their rights, and to defend their privileges. He could no more tolerate an Independent Presbyterian Church alongside an absolute throne than James I had been able to do, believing such an anomaly to be just as impossible in the wider realm of Britain as his grandfather had deemed it in the narrower domain of Scotland. But Charles was too indolent to prosecute in person his grand scheme, and its execution was handed over to others. Lord Clarendon, we have said, was his minister, and knowing his master’s wishes, one of his first cares was to find fitting tools for the work that was to be done in Scotland. Clarendon accounted himself exceedingly fortunate, no doubt, in discovering two men whom nature seemed to have shaped and molded for his very purpose. The two men on whom Clarendon’s eye had lighted were not only richly endowed with all the vile qualities that could fit them for the base task to which he destined them, but they were equally distinguished by the happy absence of any noble and generous endowment which might have enfeebled the working and impaired the success of those opposite qualities, the possession of which had led to their selection. These two men were Middleton and Sharp.

The first was the less base of the two. Obscurely born, we know nothing of Middleton till we find him acting as “a pickman in Colonel Hepburn’s regiment in France.”[1] He next served under the Parliament in England, “taking the Covenant as he would have put a cockade in his hat, merely as the badge of the side on which he fought.”[2] Afterwards he took arms for the king; he adhered to the royal cause in exile; and on the death of Montrose, Charles’s unacknowledged lieutenant in Scotland, Middleton succeeded to his place. His daring and success on the field brought him rapid promotion. He had now attained the rank of earl. He retained the coarse, brutal, overbearing habits of the camp; he drank deeply, withheld himself from no vice, answered all appeals to reason or justice with a stroke of his sword. Cruel by disposition, and with heart still further hardened by the many scenes of atrocity and outrage in which he had mingled, he was set over the people of Scotland, as the fittest tool for taming their obdurate and haughty spirits into compliance with the mandates of the court.

James Sharp was in some respects very unlike the man with whom he was mated in the infamous work of selling his Church and betraying his country; in other respects he bore a very close resemblance to him. With placid face, stealthy eye, and grave, decorous exterior, Sharp seemed to stand far apart from the fierce, boisterous, and debauched Middleton; nevertheless, in their inner qualities of suppleness, unscrupulousness, and ambition, the divine and the soldier were on a level. Sharp was a person of very ordinary capacity; he had but one pre-eminent talent, and even that he was careful to hide till it revealed itself in the light of its crooked working: he was a consummate deceiver. Sent to London by the Scottish ministers at the period of the Restoration, with instructions to watch over the Presbyterian interests, he not only betrayed the cause confided to him, but he did so with an art so masterly, and a dissimulation so complete, that his treachery was not once suspected till it had borne its evil fruit, and was beyond remedy. The letters which he wrote to his brethren in Scotland, and by which he kept their eyes closed till their Church was overthrown, are embodied in the Introduction to Wodrow’s History, and will remain a monument of his infamy to all coming time. His

[1]Kirkton, History of Church of Scotland, p. 60.

[2]Dodds, Fifty Year’s Struggle, p. 95.

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name has become a synonym among his countrymen for all that is dark and hypocritical. He received the wages for which he had undertaken his work, and became known henceforth among his contemporaries as the Archbishop of St. Andrews, and Primate of all Scotland. He stands in the pillory of history as the “Judas of the Kirk of Scotland.”

It was resolved to establish prelacy in Scotland; and only a few months elapsed after Charles II ascended the throne till a beginning was made of the work; and once commenced, it was urged forward without pause or stop to the end. In January, 1661, the Scottish Parliament was assembled. It was opened by Middleton, as royal commissioner. The appearance of this man was to Scotland a dark augury of the work expected of the Parliament. Had the nation been fairly represented, the religion and liberties of the country would have been in small danger; for even yet the majority of the aristocracy, almost all the ministers, and the great mass of the people remained true to the principles of the Reformation. But “Middleton’s Parliament,” for by this name was it known, did not fairly represent the nation. Wholesale bribery and open force had been employed to pack the House. The press was gagged, many gentlemen known to be zealous Presbyterians were imprisoned, and some popular ministers were banished, the better to secure a Parliament that would be subservient to the court. Scotland enjoyed no Act of Indemnity, such as protected England, and not a public man was there in the northern country who was not liable to be called to account for any word or action of his during the past ten years which it might please the Government to construe unfavorably. This let loose a reign of violence and terror. The ministers, though pious and diligent, did not possess the intrepid spirit of Melville and Henderson, and those of their time. The grand old chiefs of the Covenant-London, Sutherland, Rothes-were dead, and the young nobles who had arisen in their room, quick to imbibe the libertine spirit of the Restoration, and to conform themselves to the pattern shown to them at Whitehall, had forgotten the piety, and with that the patriotism, of their fathers. The great scholars and divines who had illumined the sky of Scotland in the latter days of James VI and the reign of Charles I-the Hendersons, the Hallyburtons, the Gillespies-had died as these troubles were beginning. Rutherford lived to publish his Lex Rex in 1660, and to hear that the Government had burned it by the hands of the hangman, and summoned its author to answer to a charge of high treason, when he took his departure “to where,” in his own words, “few kings and great folk come.” The existing race of clergy, never having had the bracing influence which grappling with great questions gives, and emasculated by the narrow and bitter controversies which had raged in the Church during the twelve preceding years, were somewhat pusillanimous and yielding, and incapable of showing that bold front which would repel the bad men and the strong measures with which they were about to be assailed. “The day was going away,” but no one had foreseen how black would be the night that was descending on the poor Church of Scotland, and how long its hours of darkness would continue.

The first measure passed in Parliament was of such vast significance that it may be said to have consummated the work which it professed only to have begun. This was the Act of Supremacy, which transferred the whole power of the Church to the king, by making him absolute judge in both civil and ecclesiastical matters. This was a blow at the root. It did not indeed set up prelacy, but it completely subverted the Presbyterian Kirk which Knox had established in Scotland; for that Church is independent in things spiritual, or it is nothing.

This Act was immediately followed by another, which was meant to carry into effect the former. This second Act imposed an Oath of Allegiance. Allegiance to the king was what every Scotsman was willing to render as fully without as with an oath; but the allegiance now exacted of him went beyond the just measure of obedience due by Scottish subject to sovereign. The new oath bound the swearer to uphold the supremacy of the king in all religious as well as all civil matters; and to refuse the oath, or deny the principle it contained, was declared to be high treason. This left to Scotsmen no alternative but perjury or treason. The whole Scottish nation, only twenty-three years before, had taken an oath which declared that “the Lord Jesus Christ is the only King and Head of his Church,” an expression which was meant to repudiate and shut out the ecclesiastical supremacy of the monarch. The new oath was in fact contradiction of the old, and made the swearer vest in an earthly throne that which he had declared with all the solemnity of an oath was the exclusive prerogative of the Heavenly King. How then could the Scottish people swear this second oath without perjuring themselves? The Act laid a yoke on the consciences of the Christian people. On those who had no conscience, it imposed no burden; but all were not in a condition to swear contradictory oaths, and to feel that they [563] had incurred neither sin nor shame, and the latter class were the greater as well as the more loyal part of the nation.

The flood-gates of tyranny now thrown wide open, the deluge poured in. As if tyranny had become giddy and grown delirious-an almost insane attempt was made to blot out, and cause to perish from the memories of men, that whole period of the nation’s history during which the Church of Scotland had administered her doctrine and government, subject only to her Divine Head. We refer to the period during which her Assemblies and courts had been free to meet and legislate. The “Act Recissory” was passed. This Act swept away all the Parliaments, all the General Assemblies in short, the whole legislation of Scotland since the year 1638. All were by a single stroke buried in oblivion. Thus the men who now reigned, not content with having the future in their hands, made war upon the past. The National Covenant was declared an unlawful oath and condemned. The Solemn League was also condemned as an unlawful and treasonable compact. The Glasgow Assembly of 1638, over which Alexander Henderson presided, could not be other than specially obnoxious, seeing it overturned the prelacy of the previous period, and accordingly it was declared to be a seditious and unlawful meeting, and put under the ban of Government.

We know not whether the wildest revolutionist ever committed greater excesses, or showed himself under the spirit of a more delirious madness, than the men who now unhappily governed Scotland. We behold them scorning all truth and equity, making void all oaths and promises, tearing down all the fences of the State and leaving the throne no claim to obedience and respect save that which the sword and the gallows can enforce. Although they had plotted to bring all authority into contempt, to vilify all law, and destroy society itself, they could not have adopted fitter methods. In a neighboring country, liable to be visited with periodic revolutionary tempests, we have seen nothing wilder than the scenes now being transacted, and about to be transacted, in Scotland. In France the tempest rises from below; it ascends from the Communistic abyss to assail the seats of power and the tribunals of justice: in the instance we are now contemplating the storm descended upon the country from the throne: it was the closet of the monarch that sent forth the devastators of order. Never before, perhaps, had country made so swift and terrible a descent into, not social anarchy, but monarchical and military despotism. Scotland up to this hour was enjoying an ample liberty?that liberty was fenced round on all sides by legal securities: a single edict laid them all in the dust, and confiscated that whole liberty which they guarded, and the country went sheer down at a plunge into the gulf.

The tyranny that wrought all this havoc in a moment, as it were, has been stigmatized as “intoxicated.” History has preserved the fact that the intoxication was more than a figure. “It was a maddening time,” says Burner, “when the men of affairs were perpetually drunk.”[3] Middleton, who presided over this revolutionary crew, was a notorious inebriate, and came seldom sober to the House; and it is an accepted fact that the framers of the Act Recissory passed the night that preceded the proclamation of their edict in a deep debauch.

[3]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 1., pp. 149-151.

Chapter 21: Establishment of Prelacy in Scotland

Destruction of Scottish Protestantism—Marquis of Argyle—His Character—His Possessions—His Patriotism—His Service to Charles II—How Requited—He is Condemned as a Traitor—His Demeanor in Prison—on the Scaffold—Mr. James Guthrie—His Character—Sentenced to be Hanged—His Behavior on the Scaffold—His Head Affixed to the Netherbow—Prelacy set up—The New Bishops—Their Character—Robert Leighton—The Ministers required toReceive Presentation and Collation Anew—Will Scotland Submit?

Picture: View of the Ruins of the Cathedral of St. Andrews.

Picture: View of Edinburgh Castle from the Grassmarket

We have seen the scheme resumed, after a short pause, of seating a Popish prince upon the throne of England, and carrying over the whole power and influence of the three kingdoms to the interests of Rome. A beginning had been made of the bold project in the restoration of Charles II, whose concealed [564] Popery better served the purpose of the men who were behind the scenes than an open profession of the Romish faith would have done. The next part of the program was the destruction of the Protestantism of Scotland. The three infamous edicts passed in the Parliament of 1661 had stripped the Presbyterian Church of Scotland of every legal security, had imposed upon the Scots a virtual abjuration of Presbyterianism, and left the Protestant Church of the northern country little better than a wreck. A fourth edict was about to complete the work of the former three. But at this stage it was found necessary to set up the scaffold. There were two men in Scotland of pre-eminent position and influence, who must be taken out of the way before it would be safe to proceed with the measure now contemplated, namely, that of abolishing Presbyterianism and substituting prelacy. These two men were the Marquis of Argyle and Mr. James Guthrie, minister at Stirling.

Archibald, Marquis of Argyle, stood conspicuous among the nobles of Scotland; in grandeur and influence he towered high above them all. Nature had endowed him with excellent talents, which a careful education had developed and trained. He was cautious, eminently wise, liberal in politics, eloquent in discourse, and God-fearing, and to the graces of the true Christian he added the virtues of the patriot. His inheritance was a magnificent one. From those western isles which receive the first shock of the Atlantic wave as it rushes toward the mainland, his possessions stretched southward to the Clyde, and away towards the Tay on the east, comprehending many a grand mountain, many a far-extending forest, many a strath and moorland, watered by great rivers, and dotted with meadow and corn land-the seat of a mighty clan, who knew no king but the Maccallum-More. To his Highland princedom he added many an acre of the richer south, and he owned many a mansion in the great cities, where he occasionally kept court. In those years when Scotland had no king, Argyle bore the burden of the State, and charged himself with the protection of the Presbyterian interests.

That he was wholly free from the finesse of the age, that threading his way amid the snares and pitfalls of the time he never deviated from the straight road, and that amid his many plans he never thought of the aggrandizement of his own family, we will not venture to affirm; but in the main [565] his designs were noble, and his aims steadily and grandly patriotic. He had rendered some important services to Charles Stuart when the fortunes of the royal house were at the lowest. Argyle had protested against the execution of Charles I, and when England rejected the son, Argyle was the first to invite Charles to Scotland, and he it was who placed the crown of that ancient kingdom upon his head. He naturally expected that these services, done at a time which made them trebly valuable, would not be wholly forgotten. Argyle posted up to London to congratulate the king on his restoration. It was now that he discovered the utter baseness of the man by whose side he had stood when so many had forsaken him. Without even being admitted into Charles’s presence, he was seized, and sent down by sea to Scotland, to be tried by the Parliament for high treason. On Saturday, the 25th of May, 1661, he was sentenced to be beheaded on the Monday following. He was the most prominent Protestant in Scotland, and therefore he must die.

Argyle shrank from physical suffering; but now, sentenced to the ax, he conquered his constitutional weakness, and rose above the fear of death.

A deep serenity filled his mind, which imparted a calmness, and even majesty, to his demeanor during the hours between his sentence and its execution. In his prison he had a ravishing sense of God’s love, and a firm assurance of his admission into the heavenly joys. All night through he slept sweetly, and rose refreshed in the morning. He dined with his friends on the day of his execution, discoursing cheerfully with them, and retiring after dinner for secret prayer. The procession to the scaffold being formed, “I could die like a Roman,” said he, “but choose rather to die as a Christian. Come away, gentlemen; he that goes first goes cleanest.” He stopped a moment on his way to execution, to greet James Guthrie, now under sentence of death, and confined in the same prison. They embraced. “Were I not under sentence of death myself,” said the minister to the marquis, “I would cheerfully die for your lordship.” They parted as men do who are soon to meet again, and Argyle, his step firm, and the light of triumph on his brow, went on his way. On the scaffold he addressed the people with great composure, bidding them prepare for times which would leave them only this alternative, to “sin or suffer.” When about to lay his [566] head on the block his physician approached him and touched his pulse, and found that it was beating at its usual rate, calm and strong.[1] He kneeled down, and after a few minutes’ prayer, he gave the signal, the ax fell, and that kingly head rolled on the scaffold.[2] It was affixed to the west end of the Tolbooth, “a monument,” says Wodrow, “of the Parliament’s injustice and the land’s misery.”[3]

In a few days Mr. James Guthrie was brought forth to die. Guthrie was descended from an ancient Scottish family, and was distinguished for his piety, his learning, his eloquence, and his sweetness of disposition, combined with great firmness of principle. His indictment charged him with a variety of offenses, amounting in the eyes of his enemies to high treason; but his real offense was his being a consistent, eloquent, and influential Protestant, which made it necessary that he should be put out of the way, that Middleton might rule Scotland as he liked, and that James Sharp might march in and seize the mitre of St. Andrews. He was sentenced to be “hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh as a traitor, on the 1st of June, 1661, and thereafter his head to be struck off and affixed on the Netherbow, his estate to be confiscated, his coat-of-arms torn and reversed, and his children declared incapable, in all time coming, to enjoy any office, dignities, etc., within this kingdom.” His composure was not in the least disturbed by hearing this sentence pronounced as doom; on the contrary, he expressed, with much sweetness, a hope that it would never affect their lordships more than it affected him, and that his blood would never be required of the king’s house. On the day of his execution he dined with his friends in prison, diffusing round the table the serenity and joy that filled his own soul, and cheering the sorrow of his guests by the hopes that found eloquent expression form his lips. The historian Burner, who witnessed his execution, says that “on the ladder he spoke an hour with the composedness of one who was delivering a sermon rather than his last words.”[4] The martyr himself said that he had often felt greater fear in ascending the pulpit to preach than he now did in mounting the gallows to die. “I take God to record upon my soul,” said he in conclusion, “I would not exchange this scaffold with the palace or mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain.” His face was now covered with the fatal napkin; he made it be lifted a moment, and said, “The Covenants shall yet be Scotland’s reviving.”[5]

His head was affixed to the Netherbow, and there it remained, blackening in the sun, through all the dark years of persecution that followed. The martyrs on their way to the Grass Market to die passed the spot where these honoured remains were exposed. They must have felt, as they looked up at them, that a ray of glory wins cast athwart their path to the scaffold, though the persecutor had not meant it so. “Courage,” would these moldering lips seem to say, and strengthened by the thought that James Guthrie had trodden this road before them, the martyrs passed on to the gallows. Raving hung all these mournful years, and been observed of many martyr processions, Guthrie’s head was at last taken down by a young man named Hamilton, who was at the time a student in Edinburgh, and afterwards became successor at Stirling to the man to whose remains he had performed this kind office.

The two men of all living Scotsmen whom Middleton and Sharp most feared were now in their grave, and the way was open for the execution of the project on which their heart, as well as that of the king, was so much set-the institution of prelacy in Scotland. Accordingly, on the 6th of September, 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation, restoring “the ancient and legal government of the Church by archbishops and bishops, as it was exercised in the year 1637.” The only reason assigned for so vast a change was the king’s good pleasure. The royal mandate must serve for the wishes of the people, the law of the country, and the warrant of Scripture. In the December following, five ministers set out for London, and got themselves appointed bishops, and consecrated in Westminster. The first was James Sharp, who now, as the reward of his treachery, obtained the archiepiscopal mitre of St. Andrews. The second was Fairfoul, who was made Bishop of Glasgow. If a slender theologian, he had some powers as a humorist; but his censors said that his morals were not so pure as his lawn. The third was Wishart, who had the See of Edinburgh. He, too, was of damaged character, and had a habit, when he had drunk freely, of emphasizing his talk with oaths. The fourth was Sydserf, now in his dotage, and made Bishop of Orkney. The fifth was a man of pure character, and fine genius, who was thrown

[1]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 1., pp. 57; London, 1815.

[2]Wodrow, book 1., sec. 3. Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 1., p. 179; Edinburghed.

[3]The body of Argyle was immediately on his execution, carried into the Magdalene Chapel, and laid upon a table still to be see there.

[4]Burnet, vol. 1., p. 159.

[5]Wodrow, book, 1., sec 4. Mr. Gurthrie’s indictment, his speech in court, and his speech on the scaffold, are all given in full in Wodrow, vol. 1.: Glasglow, 1828.

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in to reconcile the Scots to the new Establishment. This was Robert Leighton, appointed to the Episcopal chair of Dunblane. His exposition of the first Epistle of Peter, so chaste and graceful in style, and so rich in evangelical truth, will long remain a monument of his fervent piety. Leighton held that nothing had been laid down, even inferentially, in Scripture on the subject of Church government; and he looked on episcopacy as the best form, but he knew that, as matters then stood in Scotland, the liberties of the nation were bound up with the maintenance of the Presbyterian government; and that government, moreover, he had sworn to maintain. This, if nothing else, ought to have inspired him with a salutary fear of becoming the tool of the tyrant and the partner of renegades in a traitorous scheme for sapping the ancient liberties of his native land, and overthrowing the sacred independence of his Church. His genius and piety but made the part he acted the more criminal, seeing they were employed to support measures which he condemned. The blood of Argyle and Guthrie had to be poured out before he could wear his mitre, and one would have thought that never could he put it on his head without feeling that it imprinted its red marks on his brow. In those days there were few genuine honors to be gained in Scotland save those which the headsman bestowed.

Soon after their consecration the new prelates arrived in Scotland. They entered Edinburgh with some little pomp, being not unwilling to air their new dignity-all except Leighton, who, as if ashamed of his companions, and unwilling to be paraded in the train of Sharp, stole away when the party approached the city, and made his entrance privately. One of their first acts after setting foot on their native soil was to ordain other ten bishops. These had till now been Presbyterian ministers; their anointing took place in the Chapel of Holyrood. Scotland was now divided into fourteen dioceses, and over each diocese was set a regularly consecrated bishop with jurisdiction. The new shepherds to whom the Scottish flock was committed by Charles II had all, before receiving their second consecration, renounced their Presbyterian ordination as null. This throws an interesting light on the mission they had now taken in hand, and the condition of that country, as it appeared in their eyes, in which they were to fulfil it. If their Presbyterian ordination was worthless, so was that of all Presbyters in Scotland, and equally worthless were the powers and ministrations of the whole Presbyterian Church. Scotland, in short, was a pagan country. It possessed neither valid pastors nor valid Sacraments, and had been without both since the Reformation; and these men, themselves consecrated in Westminster, now consecrated others in Holyrood, and came with the benevolent design of restoring to Scotland the valid orders of which Knox had deprived it. In short, they came to plant Christianity a second time in Scotland. Let us mark how they proceeded in their work.

On the 8th of May, 1662, the Scottish Parliament sat. The new bishops took their places in that Assembly, gracing it, if not by their gifts of learning and apostleship, on which history is silent, by their titles and official robes. Their presence reminded the Parliament of the necessity of showing its zeal in the king’s service, and especially that branch of it on which Charles was at that time so intent, the transforming a Presbyterian country into a prelatic one, and changing a constitutional government into an arbitrary monarchy. The Parliament was servile and compliant. Act followed Act, in rapid succession, completing the work which the king had commenced in his proclamation of the September previous ordaining episcopacy. In the first Act of Parliament it was laid down that “the ordering and disposing of the external government and policy of the Church doth properly belong unto his Majesty as an inherent right of the crown, by virtue of his royal prerogative and supremacy in causes ecclesiastical.”[6] The next Act restored the bishops to all their ancient privileges, spiritual and temporal; another Act was passed against all resistance to the king’s government; another forbidding all attempts for any alteration in Church or State, and another declaring the Covenants unlawful and seditious. To this Act was added a curious appendage, which would not have been surprising had it issued from the Vatican, but coming from a temporal government was certainly a novelty. A dispensing clause was sent forth from Whitehall, releasing all who had taken the Covenant from the obligation of fulfilling the oath. That oath might or might not be valid, but for the government to publish a release of conscience to all who had sworn it was one of the startling assumptions of this extraordinary time.

One other edict remains to be specially noted. It required all ministers in Scotland ordained since 1649, on or before the 20th of September to present themselves before the patron to take presentation anew to their livings, and before the bishop of the diocese to receive collation. The year 1649 was fixed on as that from which commenced this second ordination because, the strict covenanting party being then

[6]See Act in Wodrow, book 1., chapter 3, sec. 2.

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in power, patronage had been abolished. But now, patronage being restored, those who had entered the Church by the free choice of the people, and not by the nomination of the patron, were called on to retrace their steps, and begin anew by passing through this ordeal. Collation from the bishop, which was also required of them, implied something more than that they had been informal ministers, namely, that they had not been ministers at all, nor had ever discharged one valid function. One of the clauses of that collation ran thus-“I do hereby receive him into the functions of the holy ministry.” That certainly meant that the man now receiving collation had not till then been clothed with the ministerial office, and that for the first time was he now validly to discharge its functions. The principle on which all these changes proceeded was plainly this, that government was restoring to Scotland a true ministry, which it had lost when its ancient hierarchy was overthrown.

It was not necessary in order to the carrying out of these edicts that Charles II should leave London, the scene of his ease and of his pleasures, and visit the northern kingdom. The royal voluptuary, dearly as he loved power, would perhaps have foregone it in part, had he been required to earn it at the price of anxiety and drudgery. But there was no need he should submit to this sacrifice; he had zealous and trusty tools on the spot, who were but too willing to do the work which he was too indolent to undertake himself. The Privy Council exercised supreme power in his name in Scotland, and he could safely leave with the members of that Council the prosecution of all the schemes of tyranny then on foot. There were men around him, too, of darker counsels and wider schemings than himself-men who, though he little suspected it, were just as ready to thrust him aside as they would have been to dispatch any Covenanter in all Scotland, should he stand in their way; these persons devised the steps which were necessary to be taken, the king sanctioned them, and the perjured and brutal junto who served Charles in Scotland carried them out. We behold the work already almost completed. Only two years have elapsed since Charles II ascended the throne, and the liberties and religion of Scotland have been all but entirely swept away. What it had taken a century and a half to achieve, what had been painfully won, by the stake of Hamilton, the labours of Knox, and the intrepidity of Melville and Henderson, had, as it now seemed, been lost in the incredibly short space from 1600 to 1602. The tame acquiescence of Scotland at so great a crisis amazes us! Have all become unfaithful? Is there no one to fight the old battle? Of the tens of thousands who twenty-four years before assembled in the Grayfriars’ Church-yard of Edinburgh, their hands lifted up to heaven, is there no select band-a thousand? a hundred? fifty?-willing to throw themselves into the breach, and stem the torrent of Popish intrigue and tyrannical violence that is flooding Scotland, and, having overwhelmed it, will next rush on England, burying beneath its swelling wave the Protestantism of the southern kingdom, and along with it the Protestantism of all Christendom? Is there none to avert a catastrophe so awful? We shall see.

Chapter 22: Four Hundred Ministers Ejected

The Bishops hold Diocesan Courts—Summon the Ministers to Receive Collation—The Ministers Disobey—Middleton’s Wrath and Violence?Archbishop Fairfoul’s Complaint—“Drunken Act of Glasgow ”—The 1st of November, 1662—Four Hundred Ministers Ejected—Middleton’s Consternation—Sufferings of the Ejected—Lamentations of the People—Scotland before the Ejection—The Curates—Middleton’s Fall—The Earl of Rothes made Commissioner?Conventicles?Court of High Commission—Its Cruelty—Turner’s Troop—Terrible Violence

Picture: View of Glasgow Cathedral

Picture: A Conventicle: Worship on the Hill-side

The Parliament, having done its work, dissolved. It had promulgated those edicts which placed the Church and State of Scotland at the feet of Charles II, and it left it to the Privy Council and the bishops to carry into effect what it had enacted as law. Without loss of tune the work was commenced. The bishops held diocesan courts and summoned the ministers to receive collation at their hands. If the ministers should obey the summons, the bishops would regard it as an admission of their office: they were not unnaturally desirous of such recognition, and they waited with [569] impatience and anxiety to see what response their citation should receive from the Presbyterian pastors. To their great mortification, very few ministers presented themselves. In only a few solitary instances were the Episcopal mandates obeyed. The bishops viewed this as a contempt of their office and an affront to their persons, and were wroth at the recalcitrants. Middleton, the king’s prime minister in Scotland, was equally angry, and he had not less cause than the bishops for being so. He had assured the king that the royal scepter once firmly stretched out would compel the Presbyterians of the North to bow to the crosier; and if, after all, his project should fail, he would be ruined in the eyes of Charles. To the irascibility and imperiousness with which nature had endowed him, Middleton added the training of the camp, and he resolved to deal with this matter of conscience as he would with any ordinary breach of military discipline. He did not understand this opposition. The law was clear: the king had commanded the ministers to receive collation at the hands of the bishop, and the king must be obeyed, and if not, the recusant must take the consequences-he must abide both Middleton’s and the king’s wrath.

Having made up his mind to decisive measures, Middleton and the other members of the Privy Council set out on a tour of inspection of the western counties, where the more contumacious lived. Coming to Glasgow, Archbishop Fairfoul complained that “not one minister in his whole diocese had presented himself to own him as bishop, and receive collation to his benefice; that he had only the hatred which attends that office in Scotland, and nothing of the power; and that his Grace behoved to fall upon some other and more effectual methods, otherwise the new-made bishops would be mere ciphers.”[1] Middleton consoled the poor man by telling him that to the authority of his crosier he would add the weight of his sword, and he would then see who would be so bold as to refuse to own him as his diocesan. A meeting of the Privy Council was held in the College Hail of Glasgow, on the 1st of October, 1662. They met in a condition that augured ill for the adoption of moderate measures. The bishops urged them to extreme courses with these counsels their own passions coincided; they drank till they were maddened, and could think only of vengeance. It was resolved to extrude from their livings and banish from their parishes all the ministers who had been ordained since 1649, and had not received presentation and collation as the king’s Act required. In pursuance of this summary and violent decision a proclamation was drawn up, to be published on the 4th of October, commanding all such ministers to withdraw themselves and their families out of their parishes before the 1st of November next, and forbidding them to reside within the bounds of their respective presbyteries, They had three weeks given them to determine which they would choose, submission or ejection.[2]

This Act came afterwards to be known as the “Drunken Act of Glasgow.” It is hardly conceivable that sober men would, in the circumstances, have issued so ferocious an edict. “Duke Hamilton told me,” says Burner, “they were all so drunk that day that they were not capable of considering anything that was before them, and would hear of nothing but executing the law without any relenting or delay.”[3] The one sober man at the board, Sir James Lockhart of Lee, remonstrated against the madness of his fellow councilors, but he could recall them neither to sobriety nor to humanity. Their fiat had gone forth: it had sounded, they believed, the knell of Scottish Presbyterianism. “There are not ten men in all my diocese,” said Bishop Fairfoul, “who will dare to disobey.” Middleton was not less confident. That men should cast themselves and their families penniless upon the world for the sake of conscience, was a height of fanaticism which he did not believe to be possible even in Scotland. Meanwhile the day drew on.

The 1st of November, to which Middleton had looked forward as the day that was to crown his bold policy with success, and laying the Presbyterianism of Scotland in the dust, to establish on its ruins prelacy and arbitrary government, was, to the contrary, in the issue to hurl him from power, and lift up that Presbyterianism which he thought to destroy. But to Middleton retribution came in the guise of victory. Hardly four weeks had he given the ministers to determine the grave question whether they should renounce their Presbyterianism or surrender their livings. They did not need even that short space to make up their minds. Four hours-four minutes-were enough where the question was so manifestly whether they should obey God or King Charles. When the 1st of November came, four hundred ministers-more than a third of the Scottish

[1]Wodrow, book 1., chapter 3, sec. 3.

[2]The Act is said to have been the suggestion of Fairfoul, Archbishop of Glasgow. (Wodrow, bk. 1., chapter 3, sec. 3.)

[3]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 1., pp. 194, 195.

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clergy-rose up, and quitting their manses, their churches, and their parishes, went forth with their families into banishment. Middleton was astounded. He could never have believed that the gauntlet he had flung down would be taken up so boldly. It was submission, not defiance, he had looked for from these men. The bishops shared his consternation. They had counseled this violent measure, and now they trembled when they saw how well it had succeeded. They had thought that the Scotland of Knox was dead, and this Act was meant to consign it to its sepulcher; the Act, on the contrary, had brought it to life again; it was rising in the strength of old days, and they knew that they must surely fall before it. Middleton’s rage knew no bounds: he saw at a glance all the fatal consequences to himself of the step he had taken-the ultimate failure of his plans, the loss of the royal favor, and the eventual triumph of that cause to which he thought he had given the death-blow.

Meanwhile, the sufferings of the ejected ministers were far from light. The blow had come suddenly upon them, and left them hardly any time to provide accommodation for themselves and their families.

It was the beginning of winter, and the sight of the bare earth and the bleak skies would add to the gloom around them. They went forth not knowing whither they went. Toiling along on the rough miry road, or laying them down at night under the roof of some poor hovel, or seated with their little ones at some scantily furnished table, they nevertheless tasted a joy so sweet that they would not have exchanged their lot for all the delights of their persecutors. They had their monarch’s sore displeasure, but they knew that they had the approval of their heavenly King, and this sweetened the bitter cup they were drinking. The sacrifice they were now making had only added to their guilt in the eyes of their monarch, and they knew that, distressing as was their present condition, their future lot was sure to be more wretched; but rather than take their hands from the plough they would part with even dearer possessions than those of which they had been stripped. They had counted the cost, and would go forward in the path on which they had set out, although they plainly descried a scaffold at the end of it.

The religious people of Scotland followed with their affection and their prayers the pastors who [571] had been torn from them. The throne had loosened its hold, prelacy had sealed its doom, but the firmness of principle shown by the ministers had exalted the cause of Presbytery, and rallied once more round it the better portion of the Scottish people. The shepherds had been smitten, but the flocks would not long escape, and they prepared to suffer when their day of trial should come. Meanwhile, lamentation and woe overspread the country. “Scotland,” says Wodrow, “was never witness to such a Sabbath as the last on which these ministers preached; and I know no parallel to it save the 24th of August to the Presbyterians in England. Tears, loud wailings, and bursts of sorrow broke in many cases upon the public service. It was a day not only of weeping but howling, like the weeping of Jazer, as when a besieged city is sacked.” The Sunday that followed the ejection was sadder even than that on which the pastors had bidden their congregations farewell. The silence as of death brooded over a large portion of Scotland. All over the western counties of Ayr and Lanark; over many parts of Lothian, Fife, Eskdale, Teviot-dale, and Nithsdale the churches were closed. To [572] quote “Naphtali’s” song of Lamentation (a well-known book in Scotland)-” Then might we have seen the shepherds smitten and the flocks scattered, our teachers removed into corners, and the Lord’s vineyard and sanctuary laid most desolate, so that in some whole counties and provinces no preaching was to be heard, nor could the Lord’s Day be otherwise known than by the sorrowful remembrance of those blessed enjoyments whereof now we are deprived.”

From this scene of desolation let us turn to the Scotland of only two years before, as graphically depicted by an old chronicler. “At the king’s return every parish had a minister, every village had a school, every family almost had a Bible, yea, in most of the country all the children of age could read the Scriptures, and were provided of Bibles, either by their parents, or by their ministers... I have lived many years in a parish where I never heard an oath, and you might have ridden many miles before you heard one; also you could not for a great part of the country have lodged in a family where the Lord was not worshipped by reading, singing, and public prayer. Nobody complained more of our Church government than our taverners; whose ordinary lamentation was-their trade was broke, people were become so sober.”[4] It was from this flourishing condition that Scotland, in the short space of two years, was plunged into her present desolation.

The numerous vacant pulpits had to be filled. The bishops turned their eyes to the northern counties in quest of men to succeed the pious and learned ministers who had been ejected. Some hundreds of raw untaught young men were brought from that part of Scotland, drafted into the Church, and taught to do duty as curates. The majority of them were as incapable as they were unwelcome. They were all of them without liberal education, and many of them lacked morals as well as letters. “They were ignorant to a reproach,” says Bishop Burnet, “and many of them openly vicious; they were a disgrace to the order and the sacred functions, and were indeed the dregs and refuse of the northern parts.”[5] In some cases their arrival in the parish was met by a shower of stones; the church door was barricaded on Sunday morning, and they had to make their entrance by the window.

Middleton was now drawing near the close of his career. He had dragged Argyle to the block and Guthrie to the gallows, and he had filled up his cup by extruding from their charges four hundred of the best ministers of Scotland, and now his fall followed hard on the heels of his great crime. But in his case, as in so many similar ones, infatuation preceded destruction. Middleton had now few sober hours; for no sooner had the fumes of one debauch been dissipated than those of another began to act upon him. Even Charles became disgusted at his habitual intoxication. His passionate violence and drunken recklessness had completely lost the opportunity for the peaceable establishment of prelacy in Scotland. He had but damaged the king’s interests by his precipitation, and the Earl of Rothes was sent down to supersede him. The new commissioner was a son of that Earl Rothes who had been one of the early leaders of the Covenanters. The son was as distinguished for his profligacy as the father had been for his piety and his talents. He was coarse, avaricious, licentious, and the policy of violence which had been inaugurated under Middleton was continued under Rothes.

It was now that field-meetings termed conventicles arose. The greater part of the pious ministers cast out, and their places filled by incapable men, the people left the new preachers to hold forth within empty walls. It was in vain that the church doors were thrown open on Sunday morning, few entered save the curates’ dependents, or the reprobates of the place; the bulk of the population were elsewhere, listening to those ministers who, not being comprehended in the Act of 1662, having been ordained before the year 1649, were still permitted to occupy their pulpits; or they had gathered by hundreds or by thousands, devout and reverend, on some moorland, or in some sequestered glen, or on some mountain-side, there to listen to one of the ejected ministers, who, taking his stand on some rock or knoll, preached the Word of Life. It was exceedingly mortifying to the bishops to see their curates despised, their churches empty, and the people traveling miles in all weathers to hear those whom they had extruded. They immediately obtained an Act forbidding any one to preach unless he had a license from a bishop, and commanding the people to attend their parish churches under the penalty of a fine. This Act was termed the “bishops’ drag-net.” It failed to fill the empty pews of the parish churches. One tyrannical measure only necessitates another and more tyrannical. Archbishop Sharp posted up to London to obtain additional powers. He returned, and set up the Court of High Commission.

This was the Star Chamber of England over again. In truth, it bore, in its flagrant defiance of forms, and its inexorably merciless spirit, a close resemblance to the “Holy Office” of the Inquisition. Soldiers were sent

[4]Kirkton, History of the Church of Scotland, pp. 64, 65.

[5]Burnet, vol. 1., p. 229.

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forth to scour the country, and if one was found who had been absent from the parish church, or had given a little aid to any of the outed ministers, or was suspected of the sin of Presbyterianism, he was dragged to the bar of the High Commission Court, where sat Sharp, like another Rhadamanthus, ready to condemn all whom the soldiers had captured and baled to his dread tribunal. The lay-judges in disgust soon left the entire business in the hands of the archbishop and his assistant prelates. Their process was simple and swift. The labor of compiling an indictment, the trouble of examining witnesses, the delay of listening to pleadings were all dispensed with. The judges walked by no rule or statute, they kept no record of their proceedings, and they suffered no one to escape. All who came to that bar left it under condemnation. The punishments awarded from that judgment-seat were various. Some it amerced in heavy fines: some it ordered to be publicly whipped: some it sent into banishment: others it consigned to dungeons; and some it branded on the cheek with hot irons, and sold as slaves, and shipped off to Barbados. The times, bad as they were, were, not so bad as to suffer such a court to exist. In two years the High Commission sank under the odium which its atrocious injustice, cruelty, and tyranny drew down upon it.

“Sir,” said the minister of Colvend on the Solway, addressing Sharp one day from the bar of this terrible court. “Know you,” growled Rothes, “to whom you speak?” “Yes,” replied the undaunted pastor, “I speak to James Sharp, once a fellow-minister with myself.” Without further inquiry into his offenses, he was laid in irons, thrown into the “Thieves’ Hole” in the Tolbooth, with a lunatic for his companion, and ultimately banished to the Shetland Islands, where “for four years,” says Wodrow, “he lived alone in a wild desolate island, in a very miserable plight. He had nothing but barley for his bread, and his fuel to prepare it with was sea-tangle and wreck; and had no more to preserve his miserable life.”

In Scotland, Presbytery and Liberty, like the twins of classic story, have ever flourished and faded together. After 1663 no Parliament met in Scotland during six years. The laws were virtually defunct, and the will of the king was the sole authority in the State. Charles II issued proclamations, his Privy Council in Scotland turned them into Acts, and the soldiers executed them with their swords. It was in this way that the country was governed. Its Presbyterian religion and its constitutional liberties had fallen together.

No part of the country south of the Grampian chain escaped this most terrible tyranny, but the south and west in particular were mercilessly scourged by it. The wretched inhabitants of these counties had been given into the hands of Sir James Turner. Turner was a man naturally of choleric temper, and when his passions were inflamed by drink, which often happened, his fury rose to madness. His troop was worthy of himself. Drawn from the dregs of the populace, they ruined the name, not of soldiers, but of ruffians, who were in their element only when carousing, pillaging, and shedding blood. It would be endless to recount the barbarities which Turner’s troop exercised upon the poor peasantry.

The great public offense of each parish was still the empty church of the curate. To punish and so abate this scandal, the following device was fallen upon. After sermon the curate called over the roll of the parishioners, and marked those not present. A list of the absentees was given to the soldiers, who were empowered to levy the fine to which non-attendance at church rendered the person liable. If the family was not able to pay the fine, a certain number of the troop took up their quarters in the house, cursing, blaspheming, carousing, wasting by their riotous living the substance of the family, and, before taking leave, destroying what they had not been able to devour. Ruin was almost the inevitable consequence of such a visit, and members of families, recently in affluence, might now be seen wandering about the country in circumstances of destitution. After the landlord, it came to be the tenants turn to be eaten up. As the locust-swarms of the East, so passed these miscreant bands from parish to parish and from family to family, leaving their track an utter waste. The sanctity of home, the services of devotion, the decencies of morality, respect to rank, and reverence for age, all perished in the presence of this obscene crew. Louder and louder every day waxed the cry of the suffering country. [574]

Chapter 23: Breach of the “Triple League” and War with Holland

The same Policy pursued in England and Scotland—Scheme for Introducing Popery and Arbitrary Government—Test Acts—Non-resistance—Power of the Militia Given to the King—Humiliation of the Nation—The Queen-mother—Surrender of Dunkirk—Breach of the “Triple League “—The King’s Sister—Interview at Dover—M. Colbert—War with Holland resolved on—How the Quarrel was Picked—Piratical Attack on Dutch Merchantmen by the Navy of England—The Exchequer Seized by the King—An Indulgence Proclaimed—War Commenced—Rapid Triumphs of the French—Duplicity of Louis XIV—William, Prince of Orange, made Stadtholder of Holland—The Great Issue

Picture: View of Dunkirk from the Sea

The great project planned and moved by the Jesuits for reconquering England, and through England subjugating Christendom, and restoring the Church of Rome to her former dominance in every country of Europe, was proceeding on parallel lines, stage by stage, in both England and Scotland at once. On the 24th of August, 1662, two thousand ministers, who formed the strength and glory of English Protestantism, were driven out of the Church of England. In the November following, a similar measure was adopted in Scotland. Four hundred men, the flower of the Scottish clergy, were extruded from their churches, and soon thereafter forbidden all exercise of their office under pain of death. The Protestantism of Great Britain was not indeed entirely smitten down by these great blows, but it lay wounded and bleeding, and had scarce spirit or strength left it for continuing the battle with a yet powerful foe. This was an entire reversal of the policy which had been pursued before the Restoration. The policy of the Solemn League was to unite the two kingdoms of Scotland and England on a thoroughly Protestant basis, that they might be able in concert to establish a constitutional throne, maintain the authority of the laws, and fortify the domain of civil and religious liberty. Now the policy of the Government was to break up the concord which had been formed between the two countries, that on the ruins of their Protestantism they might plant arbitrary power and the Popish religion. What Charles mainly aimed at, we grant, was absolute power; what the yet deeper plotters around him sought to compass was the restoration of the Romish faith; but they found it easy to persuade the monarch that he could not gain his own object except by advancing theirs. Thus each put their shoulder to the great task, and the king’s prerogative and the usurpation of the tiara advanced by equal steps, while English liberty and national honour sank as the other rose.

The first more manifest step of this national decline was the famous declaration inserted in the Act of Uniformity, and which every ecclesiastical functionary, from the Primate of all England down to the village schoolmaster, was required to subscribe, and in which he declared it to be “unlawful, on any pretense whatever, to take up arms against the king.” This test pledged beforehand all who took it to submit to any act of tyranny, however gross, and to any invasion on their property and person, however monstrous. It left to Englishmen a strange measure of liberty, namely that of passive obedience and non-resistance. Soon thereafter, there followed another declaration which all civil and military functionaries were enjoined to make, and which ran thus: “I do swear I will not endeavor any alteration in the government of this kingdom in Church or State, as it is by law established.” The nation was thus pledged neither to amend anything that might be wrong, however glaringly so, in the existing state of matters nor to offer resistance to any aggression, however unjust and oppressive, that might be attempted in future. While it disarmed itself, and stood literally manacled before the throne of Charles, the nation armed him with full means for tyrannizing over itself, by handing over to him the sole power of the militia, which then occupied the place of the army. Thus was arbitrary government set up. To resist the king, said the men of law, is treason; to dissent from his religion, said the divines, is anathema. What was this but an apotheosis of the prerogative? And the only maxim to which Charles now found it needful to have respect in ruling, was to make the yoke press not too heavily at first, lest the nation should break the fetters with which it had bound itself, and resume the powers it had surrendered.

There now opens a chapter in English history which is sad indeed, being a continuous succession of humiliations, disasters, and dishonors. Soon after Charles II ascended the throne, the queen-mother, who had been residing in Paris since the execution of her husband, Charles I, came across to [575] pay her son a visit. The ostensible object of her journey was to congratulate her son, but her true errand was to ripen into an alliance a friendship already formed between Charles II and Louis XIV, termed the Grand Monarch, and truly worthy of the name, if a hideous and colossal combination of dissoluteness, devotion, and tyranny can make any one great. It would mightily expedite the great scheme then in hand that rite King of England should be in thorough accord with the King of France, whose arms were carrying the fame of Louis and the faith of Rome over so many countries of the Continent of Europe.

The first fruits of this interview were the surrender of Dunkirk to the French. This fortress had been deemed of so great importance, that Parliament a little before had it in contemplation to prepare an Act annexing it for ever to the crown of these realms; it was now sold to the French king for 400,000 pounds-a sum not more than sufficient to cover the value of the guns and other military stores contained in it. The loss of this important place deeply grieved the nation, but what affected the English people most was the deplorable sign which its sale gave of a weak and mercenary court.

The next public proof that the Court of England was being drawn into the scheme for the destruction of the Protestant faith, was the breach of the “Triple League” on the part of Charles II, and his uniting with France to make war upon Holland. This famous Alliance had been formed between England, Holland, and Sweden; and its object was to stem the torrent of Louis XIV’s victorious arms, which were then threatening to overrun all Europe and make the Roman sway again universal. This Triple Alliance, which the great minister Sir William Temple had been at great pains to cement, was at that time rite political bulwark of the Protestant roll, on and the liberties of Europe, and its betrayal was a step to the ruin of more than England. Britain was very artfully detached from her Protestant allies and her own true interests. The Duchess of Orleans, King Charles’s sister, was dispatched (1670) on a private interview with her brother at Dover, on purpose to break this design to him. Having brought her negotiation a certain length she returned to Paris, leaving behind her a lady of acknowledged charms, Madam Carewell, afterwards Duchess of Portsmouth, and the king’s favorite mistress, to prosecute what she had been unable to conclude. Next, M. Colbert, ambassador from the Court of France, came across with 100,000 pistols to lay out to the best advantage. With so many and so convincing reasons Colbert had little difficulty in persuading the ministry, known as the Cabal,[1] to espouse the French interests, and persuade the king to fall out with the Dutch. Coventry was sent across to Sweden to induce that Government also to withdraw front the League. He succeeded so far that Sweden first grew lukewarm in the cause, and after having armed itself at the expense of the Alliance, and dissembling for a while, it dropped the visor, and drew the sword on the side of France.[2] Thus Protestant Holland was isolated.

A war with Holland having been resolved upon, the next thing was to pick a quarrel. This task required no little invention, for the Dutch had not only behaved with perfect good faith, but had studied not to give offense to England. A new and hitherto untried device was fallen upon. In August, 1671, the Dutch fleet was cruising in the North Sea, in fulfillment of their treaty engagements: a “sorry” yacht carrying the English flag suddenly sailed into the fleet, and singling out the admiral’s ship, twice fired into her. The Dutch commander, having regard to the amity existing between the two nations, paid a visit to the captain of the yacht, and inquired his reason for acting as he had done. The admiral was told that he had insulted England by failing to make his whole fleet strike to his little craft. The Dutch commander civilly excused the omission, and the yacht returned to England, bearing as her freight the quarrel she had been sent to open.[3] This, with a few other equally frivolous incidents, furnished the English Court with a pretext for declaring war against Holland.

The Dutch could not believe that England was in earnest. They were conscious of no offense, and pursued their commerce in our seas without suspicion. A rich fleet of merchantmen, on their voyage from Smyrna, were passing through the Channel, with a feeble convoy, when they were set upon by English men-of-war near the Isle of Wight. The king had thought to seize this rich booty, and therewith defray the expenses of the war which he was meditating. His attempt at playing the pirate upon his own coasts did not succeed: the merchantmen defended themselves with spirit, and the king’s prize was so meager that it scarce sufficed to pay the surgeons who attended the wounded, and the carpenters who repaired the battered ships. The next attempt of Charles II to put himself in funds

[1]So termed because the initial letters of their names form that word?Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, Lauderdale.

[2]Andrew Marvell, Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England, pp. 28, 29; Amsterdam, 1677.

[3]Sir William Temple, Works and Letters, vol. 2., pp. 502, 503; Edinburgh, 1754.

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for the war was to seize on the Exchequer, and confiscate all moneys laid up there to the use of the State. To the terror of the whole nation and the ruin of the creditors, the Crown issued a proclamation declaring itself bankrupt, “made prize of the subject, and broke all faith and contract at home in order to the breaking of them abroad with more advantage.”[4]

While the king’s fleet was in the act of attacking the Dutch merchantmen in the Channel, his printers were busy on a proclamation of Indulgence. On the 15th of March, 1672, a proclamation was issued repealing all the penal laws against Papists and Nonconformists, and granting to both the free exercise of their worship. A gift in itself good only alarmed the nation, by the time at which it was issued, and the ground on which it was placed. The Indulgence was based on the king’s inherent supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, a prerogative in virtue of which he might re-impose the fetters on Nonconformists when he chose, and the end would be that only Papists would be free, and the nation would lose its religion. So did the people reason.

It was now (17th March, 1672) that the stroke fell upon Holland. Charles II and the powerful Louis XIV united in a simultaneous attack on the little Protestant State, the former by sea and the latter by land. The invasion was the more successful that it had been so little expected. The victorious arms of France poured across the frontier of the United Provinces in an irresistible torrent. The towns and fortresses upon the German side opened their gates to the invaders, and the French made themselves masters of the inland cities “in as little time as travelers usually employ to view them.”[5] This rapid advance of the French armies was aided by an extraordinary drought which that summer rendered their rivers and canals easily fordable, and which may be said to have opened the gates of their country to the enemy.[6]

The English had not the success at sea which the French king had on land, nor did this displease Louis XIV. He had declared by his ambassador at Vienna that he had undertaken this war for the extirpation of heresy, and he had instructed his admiral so to arrange the line of battle in the joint fleets as that the English heretics should have a large share of the promised extirpation. “He only studied,” says Marvell, “to sound our seas, to spy our ports, to learn our buildings, to contemplate our way of fighting, to consume ours and to preserve his own navy, and to order all so that the two great naval Powers of Europe being crushed together, he might remain sole arbitrator of the ocean, and by consequence master of all the isles and continents.”[7]

In truth Louis XIV wanted but little of accomplishing his whole design. In the short space of three months he had, with his army of 150,000 men, overrun Holland, and reduced the States to the brink of ruin. Many of the richest families, believing all to be lost, had fled from the country. The conqueror was refusing to make peace on any other terms than the establishment of the Romish Church in Holland. The French king, prompted by his Jesuit advisers, scorned to accept of toleration for “the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion,” and demanded its public exercise throughout all the United Provinces, and that provision should be made from the public revenue for its maintenance. The English Government seconded the French king’s demands, and the fall of Holland as a Protestant State seemed imminent. With dragoons hewing down Protestantism in Scotland, with arbitrary edicts and dissolute maxims wasting it in England, with Holland smitten down and Louis XIV standing over it with his great sword, it must have seemed as if the last hour of the Reformation was come, and the triumph of the Jesuits secured. As Innocent X surveyed Europe from the Vatican, what cause he had for exultation and joy! He was nearing the goal of his hopes in the speedy accession of a Popish monarch to the throne of England.

It was out of the great wreck caused by the triumph of the Spanish arms in the preceding century that William the Silent emerged, to achieve his mighty task of rescuing Protestantism from impending destruction. Sinking States, discomfited armies, and despairing Protestants surrounded him on all sides when he stood up to retrieve the mighty ruin. A second time was the grand marvel to be repeated. The motto of his house, Tandem fit surculus arbor,[8] was once more to be verified. Out of this mighty disaster produced by the French arms, was a deliverer, second only in glory to the Great William, to arise to be the champion of a sinking Protestantism, and the upholder of perishing nations. The House of Orange had for some time past been under a cloud. A generation of Dutchmen had arisen who knew not, or did not care to know, the services which that house had rendered to their country. The ambition of burgomasters had eclipsed the splendor of the glorious line of William, and the strife of factions had brought low

[4]Andrew Marvell, Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England, pp. 30, 31: Amsterdam, 1677. Hume, vol. 2., chapter 65.

[5]Bowyer, History of King William III, p. 17; London, 1702.

[6]Sir William Temple, The United Provinces, p. 185.

[7]Marvell, p. 46.

[8]“At last the sprig becomes a tree.”

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the country which his patriotism and wisdom had raised so high. The office of Stadtholder had been abolished, and the young Prince of Orange, the heir not only of the name, but of the virtues and abilities of his great ancestor, forbidden access to all offices of the State, was living as a private person. But the afflictions that now overtook them chastened the Hollanders, and turned their eyes toward the young prince, if haply it might please Providence to save them by his hand. The States-General appointed him Captain and Admiral-General of the United Provinces.[9] From this hour the spirits of the Dutch began to revive, and the tide in their fortunes to turn. The conflict was nearly as arduous as that which his illustrious progenitor had to wage. He dealt Louis XIV several repulses, obliged him in surrender some of his conquests, and by his prudence and success so won upon his countrymen, that their suffrages placed him in the high position of Hereditary Stadtholder. We now behold a champion presenting himself on the Protestant side worthy of the crisis. He must wage his great fight against tremendous odds. He is opposed by all the Jesuits of Europe, by the victorious arms of France, by the treachery and the fleet of Charles II; but he feels the grandeur as well as the gravity of his noble mission, and he addresses himself to it with patience and courage. The question is now who shall occupy the throne of England? Shall it be the Prince of Orange, under the title of William III, or shall it be a protégé of the Jesuits, under the title of James II? In other words, shall the resources of Great Britain be wielded for Protestantism, or shall its power be employed to uphold Popery and make its sway again triumphant and universal? Fleets and armies, prayers and faith, must decide this question. The momentous issues of the conflict were felt on both sides. The Kings of France and England pressed William of Orange to accept of a sovereignty under their suzerainty, in the hope of beguiling him from his destined mission. The prince replied that he would never sell the liberties of his country which his ancestors had so long defended: and if he could not prevent the overthrow with which they threatened it, he had one way left of not beholding its ruin and that was “to lie in the last ditch.”

[9]Bowyer, History of William III., vol. 1., p. 19.

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Chapter 24: The Popish Plot, and Death of Charles II

The Issue Adjusted—Who shall Sit on the Throne of Britain?—Peace with Holland—Charles II a Pensioner of Louis XIV—English Ships Seized by France—No Redress—Duke of York’s Second Marriage—William of Orange Marries the Princess Mary—The Duke of York’s Influence in the Government—Alarm—Test Acts—The Duke’s Exclusion from the Throne demanded—The Popish Plot—Titus Oates—The Jesuit Coleman—His Letter to Père la Chaise—Murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey—The Duke’s Exclusion—Attempts to throw the Plot on the Presbyterians—Execution of Essex, Russell, and Sidney—Judge Jeffreys—Illness and Death of the King—What they Said of his Death at Rome

Picture: The Interior of the Chapel Royal (Banqueting House), Whitehall

Picture: Burning the Pope in Effigy at Temple Bar

Is the great war of Truth and Liberty against Error and Slavery which had raged since the days of Wicliffe, and in which there had been so many momentous crises, but no crisis so momentous as the present, the grand issue had now been adjusted. That issue was simply this: Shall a Protestant or a Popish régime be established in Christendom? In order to arrive at the final determination of this issue the question had first to be decided, as one of the essential preliminaries, to whom shall the throne of Great Britain belong?-whether shall Protestant or a Popish sovereign occupy it? The house of Orange had for some time been in obscurity, but it was the singular fortune of that illustrious line to emerge into prominence at all the great epochs of the Reformation, and with its re-emergence the light of victory ever returned to gild again the banners of Protestantism. The present hour produced a second William of Orange, who, devoting himself to the cause of his country and of Christendom, when the condition of both seemed desperate, turned the tide of the French victories which were overflowing Europe, uplifted the sinking balance of the Protestant interests in England, and elevated the cause of the Reformation to so stable a position, that of the second William it may be truly said that he crowned the great struggle which the first William had commenced more than a century before.

We cannot follow in its details the progress of this great struggle, we can only indicate the direction and flow of its current. The veteran warriors of the French king had to retreat before the soldiers of the young Stadtholder, and the laurels which Louis XIV had reaped on so many bloody fields, he had at last to lay at the feet of the young prince. The English, who had conducted their operations by sea with as little glory as the French had carried on theirs by land, found it expedient in 1674 to conclude a peace with Holland. The union between England and France was thus at an end, but though no longer confederate in arms, the two crowns continued to prosecute in concert the greater plot of overthrowing Protestantism. A deeper influence than perhaps either Power was aware of, steadily moved both towards one goal. The more successfully to undermine and ruin the Protestantism of Great Britain, England was kept dependent on France. The necessities of the English monarch were great, for his Parliament was unwilling to furnish him with supplies while he and his Government pursued measures which were in opposition to the nation’s wishes and interests. In the straits to which he was thus reduced, Charles II was but too glad to have recourse to Louis XIV, who freely permitted him access to his purse, that he might the more effectually advance the glory of France by lowering the prestige of England, and securing the co-operation of the English king in the execution of his projects, and more especially of those that had for their object the overthrow of Protestantism, which Louis XIV. deemed the great enemy of his throne and the great disturber of his kingdom. Thus Charles II, while he played the tyrant at home, was content to be the pensioner abroad.

The subserviency of the English Government to France was carried still further. After England had made peace with Holland the French king sent out his privateers, which scoured the Channel, made prizes of English merchantmen, and came so close in shore in these piratical expeditions, that our ships were seized at the very entrance of their harbors. The king’s Government submitted to these insults, not indeed from any principle of Christian forbearance, but because it dared not demand reparation for the wrongs of its subjects at the hand of the King of France.[1] Instead of enforcing redress, insults were recompensed with favors, and vast stores of warlike ammunition, guns,

[1]We find the Lords of the Committee of Trade presenting to his Majesty in Council in 1676, in the name of all the merchants in London, a list of the ships taken by the French, amounting to fifty-four, and begging his Majesty’s interference. (A List of Several Ships belonging to the English Merchants, etc.; Amsterdam, 1677.)

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iron, shot, gunpowder, pikes, and other weapons were sent across, to arm the fortresses and ships of France. This transportation of warlike material continued to go on, more or less openly, from June, 1675, to June, 1677.[2] Such was the reprisal we took of the French for burning our ships and robbing our merchants, as if King Charles were bent on doing what he had urged the Prince of Orange to do in respect of Holland, and were content to hold the sovereignty of England under the protection of France. The two crowns were drawn yet closer by the marriage of the king’s brother, the Duke of York. His first wife, a daughter of Lord Clarendon, having died, Louis XIV chose a second for him in the person of the Princess of Modena, a relation of the reigning Pope. The princess was a pensioner of France, and Louis XIV admitted her husband to the same honour, by offering his purse to the duke, since their interests were now the same, to assist him against all his enemies.

While one train of events was going forward, and the throne of England was being drawn over to the side of Rome, another train of events was in progress, tending to link that same throne to the Protestant interests. Another marriage, which took place soon after the duke’s, paved the way for that great issue in which this complication of affairs was to end. The Prince of Orange, having finished his campaign of 1677, came across to England, accompanied by a noble retinue, to open marriage negotiations with the Princess Mary. This princess, the daughter of the Duke of York by his first wife, was a lady of graceful person and vigorous intellect, and the prince on seeing her was fascinated with her charms, and eagerly pressed his suit. After some delays on the part of the king and the duke, the marriage was at last arranged, and was consummated to the great joy of the people of both countries.[3] To that general satisfaction there was one exception. Louis XIV was startled when he learned that an affair of such consequence had been transacted at a court where, during many years, nothing of moment had been concluded without his knowledge and advice. Our ambassador at Versailles, Montague, said that he had never seen the king so moved as on receiving this news. “The duke,” he said, “had even his daughter to the greatest enemy he had in the world.”[4] Men saw in it another proof that the great conqueror had begun to fall before the young Stadtholder. The marriage placed William in the line of succession to the English throne, though still there were between him and this high dignity the possible offspring of Charles II and also James, Duke of York.

Meanwhile the kingdom was filled with priests and Jesuits. Their numbers had been recruited by new arrivals in the train of the Princess of Modena. Mass was said openly in the queen’s chapel at Somerset House, and the professors of the Romish faith were raised to the highest offices of the kingdom. Charles wore the crown, but the Duke of York governed the nation. The king, abandoning himself to his pleasures, left the care of all affairs to his brother; whom, although a member of the Church of Rome, no one durst call a Papist without incurring the penalty of death. All who had eyes, and were willing to use them, might now see the religion of Rome marching like an armed man upon the liberties of England.

The Parliament was at last aroused, and set about concerting measures to save the country. They had often addressed the king on the matter, but in a manner so little in earnest that nothing came of it. If Charles was of any faith it was that of Rome, and his usual answer to the supplications of the Commons, praying him to take steps to prevent the growth of Popery, was the issue of a new proclamation, which neither hurt the Romanists nor benefited the Protestants. Now the Parliament, more in earnest, resolved to exclude all Papists from any share in the government. For this end the “Test Act” was framed. This Act required, “That all persons bearing any office, or place of trust and profit, shall take the oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance in public and open court, and shall also receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper according to the usage of the Church of England.” The swearer was also required to subscribe a declaration that he did not believe in Transubstantiation. This test aimed at a great deal, but it accomplished little. If it excluded the more honest of the professors of the Roman creed, and only these, for no test could bar the entrance of the Jesuit,[5] it equally excluded the Nonconformists from the service of the State. Immediately on the passing of the Bill, the Duke of York and the Lord Treasurer Clifford laid down all their offices. These were the first-fruits, but they were altogether deceptive; for while the duke professed to bow to

[2]Andrew Marvell, p. 69.

[3]Bowyer, History of William III, vol. 1., pp. 95-97.

[4]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 2., p. 13; London, 1815.

[5]The reverend Fathers of the Society have given order to erect several private workhouses in England case-hardening of consciences. The better to carry on this affair there are thousands of Italian vizard sent over, that hall make a wolf seem a sheep, and as rank a Papist as any in Spain pass for a good English Protestant.”? The Popish Courant, Dec. 11th, 1678. (The Popish Courant was published alternately with the Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome.)

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the nation’s wishes by publicly stripping himself of his offices, he, continued to wield in private all the influence he had before exercised openly.

The fears of the nation rose still higher. The Test Act had done little to shelter them from the storm they saw approaching, and they demanded other and greater securities. The duke had laid down his staff as commander of the army, but by-and-by he would grasp a yet mightier rod, the sceptre of England namely. The nation demanded his exclusion from the throne. There could be no permanent safety for the liberties of England, they believed, till the duke’s succession was declared illegal. The army lay encamped at Blackheath; this also aggravated the popular terror. The excuse pleaded by the court for stationing the army so near to London was the fear of the Dutch. The Dutch against whom the army are to act, said the people, are not so far off as Holland, they are the men who assemble in St. Stephens. The court has lost all hope of the Parliament establishing the Roman religion by law, and here is the army ready at a stroke to sweep away all Parliaments, and establish by the sword the Roman Church and arbitrary government. These suspicions were held as all but confirmed, when it was found that in the course of a single month not fewer than fifty-seven commissions were issued to Popish recusants, without demanding either the oath of supremacy or the test. The Secretary of State who countersigned the warrants was committed to the Tower by the Commons, but liberated next day by the king.

The alarm rose to a panic by an extraordinary occurrence which happened at this time, and which was enveloped in considerable mystery, from which it has not even yet been wholly freed. We refer to the Popish Plot. Few things have so deeply convulsed England. The information was in some parts so inconsistent, incredible, and absurd, and in others so circumstantial, and so certainly true, and the story so fell in with the character of the times, which were prolific in strange surmises and unnatural and monstrously wicked devices, that few people doubted that a daring and widely ramified Conspiracy was in progress for burying England and all its Protestant institutions in ruins. Titus Oates was the first to give information of this astounding project. Oates, who had received orders in the Church of England, but had reconciled himself to Rome, appeared before the king and Council, and stated in effect, “That there had been a plot carried on by Jesuits and other Catholics, against his Majesty’s life, the Protestant religion, and the government of this kingdom.” Oates was only half informed; he was to a large extent guessing, and hence the variations, mistakes, and contradictions into which he fell. He may have been partially admitted into the secret by the conspirators; but however he came by his knowledge, there can be no doubt that a plot there was. The papers of Coleman, the Jesuit, were seized, and these fully corroborated the substance of Oates’ information. Coleman’s letters during the three preceding years, addressed to Père la Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV, left no doubt that he was in concert with high personages in France for restoring Popery in England. “We have here,” says he in one of these, “a mighty work upon our hands, no less than the conversion of three kingdoms, and by that perhaps the utter subduing of a pestilent heresy, which has a long time domineered over this northern world. There were never such hopes since the death of our Queen Mary as now in our days. God has given us a prince,” meaning the duke, “who has become (I may say by a miracle) zealous of being the author and instrument of so glorious a work; but the opposition we are sure to meet with is also like to be great; so that it imports us to get all the aid and assistance we can.” In another letter he said, “I can scarce believe myself awake, or the thing real, when I think of a prince, in such an age as we live in, converted to such a degree of zeal and piety as not to regard anything in the world in comparison of God Almighty’s glory, the salvation of his own soul, and the conversion of our poor kingdom.”[6]

The murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey confirmed the popular suspicions, as well as deepened the fear in which the nation stood of the conspirators. Godfrey, who was the most popular magistrate in London, had been specially active in the discovery of the plot, and was the first to take the evidence of Oates relating to it. The Jesuits had dropped hints that he should pay dearly for his pains, and the good man himself knew this, and remarked that he believed he should be the first martyr; and so it happened. After he had been missing four days, his body was found in a ditch near Primrose Hill, a mile’s distance outside of London, and in such a posture as to make the world believe that he had murdered himself. His gloves and cane were lying on the bank near him, and his body was run through with his own sword. But there was neither blood on his clothes, nor other wound on his person, save a circular discoloration on his neck, showing that he had been strangled, as was afterwards found to have been the fact by

[6]Hume, History Eng., chapter 67, sec. 3. Hallam, Constitut. History, vol. 2., pp. 115, 116.

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the confession of one of his murderers, Prance.[7] The Parliament, from the evidence laid before it, was convinced of the existence of a plot, “contrived and carried on by Popish recusants for assassinating and murdering the king, subverting the Government, rooting out and destroying the Protestant religion.” The House of Lords came to the same conclusion.

But seeing the plot, among other objects, contemplated the murder of the king, what motive had the Jesuits to seek to be rid of a man who was at heart friendly to them? Charles II, it was commonly believed, had been reconciled to Rome when at Breda. He was sincerely desirous of having the Roman religion restored in England, and a leading object of the secret treaty signed at Dover between France and England in 1670 was the advancement of the Popish faith in Great Britain. Nevertheless the object of the Jesuits in planning his assassination was transparent: Charles loved their Church, and would do all in his power to further her interests, but he would not sacrifice his crown and pleasures for her. Not so the Duke of York. A zealot, not a voluptuary, he would not stay to balance interests, but would go through with the design of restoring the Church of Rome at all hazards. James, therefore, was the sovereign whom the Jesuits wished to see upon the throne of England.

But the more the Jesuits strove to raise him to the throne, the more resolved were the people of England to exclude him from it. A Bill to that effect passed the House of Commons on November 15th, 1680, and was carried up to the House of Lords by Lord William Russell. It was thrown out of the Upper House by a majority of thirty voices. The contest, in which was involved the fate of Britain, continued. The Parliament struck, time after time, against the duke, but the king was staunch to his interests. The House of Lords and the bishops espoused his cause, and the duke triumphed. The Commons, despite their zeal, failed to alter the succession, or even to limit the prerogative.

But the duke, notwithstanding his victory in Parliament, found that the feeling of the nation, arising from the Popish plot, set strongly against him; and now he set to work to discredit the plot, and to persuade the public that it never had existed save in the imagination of fanatics.[8] The skill of a general is shown in conducting a safe retreat as well as in ordering a successful charge. Treasons are never to be acknowledged unless they succeed. When the Gunpowder Plot failed it was disowned; the credulous were told that only a few desperadoes were concerned in it; in truth, that it was a State trick, a plot of Secretary Cecil against the Roman Catholics. The same tactics were pursued a second time. Writers were hired to render the Popish plot ridiculous, and laugh down the belief of it. One or two conspirators were executed, but in great haste, lest they should tell too much. Coleman, whose papers had supplied such strong evidence of the conspiracy, died protesting stoutly his innocence, and vindicating the duke.[9] But of what worth were such protestations? Treason and murder cease to be such when directed against heretics. To tell the truth at the last moment to the prejudice of the Church is to forfeit paradise; and it is even lawful to curse the Pope, provided it be done in his own interests.

Their success in getting the plot to be disbelieved not being equal to their expectations, the duke and his party next tried to throw it upon the shoulders of the Nonconformists. One of the arts employed for this purpose was to drop prepared papers in the houses of the chief persons concerned in the discovery of the Popish plot; and on their discovery?an easy matter, seeing those who had left them knew where to search for them-to proceed against those in whose dwellings they had been found. Colonel Mansel was one of the first to be arraigned on a charge so supported; but he was acquitted by the Attorney-General, who, in addition to finding Mansel innocent, declared that this appeared “a design of the Papists to lay the plot upon the Dissenters.” This judgment being accounted disloyal by the court, the Attorney-General was dismissed from his office.[10]

The charters of the City of London were next attacked.[11] Parliaments were summoned only to be dissolved. The king was weary of holding such troublesome assemblies. The tragedy of England’s

[7]“Here is lately discovered a strange miracle, beyond that of St. Denis or St. Winifred. A gentleman first stifled and then strangled, that should afterwards get up and walk invisibly almost five miles, and then, having been dead four days before, run himself through with his own sword, to testify his trouble for wronging Catholic traitors whom he never injured.” (The Popish Courant, Dec. 3rd, 1678.)

[8]The great work is now to damn that plot which we could not go through with.” (The Popish Courant, Feb. 24th, 1679.) The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome was at this time seized by order of the court, and the author punished for printing without a license; the celebration of the 5th of November was suppressed, and it was forbidden to mention the Popish plot, unless it were to attribute it to the Protestant fanatics.

[9]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 2., pp. 19, 50.

[10]Bennet, Memorial, p. 283.

[11]Hume, History Eng., chapter 69, sec. 5.

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ruin was proceeding apace. It was treason to lament the nation’s approaching fate. There were still a few in that evil time who had courage to open their mouth and plead for the sinking liberties and religion of their country. Among these we mention Johnson, who won for himself the high displeasure of the court by his Julian. This was a parallel between Popery and Paganism, based on the life of the great apostate, in which the author gave a scathing exposure of the doctrine of passive obedience. Johnson was amerced in a heavy fine, and sent to the prison of the King’s Bench till it was paid.

Nobler victims followed. The Earl of Essex, Lord Russell, and Algernon Sidney had met together to consult by what steps they might prevent the ruin of their country. England was a limited monarchy, and that gave its subjects, in their view, the right of resistance when the monarch exceeded his constitutional powers; otherwise, a limited monarchy meant nothing. The excess in the present case was flagrant, the Crown had broken through all restraints, and it behoved every patriot to do what in him lay to recall it within the boundaries of the constitution. So far, and no farther, had these men plotted. Against the life, and the constitutional rule of Charles Stuart, they had devised nothing. But, unhappily, the Rye House plot was contemporaneous with their consultation, and the Government found it an easy matter, by means of the false witnesses which such Governments [583] [584] have always at their command, to connect these patriots with a plot they had no concern in, and in truth abhorred. They were condemned to die. Lord Essex was murdered in the Tower; Russell and Sidney died on the scaffold. With the calmness and joy of Christian patriots they gave their blood for the Protestant religion and the constitutional liberty of Great Britain.[12] Thus the Popish plot, though it had missed its immediate object, gained virtually its end. Charles II still lived; but the laws of England were being annulled, the nation had sunk deeper in despotism, the enemies of the duke had been destroyed, and his succession to the throne secured.

The work of destruction was carried still farther. No pains were spared to render Nonconformists odious. They were branded with vile names, they were loaded with the guilt of murderous plots, their enemies being intent on drawing upon them a tempest of popular vengeance. The Government had no lack of instruments for executing their base ends; but the hour yielded another agent more monstrous than any the court till now had at its service. This monster in human form was Jeffreys. Regarding neither law, nor reason, nor conscience, he was simply a ruffian in ermine. “All people,” says Burner, “were apprehensive of very black designs when they saw Jeffreys made Lord Chief Justice, who was scandalously vicious, and was drunk every day; besides a drunkenness in his temper that looked like enthusiasm.”[13] He made his circuit like a lictor, not a judge; the business of his tribunal was transacted with an appalling dispatch. Nonconformity, at that judgment-seat, was held to be the sum of all villainies; and when one chargeable with that crime appeared there he could look for nothing less fearful than death. Jeffreys scowled upon him, roared at him, poured a torrent of insulting and vilifying epithets upon him, and then ordered him to the gallows. “His behavior,” says Burner, “was beyond anything that was ever heard of in a civilized nation.” “On one circuit,” says the same authority, “he hanged in several places about six hundred persons... England had never known anything like it.”[14]

In the year 1683, as Jeffreys was making his northern circuit, he came to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Here he was informed that some twenty young men of the town had formed themselves into a society, and met weekly for prayer and religious conversation. Jeffreys at once saw in these youths so many rebels and fanatics, and he ordered them to be apprehended. The young men were brought before his tribunal. A book of rules which they had drawn out for the regulation of their society was also produced, and was held by the judge as sufficient proof that they were a club of plotters. Fixing his contemptuous glance on one of them, whose looks and dress were somewhat meaner than the others, and judging him the most illiterate, he resolved to expose his ignorance, and hold him up as a fair sample of the rest. His name was Thomas Verner. “Can you read, sirrah?” said the judge. “Yes, my lord,” answered Mr. Verner. “Reach him the book,” said Jeffreys. The clerk of the court put his Latin Testament into the hand of the prisoner. The young man opened the book, and read the first verse his eye lighted upon. It was Matthew 7:1, 2: “Ne judicate, ne judicemini,” etc. “Construe it, sirrah,” roared the judge. The prisoner did so:”’ Judge not, that ye be not judged; for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.’” Even Jeffreys changed countenance, and sat a few minutes in a muse; but instantly recovering himself, he sent the young men to prison, where they lay a year, and would without doubt have been brought to the scaffold, had not the death of the king, which occurred in the meantime, led to their release.[15]

Meanwhile, the king’s last hour was drawing nigh. To be surprised by death in the midst of his profiligacies and tyrannies was a doom unspeakably terrible-far more terrible than any to which he was condemning his victims. Such was the fate of Charles II. The king had of late begun to reflect seriously upon the state of his affairs and the condition into which his kingdom had fallen, which bred him constant uneasiness. He complained of his confidence having been abused, and dropped a hint with some warmth, that if he lived a month longer he would find a way to make himself easier the rest of his life. It was generally believed by those about the court that the king meant to send away the duke, and recall Monmouth from Holland, summon a new Parliament, and have his son acknowledged as his successor. This involved an entire change of policy, and in particular an utter frustration of the cherished project of the Romanists, so surely, as they believed, approaching consummation. The king confided his plans to the Duchess of Portsmouth, the favorite mistress; she kept the secret from all save her confessor. Whether the confessor kept that secret we know not; what he would consider the higher good of the Church would, in this instance, release him from the obligation

[12]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 2., pp. 206-209.

[13]Ibid., vol. 2., p. 216.

[14]Ibid., vol. 2., pp. 314, 315.

[15]Bennet, Memorial, pp. 290, 291.

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to secrecy, if he thought fit to break it. Be that as it may, the king, who had previously been in good health, was suddenly seized with a violent illness. The symptoms of the malady, all agreed, were those of poisoning. When it became evident that the king was dying, Priest Huddlestone was admitted by a back door with the materials for mass, Charles received the Sacrament, and the host having stuck in his throat it was washed down with a draught of water. After this the king became calm. The English bishops were now admitted, but Charles paid no attention to their exhortations. He gave special directions to the duke his brother about his mistresses, but he spoke not a word of his wife, nor of his subjects, nor servants. What a mornful spectacle, what a chamber of horrors! Surprised by death in the midst of his harem! How ghastly his features, and how racking his pains, as he complains of the fire that burns within him! and yet his courtiers gaze with perfect indifference on the one, and listen with profound unconcern to the other. Behind him what a past of crime! Around him are two kingdoms groaning under his tyranny. Before him that great Tribunal before which Charles, as well as the humblest of his subjects, must give account of his stewardship; and yet he neither feels the burden of guilt, nor dreads the terrors of the reckoning. This utter callousness is the saddest feature in this sad scene. “No part of his character looked wickeder, as well as meaner,” says Bishop Burner, “than that he, all the while that he was professing to be of the Church of England, expressing both zeal and affection to it, was yet secretly reconciled to the Church of Rome: thus mocking God, and deceiving the world with so gross a prevarication. And his not having the honesty or courage to own it at the last: his not showing any sign of the least remorse for his ill-led life.”[16] Charles II died on the 6th of February, 1684, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. With his life departed all the homage and obsequiousness that had waited round the royal person; his corpse was treated almost as if it had been so much carrion; his burial was mean, and without the pomp that usually attended the funeral of the kings of England.

If one spoke of the king’s death he had to be careful in what terms he did so. His words were caught up by invisible auditors, and a hand was stretched out from the Duchess to punish the imprudence of indiscreet remarks. A physician who gave it as his opinion that the king had been poisoned was seized with a sudden illness, the symptoms of which closely resembled those of the king, whom he followed to the grave in a few days. But at Rome it was not necessary to observe the same circumspection. The death of Charles II was there made the theme of certain orations, which eulogized it as singularly opportune, and it was delicately insinuated that his brother was not without some share in the merit of a deed that was destined to introduce a day of glory to the Roman Church and the realm of England. Misson has given a few extracts from these orations and epigrams which are somewhat curious. “James,” says the author of one of these pieces, “intending to notify to the gods his accession to the crown, that he might send the important message by an ambassador worthy of them and him, he sent his brother.’”[17] And again, “His brother, who is to be his successor, adds wings to him that he may arrive sooner at heaven.”[18] The author of these orations, unable to restrain his transports at the accession of James, breaks out thus-” We will declare that he gives a new day to England; a day of joy; a day free from all obscurity. That kingdom enlightened by the setting of Charles, and the rising of James, shall suffer night no more. O happy England! a new constellation of twins, Charles and James, is risen in thy horizon. Cast thy eyes on them, and care no more for Castor and Pollux. At least divide thy veneration. And while Castor and Pollux will be the guides of thy ships, as they hitherto have been, let James and Charles conduct thee to heaven whither thou aspirest, as thou deservest it.”[19]

[16]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 2., p. 274.

[17]Misson, Travels, in Italy, vol. 2., part i., p. 218.

[18]“Regnaturus a tergo frater, alas Carolo ad coelum addidit.” (Misson, vol.2., part 2., p. 666.)

[19]Misson, vol. 2., part 2., p. 670.

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Chapter 25: The First Rising of the Scottish Presbyterians

Barbarities—Inflexible Spirit of the Scots—Dragoons at Dairy—The Presbyterians of the West take Arms—Capture of Sir James Turner—The March to Lanark—They Swear the Covenant, and Publish a Declaration—Their Sufferings on the March—Arrive near Edinburgh—Battle of the Pentlands—Defeat of the Presbyterians—Prisoners—Their Trial and Execution—Neilson of Corsac and Hugh McKail—The Torture of the Boot—Execution of Hugh McKail—His Farewell

Picture: The Pentland Hills

Picture: The Old Covenanter Last Sermon

In returning to Scotland, as we once more do, it is necessary to go back some twenty years, and briefly narrate the dismal tragedy which was being enacted in the northern kingdom while the events which have occupied us in the last few chapters were passing in England. The last scene which we witnessed in Scotland was the ejection of four hundred ministers, and the irruption into their parishes and pulpits of an equal number of young men from the northern parts, who were totally devoid of learning, many of them being as devoid of morals; while all, by their glaring unfitness for their office, were objects of contempt to the people. The ejected ministers were followed to the woods and the moors by their parishioners and dragoons were sent out to hunt for these worshippers in the wilderness, and bring them back to fill the churches their desertion had left empty. The men who acted for the Government in Scotland, brutal, unprincipled, and profligate, observed no measure in the cruelties they inflicted on a people whom they were resolved to bend to the yoke of a despotic monarch and an idolatrous Church. Indecencies of all sorts desecrated the hearths, and fines and violence desolated the homes of the Scottish peasantry. The business of life all but stood still. Virtue fled from the scene of such unhallowed outrage, and many families who had lived till then in affluence, become the sudden prey of greedy informers and riotous spoilers, sank into poverty and beggary. But the spirit of the nation would not yield.

Every new oppression but deepened the resolution of the sufferers to stand by their Church and their country, despite all the attempts to corrupt the one and enslave the other. The glorious days of the past, the uplifted hands of their fathers, the majesty of their General Assemblies, the patriarchal and learned men who had preached the Word of Life to them, their own vows, all these grand memories came back upon them, and made it impossible for them to comply with the mandates of the court. Their resistance had so far been only passive, but now the hour was come when a passive resistance was to be exchanged for an active and organized opposition.

The first rising of the persecuted Presbyterians was owing to an occurrence purely accidental. On Tuesday morning, the 13th of November, 1666, four of the persecuted wanderers, whom cold and hunger had forced to leave their solitude amid the mountains of Glen-Ken, appeared in the village of Dalry, in Kirkcudbrightshire. They came just in time to prevent one of those outrages which were but too common at that time. A party of Sir James Turner’s soldiers were levying fines in the village, and having seized an old man whose poverty rendered him unable to discharge his penalties, they were binding him hand and foot, and threatening to strip him naked and roast him on a gridiron. Shocked at the threatened barbarity, the wanderers interposed in behalf of the man. The soldiers drew upon them, and a scuffle ensued. One of the rescuing party fired his pistol, and wounded one of the soldiers, whereupon the party gave up their prisoner and their arms. Having been informed that another party of Turner’s men were at that moment engaged in similar outrages at a little distance from the village, they resolved to go thither, and make them prisoners also. This they did with the help of some country people[1] who had joined them on the way, killing one of the soldiers who had offered resistance.

All this was the work of an hour, and had been done on impulse. These countrymen had now time to reflect on what was likely to be the consequence of disarming and capturing the king’s soldiers. They knew how vindictive Sir James was, and that he was sure to avenge in his own cruel way on the whole district the disgrace that his soldiers had sustained. They could not think of leaving the helpless people to his fury; they would keep together,

[1]Wodrow, vol. 2., pp. 17, 18; Glasg., 1830. Kirkton, pp. 229-231. Blackadder, Memoirs, p. 136.

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and go on with the enterprise in which they had so unexpectedly embarked, though that too was a serious matter, seeing it was virtually to defy the Government. They mustered to the number of fifty horsemen and a few foot, and resolving to be beforehand with Sir James, marched to Dumfries, drank the king’s health at the cross, and after this display of loyalty went straight to Turner’s house and made him their prisoner. The revolt had broken out, and a special messenger, dispatched from Carlisle, carried the news to the king.

It happened that, a day or two before the occurrence at Dalry, Commissioner Rothes had set out for London. On presenting himself at Whitehall the king asked him, “What news from Scotland?” Rothes replied that “all was going well and that the people were quiet.” His majesty instantly handed him the dispatch which he had received of the “horrid rebellion.” The commissioner’s confusion may be imagined. Charles had set up the machine of episcopacy to amplify his power in Scotland, and procure him a quiet reign; but here was an early presage of the troubles with which it was to fill his life. It had already dethroned him in the hearts of his Scottish subjects, and this was but an earnest of the greater calamities which were to strike his house after he was gone.

The party who had captured Sir James Turner turned northwards, carrying with them their prisoner, as a trophy of their courage. Their little army swelled in numbers as they advanced, by continual contributions from the towns and villages on the line of their march. Late on the evening of Sunday, the 25th of November, they reached Lanark. Their march thither had been accomplished under many disadvantages: they had to traverse deep moors; they had to endure a drenching rain, and to lie, wet and weary, in churches and barns at night, with a most inadequate supply of victuals.[2] Their resolution, however, did not flag. On the Monday the horse and foot mustered in the High Street, one of their ministers mounted the Tolbooth stairs, preached, and after sermon read the Covenant, which the whole army, who were joined by several of the citizens, swore with uplifted hands. They next published a declaration setting forth the reason of their appearing in arms, namely, the defense of their Presbyterian government and the liberties of their country.[3] “Here,” says Kirkton, “this rolling snowball was at the biggest.” Their numbers were variously estimated at from 1,500 to 3,000, but they were necessarily deficient in both drill and arms. Sir James Trainer, their enforced comrade, describes them as a set of brave, lusty fellows, well up in their exercises for the short time, and carrying arms of a very miscellaneous description. Besides the usual gun and sword, they were provided with scythes fixed on poles, forks, staves, and other weapons of a rude sort. Had they now joined battle, victory would probably have declared in their favor, and if defeated they were in the midst of a friendly population who would have given them safe hiding. Unfortunately they gave credit to a report that the people of the Lothians and the citizens of Edinburgh but waited their approach to rise and join them. They continued their march to the east only to find the population less friendly, and their own numbers, instead of increasing as they had expected rapidly diminishing. The weather again broke. They were buffeted by torrents of rain and occasional snow drifts; they marched along in deep roads, and crossed swollen rivers, to arrive at night foot-sore and hungry, with no place to sleep in, and scarcely any food to recruit their wearied strength. In this condition they advanced within five miles of Edinburgh, only to have their misfortunes crowned by being told that the citizens had closed their gates and mounted cannon on the walls to prevent their entrance. At this point, after several consultations among themselves, and the exchange of some communications with the Privy Council, they came to the resolution of returning to their homes.

With this view they marched round the eastern extremity of the Pentlands

- a range of hills about four miles south of Edinburgh with the intent of pursuing their way along the south side of the chain to their homes. It was here that Dalziel with his army came up with them. The insurgents hastily mustered in order of battle, the foot in the center and the horse on the two wings. The action was commenced by Dalziel’s sending a troop of cavalry to attack the right wing of the enemy. The insurgents drove them back in confusion. A second attack was followed by the rout of the Government troops. There came still a third, which also ended in victory for the Presbyterians, and had their cavalry been able to pursue, the day would have been won. Dalziel now saw that he had not silly and fanatical countrymen to deal with, but resolute fighters, ill-armed, way-worn, and faint through sleeplessness and hunger, but withal of a tougher spirit than his own well-drilled and well-fed dragoons; and he waited till the main body should arrive, which it now did through a defile in the hills close by the scene of the action.

[2]Kirkton, History, pp. 234-236.

[3]The declaration is given in Wodrow, vol. 2., p. 25.

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The odds were now very unequal. The Presbyterian host did not exceed 900, the Government army was not less than 3,000. Dalziel now moved his masses to the assault. The sun had gone down, and the somber shadows of a winter twilight were being projected from the summits above them as the two armies closed in conflict. The insurgents, under their courageous and skillful leader, Captain Wallace, fought gallantly, but they were finally borne down by numbers.

As the night fell the fighting ended; in truth, they had prolonged the contest, not for the coming of victory, which now they dared not hope for, but for the coming of darkness to cover their flight. Leaving fifty of their number dead on the battle-field of Rullion Green?for such was the name of the spot on which it was fought-the rest, excepting those taken prisoners, who were about 100, made their escape over the hills or along their southern slopes towards their native shires in the west.[4]

The slaughter begun on the battle-field was continued in the courts of law. The prisoners were brought to Edinburgh, crowded into various prisons, and brought to their trial before a tribunal where death more certainly awaited them than on the battle-field. Fifty had fallen by the sword on Rullion Green, but a greater number were to die on the gallows. In the absence of Rothes it fell to the primate, Sharp, to preside in the Council, “and being now a time of war, several of the lords grumbled very much, and spared not to say openly with oaths, “Have we none in Scotland to give orders in such a juncture but a priest?”[5] Sharp, on being told of the rising, was seized with something like panic. In his consternation he wrote urgent letters to have the king’s army sent down from the north of England, and, meanwhile, he proposed that the Council should shut themselves up in the castle. His terrified imagination pictured himself surrounded on all sides by rebels. But when he received the news of the defeat of the insurgents, “then,” says Burner, “the common observation that cruelty and cowardice go

[4]Kirkton, pp. 242, 245. Burnet, vol. 1., p. 303.

[5]Wodrow, History, vol. 2., p. 20.

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together, was too visibly verified.”[6] The prisoners had been admitted to quarter by the soldiers on the battle-field, and in all common justice this ought to have been held as the king’s promise of their lives. The clerical members of Council, however, refused to take that view of the matter, insisting that the quarter to which they had been admitted was no protection, the war being one of rebellion. They were tried, condemned, and executed in batches. With such speed were these judicial murders carried through, that the first ten, who were mostly men of property, suffered only a few days after the battle. They were sentenced to be hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh, their heads to be dispersed over the country, and affixed at monuments in the principal cities, and their right arms to be exposed on the Tolbooth of Lanark, where their hands had been lifted up to swear the National Covenant. They all died with undaunted courage. They might have saved their lives by subscribing the declaration of submission to the bishops, but all of them refused. They fell a sacrifice

[6]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 1., p. 303.

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to Prelacy, giving their blood in opposition to those manifold evils which had rushed in like a torrent upon their country through the destruction of its Presbyterian Government. Nor did their punishment end with their lives. Their families were plundered after their death; their substance was swallowed up in fines, and their lands were confiscated. Their homes were invaded by soldiers, and the inmates driven out to a life of poverty in their own country, or to wander as exiles in a foreign land.[7]

One batch of prisoners succeeded another on the gallows till all were disposed of. “It was a moving sight,” says Burner, “to see ten of the prisoners hanged upon one gibbet at Edinburgh. Thirty-five more were sent to their counties, and hanged up before their own doors, their ministers (the curates) all the while abusing them hardly, and declaring them damned for their rebellion.”[8]

Among these sufferers there are two over whose last hours we shall pause a little. These are Mr. John Neilson of Corsac, and Mr. Hugh McKail, a minister. Both were made to undergo the torture of the boot in prison, the Council reviving in their case a horrible practice which had not been known in Scotland in the memory of living man.[9] The object of their persecutors in subjecting them to this terrible ordeal was to extort from them information respecting the origin of the insurrection. The rising had been wholly unpremeditated. Nevertheless the judges continued the infliction, although the two tortured men protested that it was impossible to disclose a plot which never existed. The shrieks of Neilson were heartrending; but the only effect they had upon the judges was to bid the executioner strike yet again.[10] The younger and feebler prisoner stood the infliction better than the other. The slender and delicate leg of the young McKail was laid in the boot; the hammer fell, the wedge was driven down, a pang as of burning fire shot along the leg, making every limb and feature of the prisoner to quiver. McKail uttered no groan. Six, seven, eight, ten strokes were given; the hammer was raised for yet another; the sufferer solemnly protested in the sight of God “that he could say no more, although every joint in his body was in as great torture as that poor leg.”

The real offense of McKail was not his joining the insurgents, but his having preached in the high church of Edinburgh on the Sunday preceding that on which the “Four Hundred” were ejected, and having used some expressions which were generally understood to be leveled at the Archbishop of St. Andrews. The young minister took occasion to refer in his sermon to the sufferings of the Church, saying that “the Scripture doth abundantly evidence that the people of God have sometimes been persecuted by a Pharaoh upon the throne, sometimes by a Haman in the State, and sometimes by a Judas in the Church.” The hearers had no difficulty in finding the living representatives of all three, and especially of the last, who stood pre-eminent among the dark figures around him for his relentless cruelty and unfathomable perfidy. The words changed Sharp into a pillar of salt: he was henceforth known as “the Judas of the Scottish Kirk.”

When Hugh McKail was sentenced to the gallows he was only twenty-six years of age. He was a person of excellent education, great elevation of soul, an impressive eloquence, and his person seemed to have molded itself so as to shadow forth the noble lineaments of the spirit that dwelt within it. He had a freshness and even gaiety of mind which the near approach of a violent death could not extinguish. On entering the prison after his trial, some one asked him how his limb was. “The fear of my neck,” he replied, “makes me forget my leg.” In prison he discoursed sweetly and encouragingly to his fellow-sufferers. On the night before his execution he laid him down, and sank in quiet sleep. When he appeared on the scaffold it was with a countenance so sweet and grave, and an air so serene and joyous, that he seemed to the spectators rather like one coming out of death than one entering into it. “There was such a lamentation,” says Kirkton, “as was never known in Scotland before; not one dry cheek upon all the street, or in all the numberless windows in the market-place.”[11] Having ended his last words to the people, he took hold of the ladder to go up. He paused, and turning yet again to the crowd, he said, “I care no more to go up that ladder and over it than if I were going to my father’s house.”

Having mounted to the top of the ladder, he lifted the napkin that covered his face, that he might utter a few more last words. Never was sublimer or more pathetic farewell spoken.

“And now I leave off to speak any more with creatures, and begin my intercourse with God

[7]Wodrow, History, vol. 2., pp. 48-51. Kirkton, History, pp. 248, 249.

[8]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 1., p. 304.

[9]The boot consisted of four narrow boards nailed together so as to form a case for the leg. The limb being laid in it, wedges were driven down, which caused intolerable pain, and frequently mangled the leg to the extent of bruising both bone and marrow.

[10]Wodrow, History, vol. 2., p. 53.

[11]Kirkton, History, p. 249.

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which shall never be broken off! Farewell, father and mother, friends and relations! Farewell, the world and all delights! Farewell, sun, moon, and stars! Welcome, God and Father! Welcome, sweet Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant! Welcome, blessed Spirit of Grace, the God of all consolation! Welcome, glory! Welcome, eternal life! And welcome, death!”

Chapter 26: The Field-Preaching or “Conventicle”

Scotland to be Crushed? Thomas Dalziel of Binns—His Character—Barbarities exercised by his Soldiers—A Breathing Time—Duke Lauderdale—The Indulgence?Its Fruits—The Accommodation—Failure of both Plans—The Conventicle—Field-preaching at East Nisbet, Mearse—Place of Meeting—The Assembling?The Guards—The Psalm—The Prayer—The Sermon—The Communion-tables—The Communicants—The Communicating—Other Services—Blackadder’s Account—Terror of the Government

Picture: Thomas Dalziel of Binns.

Picture: Covenanters Worshipping by the Banks of the Whitadder

The insurgent Covenanters were condemned and executed as rebels. In a constitutional country the law is the king, and whoever rises up against it, be he sovereign or subject, he is the rebel. The opposite doctrine is one which is fit only for slaves.

The Government, feeling themselves to be the real law-breakers, were haunted by the continual fear of insurrection. Having suppressed the Pentland rising, they scattered over the kingdom, and exposed to public view in its chief cities, the heads and other ghastly remains of the poor sufferers, to warn all of the danger they should incur by any disobedience to the edicts or any resistance to the violence of the ruling party. But the Government could not deem themselves secure till the spirit of the people had been utterly crushed, and the down-trodden country rendered incapable of offering any resistance. In order to reach this end they resolved to begin a reign of tenor. In Thomas Dalziel of Binns, whom we have already named, they found an instrument admirably adapted for their purpose. This man united the not uncongenial characters of fanatic and savage. If ever he had possessed any of the “milk of human kindness,” he had got quit of what certainly would have been a great disqualification for the work now put into his hands. In his wars among the Tatars and Turks his naturally cruel disposition had been rendered utterly callous; in short he had grown not less the Turk than any of those with whom he did battle. From these distant campaigns he returned to inflict on his countrymen and countrywomen the horrid cruelties which he had seen and practiced abroad.

His outward man was a correct index of the fierce, fiery, fanatical, and malignant spirit that dwelt within it. His figure was gaunt and weird.

To have seen the man striding along at a rapid pace, with his flinty face, his hard cheek-bones, his gleaming eyes, his streaming beards?for he had not shaved since Charles I was beheaded-and his close-fitting antique dress, making him so specter-like, one would have thought that he was other than an inhabitant of earth. The air of hurry and violence that hung about him betokened him crazy as well as cruel.

This man was sent by the Government to be the scourge of the Presbyterians in the western counties of Scotland. He was accompanied by a regiment of soldiers quite worthy of their leader. Void of every soldierly quality, they were simply a horde of profligates and ruffians. Terror, wretchedness, and misery overspread the country on their approach. Dalziel tortured whom he would, shot men on the most menial charges without any forms of law, hung up people by the arms all night, and threw women into prisons and holes filled with snakes.[1] Of the exploits of this modern Attila and his Huns, Bishop Burner gives us the following account, “The forces,” says he, “were ordered to lie in the west, where Dalziel acted the Muscovite too grossly. He threatened to spit men and to roast them; and he killed some in cold blood, or rather in hot blood, for he was then drunk when he ordered one to be hanged because he would not tell where his father was, for whom he was in search. When he heard of any who did not go to church, he did not trouble himself to set a fine upon him, but he set as many soldiers upon him as should eat him up in a night...The clergy (the curates) never interceded for any compassion to their people. Nor did they take

[1]Kirkton, History pp. 256, 257.

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care to live more regularly, or to labor more carefully. They looked on the soldiery as their patrons, they were ever in their company, complying with them in their excesses; and if they were not much wronged, they rather led them into them, than checked them for them.”[2] These oppressions but burned the deeper into the nation’s heart a detestation of the system which it was sought to thrust upon it.

In 1667 came a lull in the tempest. This short calm was owing to various causes. The cry of Scotland had reached even the ears of Charles II, and he sent down Lauderdale, who had not quite forgotten that he had once been a Presbyterian, and was still a Scotsman, to take the place of the cruel and profligate Rothes. The policy of the Court of London had also undergone a change for the better, though not from the high principles of justice, but the low motives of interest. A tolerant policy towards the English Nonconformists was deemed the likeliest way of disarming the opposition of the enemies of the Duke of York, who was known, though he had not yet avowed it, to be a Papist, and the only means of paving his way to the throne; and Scotland was permitted to share with England in this milder régime. Its administrators were changed, the standing army was disbanded, much to the chagrin of those who were enriching themselves by its plunder, and Sharp was bidden confine himself to his diocese of St. Andrews.[3] Thus there came a breathing-space to the afflicted country.

Lauderdale opened his administration in Scotland with an attempted reconciliation between Presbyterianism and Prelacy. In one respect he was well qualified for the work, for having no religion of his own he was equally indifferent to that of the two palsies between whom he now undertook to mediate. Nature had endowed Lauderdale with great talents, but with nothing else. He was coarse, mean, selfish, without a spark of honour or generosity, greedy of power, yet greedier of money, arrogant to those beneath him, and cringing and abject to his superiors. His bloated features were the index of the vile passions to which he often gave way, and the low excesses in which he habitually indulged. It was easy to see that should he fail in his project of reconciling the two parties, and, on the basis of their union, of managing the country, his violent temper and unprincipled ambition would hurry him into cruelties not less great than those which had made his predecessor infamous.

The new policy bore fruit at last in an Indulgence. In 1669 a letter arrived from the king, granting a qualified liberty to the outed ministers. If willing to receive collation from the bishop, the ministers were to be inducted into vacant parishes and to enjoy the whole benefice; if unwilling to acknowledge the bishop, they were nevertheless to be at liberty to preach, but were to enjoy no temporality save the glebe and manse. This Indulgence grew out of a despair on the part of Government of ever compelling the people to return to the parish churches and place themselves under the ministry of the curates; and rather than permit the country to relapse into heathenism they granted a limited permission to the Presbyterian pastors to discharge their office. The Government, moreover, foresaw that this would divide the Presbyterians. And in truth this consequence followed to a deplorable extent. Those who accepted the Government’s favor were accused by their brethren who declined it of homologating the royal supremacy, and were styled the “king’s curates;” while, on the other hand, those who stood out against the Indulgence were regarded by the Government as impracticable, and were visited with greater severity than ever. Those who took advantage of the Indulgence to resume their functions might justly plead that the king’s letter only removed an external violence, which had restrained them from the exercise of an office which they held from a Higher than Charles, and that their preaching in no sense traversed the great fundamental article of Presbyterianism, namely, that Christ is the sole fountain of all office in his Church. Nevertheless, their conduct tended somewhat to obscure this vital article, and moreover the unbroken union of Presbyterianism was a far greater good than any benefit they could expect to reap from arming themselves of the royal license. This union was sacrificed by the acceptance of the Indulgence, and heats and animosities began to embitter their spirit, and weaken the Presbyterian phalanx.

The Government made trial of yet another plan. This was the proposal of Archbishop Leighton, now translated to the See of Glasgow, and is known as the Accommodation. The archbishop’s scheme was a blending of the two forms of Prelacy and Presbytery. It was proposed that the bishop should keep his place at the head of the Church and wield its government, but that in doing so he should to some extent make use of the machinery of Presbyterianism. It was easy to see that this method could not long endure; the Presbyterian admixture would speedily be purged out, and only Prelacy, pure and simple, would remain. The

[2]Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. 1., p. 306.

[3]Ibid., pp. 307-309. Kirkton, History, pp. 269-271.

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scheme was never brought into operation. The amiable and pious archbishop bemoaned its failure; but he ought to have reflected that the men whose unreasonable obstinacy, as doubtless he deemed it, had defeated his project, were maintaining views which subjected them to fines, imprisonment, and death, and in which, therefore, it was to be presumed they were entirely conscientious, whereas he, though doubtless equally conscientious, had no such opportunity of giving proof of it, inasmuch as his sentiments, happily for himself, were in accordance with his interests and honors.

These plans and others to allay the opposition of Scotland, and quietly plant Prelacy and arbitrary government, had been tried, and had all failed. What was now to be done? There remained to the Government only the alternative of confessing their defeat, and desisting from further attempts, or of falling back once more upon the sword. Those who were pushing on the Government have no such word in their vocabulary as “desist.” They may pause, or turn aside for a little, but they never desist. They stop only when they have arrived at success or ruin. The Government was still deliberating whether to turn back or go forward when there appeared on the horizon of Scotland another sign, to them most portentous and menacing. That Presbyterianism which they had driven out of the churches, and were trying to extirpate with the sword, was rising up in the wilds and moorlands to which they had chased it, mightier and more courageous than ever. The outed Presbyterians had found a sanctuary in the heart of their mountains or amid the solitudes of their moorlands; and there, environed by the majestic peaks or the scarcely less sublime spaces of the silent wilderness, they worshipped the Eternal in a temple of his own rearing. Never had the Gospel possessed such power, or their hearts been so melted under it, as when it was preached to them in these wilds; and never had their Communion Sabbaths been so sweet and hallowed as when their table was spread on the moorland or on the mountain; nor had their psalm been ever sung with such thrilling rapture as when its strains, rising into the open vault, died away on the wilds. This they felt was worship, the worship of the heart-real, fervent, sublime.

It will brighten this dark page of our history to place upon it a little picture of one of these gatherings, where children of the Covenant worshipped, far from city and temple, in the holy calm of the wilderness. We shall take an actual scene. It is the year 1677. The Communion is to be celebrated on a certain Sunday in the Mearse, in the south of Scotland. Notice of the gathering has been circulated by trusty messengers some time before, and when the day arrives thousands are seen converging on the appointed spot from all points of the horizon. The place chosen is a little oblong hollow on the banks of the Whitadder, its verdant and level bosom enclosed on all sides by ascending grassy slopes. Here, as in an amphitheater, gather the crowd of worshippers. There is no hurry or distraction, each as he enters takes his place in silence, till at length not only is the bottom of the hollow covered like floor of church, but the worshippers overflow, and occupy row on row the slopes that form its enclosure. At the head of the little plain there is a low mound, which serves as a pulpit. There stands the minister about to begin the service. His white locks and furrowed face tell of suffering; he is there at the peril of life, but he betrays no fear and he feels none. He is a true servant of Him who planted the mountains that rise round him, and hung the azure vault above them. The Almighty wing covers him.

Around this congregation of unarmed worshippers, a little way off, are posted a troop of horsemen, who keep watch and ward over the assembly. They may amount to a hundred, and are variously armed. It may be that the dragoons of Dalziel are on the search, or that some of the persecutors have got notice of their meeting, and intend dispersing it with murderous violence. It is to prevent any surprise of this sort that armed scouts are stationed all round them. Outside the first circle of watchers is a second, farther off, and amounting, it may be, to a score of horsemen in all. There is still a third line of watchers. Some dozen men ride out into the wilds, and disposing themselves in a wide circuit, sit there on horseback, their eyes fixed on the distant horizon, ready, the moment the figure of trooper appears on the far-off edge of the moor, to signal his approach to the church behind them, as they to the inner line. In this way an extent of country some fifty miles in circuit is observed, and the congregation within its triple line worship in comparative security, knowing that should danger appear they will have time to escape, or prepare for its approach.

The day was one of the loveliest that the Scottish summer affords. The sky was without a cloud, and the air was perfectly calm. No gust of wind broke the cadence of the speaker’s voice, or lost to the assembly a word of what he uttered. The worship is commenced with praise. The psalm is first read by the minister; then its notes may be heard rising in soft sweet strains from [594] those immediately around him. Anon it swells into fuller volume, waxing ever louder and loftier as voice after voice strikes in. How the whole assembly have joined in the psalm, and the climax of the praise is reached. The majestic anthem fills the dome over them. It pauses, and again it bursts out; again its melodious numbers ascend into the sky; again they roll away over the face of the wilderness, awakening its silence into song. The moorland begins to sing with its children.

The psalm ended, prayer is offered. The feeling that he is the channel through which the petitions and thanksgivings of the thousands around him are ascending to the Mercy-seat deepens the solemnity of the minister, and enkindles his fervor. With what reverence he addresses the “Host High!” How earnestly he pleads, how admirable the order in which his supplications arrange themselves, and how chaste and beautiful the words in which are expressed! After the prayer the text is read out, and the sermon commences.

The preacher on the occasion of which we speak was Mr. John Welsh, and his text was selected from the Song of Solomon 2:11, 12-that sweetest of all lyrics, which paints the passing away of winter of the Old Economy, and the coming of the springtime of the Gospel, as comes the Eastern spring with its affluence of verdure, and blossoms, and songs:-“Lo, the winter is past: the rain is over and gone: the flowers appear on the earth: the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.” The preacher took occasion to refer to the springtime of the Reformation in Scotland, when the earth was so green, and the skies so fair. Its short summer had been chased away by a winter of black tempests, but not finally, nor for long, he was assured. The Scottish [595] [596] earth would again grow mollient, its skies would clear up, and the Gospel would again be heard in its now silent pulpits. The sight around him showed that the Evangelical Vine had struck its roots too deeply in the soil to be overturned by the tempests of tyranny, or blighted by the mephitic air of a returning superstition. The sermon ended, there followed, amid the deep stillness of the multitude, the prayer of consecration. The communicants now came forward and seated themselves at the Communion-tables, which were arranged much as in an ordinary church. Two parallel tables, covered with a pure white cloth, ran along the plane of the hollow: these were joined at the upper end by a cross table, on which were placed the bread and the wine. The persons seated at the table were no promiscuous crowd. Though set up in the open wilds, the minister never forgot that the Communion-table was “holy,” and that none but the disciples of the Savior could be, in their opinion, worthy communicants. Accordingly, as was the custom among the French Huguenots, so also with the Scottish Covenanters, the usual “token” was given to the people on the Saturday preceding, and this “pass” no one could obtain unless he was known to be of Christian deportment To rally round the war-standard of the Covenant did not of itself entitle one to a seat at the Communion-table, for well did the leaders know that in character and not in numbers lay the strength of the movement. While the bread and cup were being distributed, a minister addressed the communicants in a suitable exhortation. The elders, who were generally men of position, and always men of known piety, waited at table: when one body of communicants had partaken they rose, and others took their places. On the present occasion there were not fewer than sixteen successive tables; and at the number that each table accommodated was not less than 200, the entire body of persons who that day joined in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper could not be below 3,200. Others were present besides the communicants, and the entire assemblage could not be reckoned at less than between 4,000 and 5,000. The services were conducted by five ministers. After “celebration,” another sermon was preached by Mr. Dickson, who took for his text Genesis 22:14: “And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.” The duty he pressed on his hearers was that of walking by faith through the darkness of the night now covering them, till they should come to the mount where the day of deliverance would break upon them. The services were not confined to the Communion Sunday, but included the day before and the day after; the people thus remained three days on the spot, retiring every night from their place of meeting, marshalled in rank and the under their guards; and returning to it, in the same order, next morning. They found resting-places for the night in the villages and farmhouses in the neighborhood; their provisions they had brought with them, or they purchased with money what they needed.

Before quitting a spot to be sacred ever after, doubtless, in their memory, three sermons were preached on the Monday-the first by Mr. Dickson, the second by Mr. Riddel, and the third by Mr. Blackadder. The same man who closed these public services has left us his impression of this memorable scene. “Though the people at first meeting,” says Mr. Blackadder, “were something apprehensive of hazard, yet from the time the work was entered upon till the close of it, they were neither alarmed nor affrighted, but sat as composed, and the work was as orderly gone about, as if it had been in the days of the greatest peace and quiet. For there, indeed, was to be seen the goings of God, even the goings of their God and King in that sanctuary, which was encouraging to them, and terrible to his and their enemies out of his holy place... Many great days of the Son of Man have been seen in thee, O now how desolate Kirk of Scotland! but few like this.”[4]

These field-preachings were in truth regarded with terror by the Government. The men who ruled Scotland would rather have seen ten thousand warriors arrayed against them in battle, than have beheld these men and women, armed only with prayers and patience, assembling in the wilds, and there bowing in worship before the God of heaven. And, indeed, the Government had good reason for fear; for it was at the conventicle that the nation’s heart was fed, and its courage recruited. While these gatherings were kept up in vain were all the edicts with which the persecutors proscribed Presbyterianism, in vain the swords and scaffolds with which they sought to suppress it, The field-preachings multiplied soldiers for fighting the battles of religion and liberty faster than their dragoons could shoot them down on the moors, or their hangmen strangle them in the Grass Market.

[4]Blackadder, Memoirs, MS. Copy.

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Chapter 27: Drumclog—Bothwell bridge—The “Killing Times”

The Conventicle to be Crushed—Storm of Edicts—Letters of Intercommuning—Sharp’s New Edict—His Assassination—The Highland Host—Graham of Claverhouse—His Defeat at Drumclog—Dissensions in the Covenanters’ Camp—Battle of Bothwell Bridge—Prisoners—They are Penned in Grayfriars’ Churchyard—Shipped off to Barbados—The “Killing Times “—James II—His Toleration—The Sanquhar Declaration—The Stuarts Disowned—The Last Two Martyrs, Argyle and Renwick—Importance of the Covenanting Struggle

Picture: View of the High Street: Lanark.

Picture: Robert Leighton: Archbishop of Glasgow

Despairing of being able to go through with their designs so long as the field-preachings were permitted to take place, the Privy Council summoned all their powers to the suppression of these assemblages. Lauderdale’s insolence and tyranny had now reached their fullest development. He was at this time all-powerful at court; he could, as a consequence, govern Scotland as he listed; but proud and powerful as he was, Sharp continued to make him his tool, and as the conventicle was the special object of the primate’s abhorrence, Lauderdale was compelled to put forth his whole power to crush it. The conventicle was denounced as a rendezvous of rebellion, and a rain of edicts was directed against it. All persons attending field-preachings were to be punished with fine and confiscation of their property. Those informing against them were to share the fines and the property confiscated, save when it chanted to be the estate of a landlord that fell under the Act. These good things the Privy Council kept for themselves Lauderdale sometimes carrying off the lion’s share. Magistrates were enjoined to see that no conventicle was held within their burgh; landlords were taken bound for their tenants; masters for their servants; and if any should transgress in this respect, by stealing away to hear one of the outed ministers, his superior, whether magistrate, landlord, or master, was to denounce or punish the culprit; and failing to do so, was himself to incur the penalties he ought to have inflicted upon his dependents. These unrighteous edicts received rigorous execution, and sums were extorted thereby which amazed one when he reflected to what extent the country had suffered from previous pillaging. It was not enough, in order to escape this legal robbery, that one eschewed the conventicle; he must be in his place in the parish church on Sunday; for every day’s absence he was liable to a fine.[1]

The misery of the country was still further deepened by the machine which was set up for the working of this system of ruinous oppression. The Privy Council, too large, it was judged, for the quick dispatch of business, was reduced to a “Committee of Affairs.” Sharp was president, and with him were associated two or three others, true yoke-fellows of the “Red Primate.” This court was bound by no statute, it permitted no appeal, and like the cave of ancient story, although many footsteps could be seen going in, there were none visible coining out. Another means of executing the cruel laws which had replaced the ancient statutes of the kingdom, was to raise an additional force, and place garrisons in the more disaffected shires. This, again, necessitated a “cess,” which was felt to be doubly grievous, inasmuch as it obliged the country to furnish the means of its own destruction. The peasantry had to pay for the soldiers who were to pillage, torture, and murder them. A yet further piece of ingenious wickedness were the “Letters of Intercommuning,” which were issued by the Government against the more eminent Presbyterians. Those against whom these missives were fulminated were cut off from human society: no friend, no relation, durst give them a night’s lodging, or a meal, or a cup of cold water, or address a word or a letter to them; they were forbidden all help and sympathy of their fellow-creatures. For a minister to preach in the fields was to incur the penalty of death, and a price was set upon his head. The nation was divided into two classes, the oppressors and the oppressed. Government had become a system of lawless tribunals, of arbitrary edicts, of spies, imprisoning, and murdering. Such was the state of Scotland in the year 1676. Nevertheless, the conventicle still flourished.

Till the field-preaching was entirely and utterly swept away, the persecutor felt that he had accomplished nothing. After all the severities he had put in force, would it be possible to find more rigorous means of suppressions? The persecutor’s

[1]Wodrow, History of Church of Scotland, book ii., chapter 12. Aikman, History of Scotland, vol. 4., p. 603.

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invention was not yet at an end. More terrible severities were devised; and Sharp proposed and carried in Council the most atrocious edict which had yet been passed. The edict in question was no less than to make it a capital crime on the part of any to attend a field-preaching in arms. This was, in fact, to pass sentence of death on four-fifths of the people of Scotland;[2] in some districts the entire population came within the scope of the penalty. But so it was: it was death to be present at a field-preaching; and judges, officers, and even sergeants were empowered to kill on the spot, as traitors, all persons whom they found going armed to the conventicle. This barbarous law only nursed what the Government wished to extirpate. If liable to be murdered by any Government official or spy who met him, what could the man so threatened do but carry arms? Thus the congregation became a camp; the attenders of field-preaching came prepared to fight as well as to worship; and thus were the Covenanters forced by the Government into incipient war.

Through Sharp’s influence and cruelty mainly had this unbearable state of matters been realized. His violence at last provoked a terrible retaliation. Only a few days before his departure for London, where the atrocious edict of his own drafting was afterwards ratified by the king, he was surprised at a lonely spot on Magus Moor, as he was passing (3rd May, 1679) from Edinburgh to St. Andrews, dragged from his carriage, and massacred. This was a great crime. The French statesman would have said it was worse-it was a great blunder; and indeed it was so, for though we know of no Presbyterian who justified the act, its guilt was imputed to the whole Presbyterian body, and it furnished a pretext for letting loose upon them a more ferocious and exterminating violence than any to which they had yet been subjected. The edict lived after its author, and his assassination only secured its more merciless and rigorous enforcement.

In this terrible drama one bloody phase is succeeded by a bloodier, and one cruel actor is followed by another still more cruel and ferocious. The Government, in want of soldiers to carry out their measures on the scale now contemplated, turned their eyes to the same quarter whence they had obtained a supply of curates. An army of some 10,000 Highlanders was brought down from the Popish north,[3] to spoil and torture the inhabitants of the western Lowlands. This Highland host, as it was termed, came armed with field-pieces, muskets, daggers, and spades, as if to be occupied against some great fortified camp; they brought with them also shackles to bind and lead away prisoners, whose ransom would add to the spoil they might take in war. These savages, who neither knew nor cared anything about the quarrel, were not a little surprised, on arriving in the shires of Lanark and Ayr, to see neither army nor fortified city, but, on the contrary, the pursuits of peaceful life going calmly on in the workshops and fields. Defrauded of the pleasure of fighting, they betook them to the more lucrative business of stealing. They quartered themselves where they chose, made the family supply them with strong drink, rifled lock-fast places, drew their dirks on the slightest provocation, and by threats and tortures compelled the inmates of the houses they had invaded to reveal the places in which their valuables were hidden. At the end of two months they were withdrawn, the Government themselves having become ashamed of them, and being disappointed that the population, by submitting patiently to this infliction, had escaped the massacre which insurrection would have drawn down upon them from this ruthless horde. This host returned to their native hills, loaded with the multifarious spoil which they had gathered in their incursion. “When this goodly army retreated homewards,” says Kirkton, “you would have thought by their baggage that they had been at the sack of a besieged city.”[4]

John Graham of Claverhouse and his dragoons next appear upon the scene. His troops are seen scorning the country, now skirmishing with a party of Covenanters, now attacking a field-meeting, and dyeing the heather with the blood of the worshippers, and now shooting peasants in cold blood in the fields, or murdering them at their own doors. Defeat checked for a little their career of riot, profanity, and Mood. It is Sunday morning, the 1st of June, 1679. On the strath that runs eastward from London Hill, Avondale, the Covenanters had resolved to meet that day for worship. The rounded eminence of the hill, with its wooded top, was on one side of them, the moss and heath that make up the bosom of the valley on the other. The watchmen are stationed as usual. Mr. Douglas is just beginning his sermon when a signal-gun is heard. Claverhouse and his dragoons are advancing. The worshippers sit still, but the armed men step out from the others and put themselves in order of battle. They are but a small hosts?fifty horsemen, fifty foot with muskets, and

[2]Aikman, History of Scotland, vol. 4., p. 603.

[3]Wodrow, History of Ch. of Scotland, book ii., ch. 13.

[4]Kirkton, History, pp. 390, 391.

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a hundred and fifty armed with halberds, forks, and similar weapons. Sir Robert Hamilton took the command, and was supported by Colonel Cleland, Balfour of Burley, and Hackston of Rathilet. Their step was firm as, singing the Seventy-sixth Psalm to the tune of “Martyrs” they advanced to meet the enemy. They met him at the Morass of Drumclog. The first mutual volley left the Covenanters untouched, but when the smoke had rolled away it was seen that there were not a few empty saddles in Claverhouse’s cavalry. Plunging into the moss, trooper and Covenanter grappled hand to hand with each other; but the enthusiastic valor of the latter called the day. The dragoons began to reel like drunken men. Claverhouse saw that the field was lost, and fled with the remains of his troop. He left forty of his men dead on the field, with a considerable number of wounded. The Covenanters had one killed and five mortally wounded.[5]

It was the heroism, not the numbers, of the Covenanters which had won the field; and the lesson which the victory taught them was to maintain the spirit of devotion, which alone could feed the fire of their valor, and to eschew division. The nation was with them in the main, their recent success had brought prestige to their cause, numbers were now flocking to their standards, some of them men of birth, and seeing the royal forces in Scotland were few, their chances were now better than when they measured swords with the Government at Rullion Green. But unhappily they were split up by questions growing out of the Indulgence, and they labored under the further disadvantage of having no master-mind to preside in council and command in the field. It was under these fatal conditions that, a few weeks afterwards, the battle of Bothwell Bridge was fought.

After Drumclog the Covenanters pitched their camp on Hamilton Moor, on the south side of the Clyde. They were assailable only by a narrow bridge across that river, which might be easily defended. The royal army now advancing against them, under Monmouth, numbered about 15,000; the Presbyterian host was somewhere about 5,000. But they were weakened in presence of the enemy more by disunion than by disparity of numbers. The Indulgence had all along been protective of evils, and was now to inflict upon them a crowning disaster. It was debated whether those who had accepted the Indulgence should be permitted to join in arms with their brethren till first they had condemned it. A new and extreme doctrine had sprung up, and was espoused by a party among the Presbyterians, to the effect that the king by the Erastian power he claimed over the Church had forfeited all right to the civil obedience of the subjects. The days and weeks that ought to have been spent in drilling recruits, providing ammunition, and forming the men into regiments, were wasted in hot discussion and bitter recrimination; and when the enemy at last approached they were found unprepared to meet him. A gallant party of 300, headed by Hackston, defended the bridge for many hours, the main body of the covenanting army remaining idle spectators of the unequal contest, till they saw the brave little party give way before overwhelming numbers, and then the royal forces defiled across the bridge. Panic seized the Presbyterian host, left without officers; rout followed; the royal cavalry pursued the fugitives, and mercilessly cut down all whom they overtook. The banks of the Clyde, the town of Hamilton, in short the whole surrounding country became a scene of indiscriminate slaughter. No fewer than 400 perished. This disastrous battle was fought on Sunday morning, the 22nd of June, 1679.

It was now that the cup of the suffering Presbyterians was filled to the brim. The Government, eager to improve the advantage they had obtained on the fatal field of Bothwell Bridge, struck more terribly than ever, in the hope of effecting the utter extermination of the Covenanters before they had time to rally. Twelve hundred had surrendered themselves prisoners on the field of battle. They were stripped almost naked, tied two and two, driven to Edinburgh, being treated with great inhumanity on the way, and on arriving at their destination, the prisons being full, they were penned like cattle, or rather like wild beasts, in the Grayfriars’ Churchyard. What a different spectacle from that which this famous spot had exhibited forty years before! Their misery was heartrending. The Government’s barbarity towards them would be incredible were it not too surely attested. These 1,200 persons were left without the slightest shelter; they were exposed to all weathers, to the rain, the tempest, the snow; they slept on the bare earth; their guard treated them capriciously and cruelly, robbing them of their little money, and often driving away the citizens who sought to relieve their great sufferings by bringing them food or clothing. Some made their escape; others were released on signing a bond of non-resistance; others were freed when found to be sinking under wounds, or diseases contracted by exposure. At the end of five months?for so long did this miserable

[5]Aikman, History of Scotland, vol. 5., p. 5.

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crowd remain shut up within the walls of the graveyard-the 1,200 were reduced to 250. On the morning of the 15th of November, 1679, these 250 were taken down to Leith and embarked on board a vessel, to be transported to Barbados. They were crowded into the hold of the ship, where there was scarce room for 100. Awful were the heat, the thirst, and other horrors of this floating dungeon. Their ship was overtaken by a terrible tempest off the coast of Orkney. It was thrown by the winds upon the rocks, and many of the poor prisoners on board were drowned. Those who escaped the waves were carried to Barbados and sold as slaves. A few only survived to return to their native land at the Revolution.

The years that followed are known as “the killing times;” and truly Scotland during them became not unlike that from which the term is borrowed-a shambles. The Presbyterians were hunted on the mountains and tracked by the bloodhounds of the Privy Council to the caves and dens where they had hid themselves. Claverhouse and his dragoons were continually on the pursuit, shooting down men and women in the fields and on the highways. As fast as the prisons could be emptied they were filled with fresh victims brought in by the spies with whom the country swarmed. Several gentlemen and many learned and venerable ministers were confined in the dungeons of Blackness, Dunottar, and the Bass Rock. Aged matrons and pious maidens were executed on the scaffold, or tied to stakes within sea-mark and drowned. The persecution fell with equal severity on all who appeared for the cause of their country’s religion and liberty. No eminence of birth, no fame of talent, no luster of virtue could shield their possessor from the most horrible fate if he opposed the designs of the court. Some of lofty intellect and famed statesmanship were hanged and quartered on the gallows, and the ghastly spectacle of their heads and limbs met the gazer in the chief cities of the kingdom, as if the land were still inhabited by cannibals, and had never known either civilization or Christianity. It is calculated that during the twenty-eight years of persecution in Scotland 18,000 persons suffered death, or hardships approaching it.

There came a second breathing-time under James II. This monarch, with the view of introducing Popery into the three kingdoms, published a Toleration, which he made universal. It was a treacherous [601] gift, but the majority of Nonconformists in both England and Scotland availed themselves of it. The bulk of the outed Presbyterian pastors accepted it, and returned to the discharge of their functions.

There was a party, however, who refused to profit by King James’s Toleration, and who continued to be the objects of a relentless persecution. They had previously raised the question whether the House of Stuart had not, by their perversion of the Constitution, religious and civil, and their systematic and habitual tyranny, forfeited all right to the throne. The conclusion at which they arrived they announced in their famous proclamation at Sanquhar. On the 22nd of June, 1680, a little troop of horsemen rode up the street of that ancient burgh, and on arriving at the cross one of them dismounted, and the others forming a ring round him, while the citizens congregated outside the circle, he read aloud the following declaration-” We do by these presents disown Charles Stuart, that has been reigning, or rather tyrannizing, on the throne of Britain these years bygone, as having any right, title, or interest in the crown of Scotland, for government-as forfeited several years since, by his perjury and breach of covenant both to God and His Kirk, and by his tyranny, and breach of the essential conditions of reigning in matters civil. We do declare a war with such a tyrant and usurper.” The reading [602] ended, they affixed their paper to the market cross, and rode away into the moorlands from which they had so suddenly and mysteriously issued.

From this little landward town was sounded out the first knell of the coming downfall of the House of Stuart. It looked eminently absurd in these twenty men to dethrone the sovereign of Great Britain, but however we may denounce the act as extravagant and even treasonable, the treason of these men lay in their not having fleets and armies to put down the tyrant that the law might reign. The Sanquhar Declaration however, with all its seeming extravagance, did not exhaust itself in the solitude in which it was first heard. It startled the court. The Government, instead of letting it die, took it up, and published it all over the three kingdoms. It was read, pondered over, and it operated with other causes in awakening and guiding public sentiment, till at last the feeble echoes first raised among the moors of Lanark, came back in thunder in 1688 from the cities and capitals of the empire.

The close of the persecution was distinguished by two remarkable deaths. As Argyle and Guthrie had opened the roll of Scottish martyrs, so now it is closed by Argyle and Renwick. It was meet surely that the son of the proto-martyr of the Twenty-eight Years’ Persecution, should pour out his blood on the same scaffold on which that of his great ancestor, and of so many besides, had been shed, and so seal as it were the testimony of them all. The deep sleep into which he fell just before his execution has become historic. He was taken aside in presence of his enemies into a pavilion, to rest awhile, before departing to his eternal rest. Equally historic are his last words: “I die with a heart-hatred of Popery, prelacy, and all superstition whatever.” Having so spoken he laid his head upon the block.

The scaffold, before being taken down, was to be wetted with the blood of yet another martyr-James Renwick. He was of the number of those who refused to own James as king; and fearlessly avowing his sentiments on this as on other matters, he was condemned to be executed. He appeared on the scaffold on the 17th of February, 1688?calm, courageous, and elevated. In his last prayer he expressed a confident hope that the dawn of deliverance in Scotland was near, and that days of glory yet awaited her. He essayed to address the vast concourse of sorrowing spectators around the scaffold, but the drums beat all the while. There came a pause in their noise, and the martyr was heard to say, or rather to sing, “I shall soon be above these clouds-I shall soon be above these clouds, then shall I enjoy thee, and glorify thee, O my Father, without interruption, and without interruption, forever.” The martyr’s death-song was the morning hymn of Scotland, for scarcely had its thrilling strains died away when deliverance came in the manner we shall presently see.[6]

Meanwhile we behold Scotland apparently crushed. All her noblemen and gentlemen who had taken the side of the nation against the court had perished on the scaffold, or had been chased into exile; her people were lying by thousands in their quiet graves among the moors or in the city churchyards, their withering limbs illuminating with ghastly yet glorious light the places where they were exposed to view; and when Renwick ascended the ladder to die, the last minister of the

[6]We have quoted a few only of the authorities consulted in the compilation of this brief sketch of the Twenty-eight years’’ Persecution. For the information of other than Scottish readers, we may state that details comprehending the dying speeches of the martyrs are to be found in the Scots Worthies, Naphtali, Cloud of Witnesses, De Poe, Simpson’s Traditions, Dodd’s Fifty Years’’ Struggle, McCrie’s History of the Scottish Church, etc. etc.

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Presbyterian body still in arms against the Government had fallen. There now remained none but a few country-people around the blue banner of the Covenant. Never did defeat appear more complete. As a nation Scotland seemed to be crushed, and as a Church it seemed utterly overthrown.

Yet in reality Scotland had gained a great victory. By her twenty-eight years of suffering she had so illustrated the fundamental principles of the struggle and the momentous issues at stake, and she had so exalted the contest in the eyes of the world, investing it with a moral grandeur that stimulated England, that she mainly contributed to the turning of the tide, and the triumph of the Protestant cause all over Christendom. The world was then in one of its greatest crises. The Reformation was ebbing in Germany, in France, in Holland, in all the countries of Christendom; everywhere a double-headed tyranny was advance on men, trampling down the liberties of nations and the rights of Churches. Scotland retreated behind the bulwark of her Presbyterian Church; she fought against the “supremacy of King James,” which meant simply arbitrary government; she fought for the “supremacy of King Jesus,” which meant free Parliaments not less than free Assemblies?the supremacy of law versus the supremacy of the monarch-conscience versus power. Disguised under antiquated words and phrases, this was the essence of the great struggle, and though Scotland lost her people in that struggle she won her cause. Her leaders have all fallen; the last of their ministers has just expired on the scaffold; there is but a mere handful of her people around her blue banner as it still floats upon her mountains; but there is an eye watching that flag from beyond the sea ready whenever the hour shall strike to hasten across and reap the victory of these twenty-eight years of martyrdom, by grasping that flag and planting it on the throne of Britain.

Chapter 28: James II—Projects to Restore Popery

James II—Suspicions of the Nation—His Promises to Maintain the Protestant Religion—Joy of the People—Fears of Louis XIV—His Coronation—Goes to Mass—Imposes Taxes without his Parliament—Invasion of Argyle—Insurrection of Monmouth—These Risings Suppressed—Cruelties of Jeffreys—The Test Act—Debates respecting a Standing Army—State of Protestantism throughout Christendom—Its Afflicted Condition Everywhere—A Moment of Mighty Peril—Hopes of the Jesuits

Picture: View of the Martyrs Monument Greyfriars’ Churchyard, Edinburgh

Picture: Richard Baxter before Judge Jeffreys

Charles II being dead, his brother, the Duke of York, ascended the throne under the title of James II. The peace and quietness in which he took possession of the crown may well surprise us, and doubtless it surprised James himself. Universally suspected of being a Papist, the law which made it capital for any one to affirm that he was so, so far from allaying, rather tended to confirm the wide-spread suspicions respecting him. It was only a few years since the entire nation almost had appeared to concur in the proposal to exclude him from the throne, and strenuous efforts had been made in Parliament to pass a Bill to that effect, nevertheless, when the hour arrived, James’s accession took place with general acquiescence. It is true, that as there had been no tears for the death of Charles, so there were no shouts for the accession of James: the heralds who proclaimed him passed through silent streets. But if there was no enthusiasm there was no opposition. No one thought it his duty to raise his voice and demand securities before committing the religion and liberties of England into the hands of the new sovereign.[1]

Knowing the wide distrust entertained by the nation, and fearing perhaps that it might break out in turmoil, James met his Council the same day on which his brother died, and voluntarily made in their presence the following declaration:-” I shall make it my endeavor to preserve this government, both in Church and State, as it is now by law established. I know, too, that the laws of England are sufficient to make the king as great a monarch as I can wish; and as I shall never depart, from the just rights and prerogatives of the crown, so I shall never invade any man’s property.” These words, printed and diffused over the country, quieted the fears of the nation. They were

[1]Burnet, History, vol. 2., p. 280.

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accepted as an explicit promise of two thing: first, that James would not change the religion of the nation; and secondly, that he would not tax the people but with the consent of his Parliament.

The nation persuaded itself that it had obtained a sure and solid guarantee of its rights. These few vague words seemed in its eyes an invincible rampart, and it abandoned itself to an excess of joy. It had buried all its suspicions and jealousies in the grave of the defunct monarch, and now it had nothing but welcomes and rejoicing for the new sovereign. “The common phrase,” says Burner, “was, ‘We have now the word of a king;’ and this was magnified as a greater security than laws could give.”[2] Numerous addresses from public bodies were carried to the foot of the throne, extolling the virtues of the late king, and promising loyalty and obedience to the new one, under whom, it was confidently predicted, the prestige and renown of England would be very speedily and mightily enhanced. Even the Quaking, who eschew flattery, and love plainness and honesty of speech, presented themselves in the presence of James II with a petition so artfully worded, that some took occasion to say that the Jesuits had inspired their pen. “We are come,” said they, “to testify our sorrow for the death of our good friend Charles, and our joy for thy being made our governor. We are told thou art not of the persuasion of the Church of England, no more than we; wherefore we hope thou wilt grant us the same liberty thou allowest thyself; which doing, we wish you all manner of happiness.”[3]

The assurances that were accepted by the people of England as solid securities, and which filled them with so lively a joy, were those of a man whose creed permitted him to promise everything, but required him to fulfil nothing, if it was prejudicial to the interests of his Church. James was feeding the nation upon delusive hopes. Once firmly seated on the throne, he would forget all that he now promised. Meantime, these assurances were repeated again and again, in terms not less explicit, and in manner not less solemn. The religion and laws of England would not be changed, the king would have all men know.[4] And so apparently frank and sincere were these protestations, that if they quieted the alarm of the people of England, they awakened the fears of the French king. Louis XIV began to doubt James’s fidelity to the Church of Rome, and the compact between the crowns of France and England to restore the sway of that church in all the countries, of Christendom, and to fear that he was preferring the safety of his crown to the supremacy of his creed. He wrote to his ambassador in London, inquiring how he was to construe the conduct of the English sovereign, adding, “If he and his Parliament come to a cordial trust one of another, it may probably change all in measures we have been so long conferring for the glory of our throne and the establishment of the Catholic religion.”

Meanwhile the king gave orders to prepare for his coronation, which he appointed for St. George’s Day. The ceremony was marred by several untoward occurrences, which the people interpreted as bad omens. The canopy which was carried over him broke down. The crown was too big, and sat so low on his forehead as partially to blindfold him. On that same day his son by Mrs. Sidley died. Certain other things fell out, which, although of less moment, tended to tarnish the pomp of the ceremonial, and to inspire the spectators with inauspicious forebodings. There were surer omens of impending evil presented to their eyes if they could have read them. The king was mounting the throne without legal pledge that he would govern according to law. And though he and the queen had resolved to have all the services conducted in the Protestant form, the king refused to take the Sacrament, which was always a part of the ceremony; “and he had such senses given him of the oath,” says Burner, “that he either took it as unlawful, with a resolution not to keep it, or he had a reserved meaning in his own mind.”[5]

James, deeming it perhaps an unnecessary labor to preserve appearances before those who were so willing to be deceived, began to drop the mask a little too soon. The first Sunday after his brother’s death, he went openly to mass. This was to avow what till then it was death for any one to assert, namely, that he was a Papist. His next indiscretion was to publish certain papers found in the strong-box of his brother, showing that during his lifetime Charles had reconciled himself to Rome. And, lastly, he ventured upon the bold step of levying a tax, for which he had no authority from Parliament, and which he exacted simply in virtue of his prerogative. These acts traversed the two pledges he had given the nation, namely, that he would not change the religion, and that he would govern by Parliament; and though in themselves trivial, they were of ominous significance as indicating his future policy. To be an arbitrary

[2]Burnet, History, vol. 2., p. 281.

[3]Bowyer, History James II, p. 10.

[4]Ibid, p. 11.

[5]Burnet, History, vol. 2., p. 290.

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monarch, to govern without law, without Parliaments, to consult only his own will, and to plant this absolute power on the dominance of the faith of Rome, the only stable basis he believed on which he could rest it, was the summit of James’s ambition. His besotted wife, who so largely governed him, and the fawning Jesuits who surrounded him, persuaded him that this was the true glory of a monarch, and that this glory was to be attained by the people being made entirely submissive to the priests, and the priests entirely submissive to the throne; and that to accomplish this it was lawful in the first place to make any number of false promises, and not less dutiful in the second to break them. It was a dangerous course on which he was entering. The scaffold of his father bade him beware, but James took no heed of the warning.

The more sagacious saw that a crisis was approaching. To the indications the king had already given that he was meditating a change of the Constitution, another sign was added, not less ominous than those that had gone before it. The Parliament that had assembled was utterly corrupt and subservient. With a Papist on the throne, and a Parliament ready to vote as the king might be pleased to direct, of what force or value was the Constitution? It was already abrogated. Many, both in England and Scotland, fled to Holland, where they might concert measures for the rescue of kingdoms now threatened with ruin. The immediate results of the deliberations of these exiles were the descent of Argyle on Scotland, and the invasion of England by Monmouth, the natural son of Charles II, a favorite of the English people as he had all along been of his father. An adverse fortune pursued both expeditions from their commencement to their disastrous close. Both were ill-planned, both were unskillfully led, and both were inadequately supported. Argyle, in 1685, sweeping round the north of Scotland with a few ships, unfurled the standard of insurrection among the mountains of his native Highlands. Penetrating at the head of 4,000 men to the banks of the Clyde, he was there overthrown; Monmouth, setting sail from Holland at the same time, landed at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, and gathering round his standard a few thousand men, he joined battle with the king’s forces and encountered utter defeat. Both leaders were taken and executed. Neither was the crisis ripe, nor were the leaders competent. The neck of England had to be more grievously galled by the yoke of the tyranny before its people should be prepared to adopt the conclusion at which a party of the persecuted Presbyterians in Scotland had arrived, and which had been proclaimed at the market cross of Sanquhar, namely, that the House of Stuart, by their perjuries and tyrannies, had for ever forfeited the throne of these realms. When the hour should have fully come, a mightier deliverer than either of the two would be found to execute vengeance on the royal house, and to break the fetters of the enslaved nations.

The failure of these two attempts had the effect, like all suppressed insurrections, of strengthening the Government which they were intended to overthrow. His enemies discomfited, the next care of James was to take vengeance on them. His foes were entirely at his mercy. This would have been a plea for clemency with ordinary tyrants; but James II was a tyrant after the pattern of Caligula and other despots of ancient times, and he smote his prostrate enemies with a frightful and merciless violence. He sent Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, and four judges worthy to sit on the same bench with him, along with General Kirk and a troop of soldiers, to chastise those counties in the west which had been the seat of Monmouth’s rising. The cruelties inflicted by these ferocious ministers of the tyrant were appalling. Jeffreys hanged men and women by thirties at a time; and Kirk had the gallows erected before the windows of his banqueting-room, that the sight of his struggling victims might give zest to his debauch. From the bar of Jeffreys there was no escape but by buying with a great sum that life which the injustice of the judge, and not the guilt of the prisoner, had put in the power of the tribunal, and when the Lord Chief Justice returned to London he was laden with wealth as well as blood. Jeffreys boasted with a humble pleasure that “he had hanged more men than all the judges of England since William the Conqueror.” Nor did any one gainsay his averment, or dispute his pre-eminence in the work of shedding innocent blood, save Kirk, who advanced his own pretensions-on perfectly good grounds, we doubt not-to share in the merit of the Lord Chief Justice. Some of the apologists of James II have affirmed that when the monarch learned the extent of Jeffreys’ cruelty and barbarity, he expressed his disapproval of these deeds. If so, he took a strange way of showing his displeasure; for no sooner had Jeffreys returned from the gory field of his triumphs to London, than he was punished by being promoted to the office of Lord High Chancellor of England, and made a peer of the realm.[6]

[6]Bowyer, History James II, pp. 33, 34. Burnet. History, vol. 2., p. 315. Bennet, Memorial, pp. 299-301.

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Among the other prisoners brought to the bar of this ferocious judge was the renowned and most eloquent Richard Baxter. The scene that followed we shall give in the words of Bennet. It will enable us to realize the monstrous tyranny of the times, and the utter shame into which England had sunk. Baxter was committed on Jeffreys’ warrant for his paraphrase on the New Testament, which was called a scandalous and seditious book against the Government. Being much indisposed, Baxter’s counsel moved for postponement of the trial. “I will not,” cried Jeffreys, “give him a minute’s time to save his life. We have had to deal with other sort of persons, but now we have a saint to deal with. I know how to deal with saints as well as sinners. Yonder stands Oates in the pillory, and he says he suffers for truth, and so says Baxter; but if Baxter did but stand on the other side of the pillory with him, I would say two of the greatest rogues and rascals in the kingdom stood there.” [607] [608] “His counsel,” says Bennet, “were not suffered to proceed in the defense of their client, but were brow-beaten and hectored by the judge in a manner that suited Billingsgate much better than a tribunal of justice. Mr. Baxter beginning to speak for himself, says Jeffreys to him, ‘Richard, Richard, dost thou think we will hear thee poison the court? And, Richard, thou art an old fellow, an old knave; thou hast written books enough to fill a cart, every one as full of sedition-I may say treason-as an egg’s full of meat. Hadst thou been whipped out of thy writting forty years ago, it had been happy. I know thou hast a mighty party, and I see a great many of thy brotherhood in corners, to see what will become of their mighty Don, but by the grace of Almighty God I will crush them all.’” “After this strange insult, another of Mr. Baxter’s counsel begins to speak, and to clear Mr. Baxter, would have read some passages of the book, but Jeffreys cried out, ‘You shall not draw me into a conventicle with your annotations, nor your sniveling parson neither.’ So that when neither he himself nor the lawyers could be heard, but were all silenced by noise and fury, the judge proceeds to sum up the matter to the jury:’ It is notoriously known,’ says he, that there has been a design to ruin the king and nation, the old game has been renewed, and this has been the main incendiary. He is as modest now as can be, but the time was when no man so ready at “Bind your kings in chains and your nobles in fetters of iron” and “To your tents, O Israel!” Gentlemen, for God’s sake do not let us be gulled twice in an age.’ When he had done his harangue, Mr. Baxter presumes to say,’ Does your lordship think any jury will pretend to pass a verdict on me upon such a trial?’ ‘I will warrant you, Mr. Baxter.’ says he; ‘do not trouble your head about that.’ The jury immediately laid their heads together at the bar, and brought him in guilty. This was May 30th, and on the 29th of June following, judgment was given against him that he should pay a fine of 500 marks, be in prison till it was paid, and be bound to his good behavior seven years.”[7]

The troubles of Monmouth’s insurrection having been got over by the help of the army and Jeffreys, the next step taken by the king for the establishment of arbitrary power and the Romish religion in Britain was the abolition of the Test Acts. These declared Papists incapable of serving in public employments, and especially of holding commissions in the army. These laws had been passed, not because the faith of the Romanist was a false one, but because his allegiance was given to another sovereign. But the point in the present case was, Can the king simply in virtue of his prerogative repeal these laws? Parliament had enacted them, and Parliament, it was argued, was alone competent to repeal them. In the Parliament that met on November 9th, 1685, James declared his resolution of forming a standing army, and of entrusting Romanists with commissions in it. The sudden outbreak of the late rebellion, the king argued, showed how necessary it was for the peace of the nation, and the safety of the throne, to have a certain number of soldiers always in pay. And as regarded the second point, the employment of officers excluded by the Test Acts, he had frankly to acknowledge that he had employed many such in the late campaign, and that he had been so well Served by them, and they had so approved the loyalty of their principles by their practices, that he would neither expose them to the disgrace of dismissal nor himself to the loss of their services. In short, James declared that he would have a standing army, and that it should be officered by Romanists.

This speech from the throne surprised and bewildered Parliament. They now saw of how little value were the promises with which the king had amused them. Already the sword of arbitrary power was suspended above their heads, and the liberties of England were about to pass into the hands of those whose allegiance had been given to a foreign prince. They had a Popish king, and now they were about to have a Popish army. Long and warm debates followed in Parliament. At last the House of Commons resolved to present an address to the king, representing to him that members of the Church of Rome could not by law hold either civil or military employment, nor could their disabilities be removed save by Act of Parliament; but that out of the reverence they entertained for his Majesty they were willing to capacitate by law such a number of Roman Catholic officers as he might be pleased to include in a list to be presented to Parliament. This compromise was not satisfactory to the king; neither did it suit his designs that the Parliament should continue its debates. Accordingly it was prorogued on the 20th of November, 1685, and dissolved on the 2nd of July, 1687. On the ruins of Parliament rose the prerogative.

This was but one of the many calamities that were at this same hour darkening the skies of Protestantism. The year 1685 was truly a fatal one. In all the countries of Europe the right hand of Rome had been upraised in triumph. Just five

[7]Bennet, Memorial, pp. 303-305.

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weeks before James II dismissed his Parliament, the Edict of Nantes, the only security of the Huguenots, had been revoked in France. The calamities that followed we have already described. Smitten by the whole power of Louis XIV, the Protestants of that unhappy country were fleeing from its soil in wretched crowds, or overtaken by the officers of the tyrant, were rotting in dungeons or pouring out their blood on the mountains and on the scaffold. It was now, too, that the most terrible of all the tempests that ever descended upon the poor Vaudois broke over their mountains. Fire and sword were carried through their land; their homesteads and sanctuaries were razed, a miserable remnant only were left of this once flourishing people, and they, after languishing for some time in prison, were carried to other countries, and for the first time in history their valleys were seen to be empty. Nor did these close the list of Protestant reverses. The Electorate of the Palatinate passed to a most bigoted Popish family. In the same year, too, the structure of arbitrary power in Scotland was advanced a stage. The Parliament which met in May of that year was so submissive that it passed two Acts: the first for “the security of the Protestant religion”-” that is,” says Dr. Kennet, “for the extirpation of the Presbyterians;” and the second for settling” the excise of inland and foreign commodities upon his Majesty and heirs for ever.” In the preamble of this last Act, they declare “that they abhor all principles that are derogatory to the king’s sacred, supreme, and absolute power and authority, which none, whether private persons or collegiate bodies, can participate of any manner of way, but in dependence on him, and therefore they take this occasion to renew their hearty and sincere offer of their lives and fortunes, to assist, and defend, and maintain his rights and prerogatives against all mortals.”[8] It was not the Scottish nation that thus basely prostrated itself before the tyrant, placing their conscience as well as their fortune at his service, for the supremacy which was so obsequiously ascribed to him would have been manifestly a violation of their great national oath; the party whose voice is now heard offering this idolatrous worship to James II is that of the unprincipled, debauched, and servile crew to whom he had committed the government of the northern country, where now scarcely were left any remains of an ancient and sacred liberty.

The present was, perhaps, the gloomiest moment which had occurred in the annals of Protestantism since 1572, the era of the St. Bartholomew Massacre. In fact the gloom was more universal now than it was even then. Everywhere disaster and defeat were lowering upon the Protestant banners. The schemes of the Jesuits were prospering and their hopes were high. Bishop Burnet, who at that time withdrew from England, and made a visit to Rome, says, “Cardinal Howard showed me all his letters from England, by which I saw that those who wrote to him reckoned that their designs were so well laid that they could not miscarry. They thought they should certainly carry everything in the next session of Parliament. There was a high strain of insolence in their letters, and they reckoned they were so sure of the king, that they seemed to have no doubt left of their succeeding in the reduction of England.”[9]

[8]Bowyer, History James II, p. 48.

[9]Burnet, History vol. 2., pp. 331, 332.

Chapter 29: A Great Crisis in England and Christendom

Ireland—Duke of Ormond Dismissed from the Lieutenancy—The Army Remodeled—Tyrconnel made Lord Lieutenant—Appoints Popish Judges—Lord Chancellor of Ireland—The Charters of the Corporations Abolished—Civil Rights of the Protestants Confiscated—Their Religious Rights Invaded—Protestant Tithes and Churches Seized—Parliament Dissolved—English Judges give James II a Dispensing Power—A Popish Hierarchy—Clergymen Forbidden to Preach against Popery—Tillotson, Stillingfleet, etc—Ecclesiastical Commission—Bishop of London and Dr. Sharp Suspended—The Army at Hounslow Heath—A New Indulgence—Seven Bishops sent to the Tower—Birth of the Prince of Wales—Acquittal of the Bishops—Rejoicings—Crisis

Picture: View of Judge Jeffreys House: Duke Street, Westminster

Picture: Portraits of the Seven Bishops

Meanwhile the Jesuits’ projects were pushed forward with great vigor. A universal toleration was published in Scotland. James had recourse to the not uncommon device of employing toleration to establish intolerance, and the object at which he aimed was perfectly understood in Scotland. But it [610] was in Ireland where the king’s design of enslaving his kingdoms, and bowing the necks of his people to the Romish yoke, was most undisguisedly shown, and most audaciously pursued. Within less than two months after he had ascended the throne, the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a man of sterling uprightness, and of inviolable zeal for the Protestant religion and the English interests, was commanded to deliver up the sword of state. The Privy Council was next changed; nearly all the Protestant members were expelled, and their seats given to Papists. The army was remodeled by Colonel Talbot. It consisted of 7,000 Protestants who had rendered good service to the crown, but their Protestantism was a huge disqualification in the eyes of the monarch, and accordingly all of them, officers and men, were summarily dismissed to make room for Papists. Talbot robbed them before turning them adrift, by denying to the officers compensation for their commission, and by defrauding the private soldiers of their arrears of pay. Talbot was one of the most infamous of men. Abhorred and detested above all men in the three kingdoms by the English in Ireland, this did not prevent his rising to the highest posts in the State. After revolutionizing the army, he went across to London, where, through the influence of the queen, and Father Petre, now become the intimate and trusted adviser of the king, he was first created Earl of Tyrconnel, and next appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.[1] The news that the government of Ireland had been put into the hands of Tyrconnel fell like a thunderbolt on the poor Protestants of that country. “Perhaps no age,” says Bishop King, “can parallel so dreadful a catastrophe among all ages and sexes, as if the clay of doom was come, every one lamenting their condition, and almost all that could abandoning the kingdom.”[2] Animated by a furious zeal, Tyrconnel hastened to the coast, eager to cross the channel, and enter on his work of overthrow in Ireland. But the winds were contrary. The Protestants accounted them merciful winds, for while Tyrconnel was chafing and fuming at the delay, the Earl of Clarendon, who meanwhile held the Lord Lieutenancy, was arranging affairs, and providing, so far as he could, for the safety of the Protestants in prospect of the tempest which all saw was sure to burst as soon as Tyrconnel had set foot in Ireland.[3]

Arrived at last, Clarendon put the sword of state into the hand of Tyrconnel, who lost not a moment in beginning the work for which he had been so eager to grasp that symbol of power. The first change effected was in the important department of justice. The Protestant judges were mostly dismissed, and the weakest and most profligate men in the profession were promoted to the bench. We can give but one specimen of these portentous changes. Sir Alexander Fitton was made Lord High Chancellor of Ireland. He was “a man notorious on record, as convicted of forgery both in Westminster Hall and at Chester, and fined for it by the Lords in Parliament.” He was taken out of the King’s Bench Prison to be keeper of the King’s conscience. “He had no other merit to recommend him but being a convert to the Popish religion; and to him were added as masters in Chancery, one Stafford, a Romish priest, and O’Neal, the son of one of the most busy and notorious murderers in the massacre of 1641.”[4] Ignorant of law, Fitton gave judgment according to his inclinations, affirming that the Court of Chancery was above all laws; and after hearing a cause between a Protestant and a Papist, he would often declare that before giving judgment he would consult a divine?that is, his confessor, educated in Spain, and furnished with distinctions-to satisfy his conscience. “In the year 1687 there was not a Protestant sheriff in the whole kingdom, except one, and he put in by mistake for another of the same name that was a Papist. Some few Protestants were continued in the commission of the peace, but they were rendered useless and insignificant, being overpowered in everything by the great number of Roman Catholics joined in commission with them; and those for the most part the very scum of the people, and a great many whose fathers had been executed for theft, robbery, and murder.”[5]

The next step of the Government for crushing the Protestantism of Ireland was to wrest from the Protestants their Parliamentary vote. Their right to choose their own representatives in Parliament was one of the main defenses of the people’s liberties in both England and Ireland. The great massacre in 1641 had read a lesson which the Protestants of Ireland did not neglect, on the necessity of fortifying that important privilege. With this view they had founded corporations to which Protestants only were admissible; and they had built at their own charges many corporate towns from the charters of which Romanists were excluded. This barrier was thrown down by the dissolution of all the corporations in the kingdom. This sweeping change was effected by the threats or promises of

[1]Bowyer, History James II, p. 61.

[2]King, State of Ireland-apud Bennet’s Memorial, p. 313.

[3]Bowyer, History James II, p. 62.

[4]Bowyer, History James II, p. 65.

[5]Ibid., p. 66.

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Tyrconnel, by the insinuations of his secretary Ellis, and, when these failed, by Quo-warrantos brought into the Exchequer Court. New charters were granted, filled up chiefly with Romanists, or men of desperate or of no fortune; and a clause was inserted in every one of them placing them under the absolute control of the king, so that the Lord Lieutenant could put in or exclude from these corporations whomsoever he would. Thus the barrier of free Parliamentary representation in Ireland was leveled with the dust.[6]

All being now ready-a Popish Lord Lieutenant, a Popish bench of judges, Popish corporations, and a Popish army being set up-the civil rights of Protestants were largely confiscated. Odious and treasonable charges were laid at their door; these were supported by false oaths; fines, imprisonments, and confiscation of estates followed. The Protestant was actually placed beyond law. If a Popish tenant owed his Protestant landlord his rent, he paid him by swearing him into a plot. If a Papist owed his Protestant neighbor any money, he discharged his debt in the same coin. The Protestants were disarmed and left defenseless against the frequent outrages and robberies to which they were subjected. The abstraction of a cow or a sheep from his Protestant neighbor would sometimes be enjoined on the penitent in the confessional in order to absolution. A counterfeit deed would transfer a Protestant estate to a Roman Catholic owner. But at last these petty robberies were deemed too tedious, and a wholesale act of plunder was resolved on. A register was compiled of all the names of Protestants of whatever rank and age who could be discovered, and an Act of Attainder was passed in the Irish Parliament against all of them as guilty of high treason, and their estates were vested in the king.[7]

Their religious rights were not less grievously invaded. James II professed to be a patron of liberty of conscience, as if the same religion which compelled the King of Spain to set up the Inquisition should require the King of England to practice toleration. There came some curious illustrations of James’s understanding of that liberty which he vaunted so much; it seemed to mean an unrestricted right of appropriation on the part of the Romanist, and an equally unrestricted obligation of surrender on the part of the Protestant of whatever the latter possessed and the former coveted. In accordance with this new species of toleration, the priests began to declare openly that the tithes belonged to them, and forbade their people under pain of anathema to pay them to the Protestant incumbents. An Act of Parliament was next passed, by which not only all tithes payable by Romanists were given to their own priests, but a method was devised of drawing all the tithes, Protestant and Popish, to the Romish clergy. The Protestant clergyman was forbidden by the Act to receive any ecclesiastical dues from Roman Catholics, and as soon as his place became vacant by admission or death, a Popish incumbent was appointed to it, who, as a matter of course, received all the tithes. The University of Dublin, the one great nursery of learning in the kingdom, was closed. Protestant schools throughout Ireland were shut up, or converted into Popish seminaries. The Protestant churches in many parts of the country were converted into mass-houses. Their seizure was effected with a mixture of violence and devotion. The mayor, accompanied by the priests, would proceed to the edifice, send to the sexton for the keys, and if these were refused, break open the door; the building entered, the pews would be torn up, the floor cleared, mass would be said, and then the church would be declared consecrated, and not to be given back to the Protestants under pain of sacrilege.

Death was not as yet decreed against the Protestants, but they were called to endure every violence and wrong short of it; and in not a few instances this last penalty was actually meted out to them, though not ostensibly for their Protestantism. Many were murdered in their houses, some were killed by the soldiers, some perished by martial law, and others were starved to death in prisons. Things were in train for a general slaughter, and there is some ground to fear that the horrible carnage of 1641 would have been re-enacted had James II returned victorious from the Boyne.

We return to England. Parliament, as has already been said, James prorogued on the 20th of November, 1685, and after repeated promotions, he at last dissolved it on the 2nd of July, 1687. Finding his Parliament intractable, notwithstanding the many methods he had taken to pack it, the king resolved to try another tack. He began to tamper with the judges, in order to procure from them all opinion that the prerogative was above the law. The first with whom he was closeted, Sir Thomas Jones, told the king that twelve judges might be found who were of his mind, but certainly twelve lawyers would not be found who were of that opinion.[8] Jones and all the judges who refused to bend were

[6]Bowyer, History James II, p. 66.

[7]Bennet, Memorial, pp. 318, 319.

[8]Bowyer, History James II, pp. 70, 71.

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removed, and others put in their room, who were more at the devotion of the king. The bench, thus remodeled, was willing to fall in with the measures of the court, and to advance the royal prerogative to that extravagant pitch to which some fawning courtiers, and a few equally obsequious prelates and preachers, had exalted it in their fulsome harangues: that “monarchy and hereditary succession were by Divine right;” that “the legislature was vested in the person of the prince;” and that “power in the king to dispense with the law was law.” Accordingly the bench, in a case that was tried on purpose,[9] gave it as judgment, first, “that the Kings of England are sovereign princes;” secondly, “that the laws of England are the king’s laws” thirdly, “that therefore it is an incident, inseparable prerogative of the Kings of England, as of all other sovereign princes, to dispense with all penal laws in particular cases, and upon particular necessary reasons” fourthly, “that of those reasons and necessities the king is the sole judge;” and fifthly, “that this is not a trust invested in or granted to the king, but the ancient remains of the sovereign power of the Kings of England, which never was yet taken from them, nor can be.”[10] This sapped

[9]Burnet, History, vol. 2., p. 341.

[10]Burnet, vol. 2., pp. 342, 343. Bowyer, History James II, pp. 72, 73. Bennet, Memorial, pp. 322, 323.

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the liberties of England at their very root: it was an overthrow of the powers of the Constitution as complete as it was sudden: the prerogatives of the three branches of the State the nation, the Parliament, the throne-were all lodged in the king, and swallowed up in the royal prerogative. This destruction of all law was solemnly pronounced to be law; and the very men whose office it was to preserve the law incorrupt, and its administration pure, were the men who, to their eternal reproach, laid the liberties of England at the feet of the monarch.

This mighty attribute James did not permit to lie idle. It was not to be worn as a State jewel, but wielded as a sword for the destruction of what yet remained of the liberties of England. The king proceeded to exercise the dispensing power without reserve. Promotions, favors, and smiles were showered all round on the members of the Church of Rome. The Popish community, like the fleece of Gideon, was wet with the dew of the royal beneficence, while the rest of the nation was dry. Popish seminaries and Jesuit schools were erected not only in London, but in all the more considerable towns, and Romish ecclesiastics of every rank and name, and in every variety of costume, multitudinous and cloudy like the swarms of Egypt, began to cover the land. The Roman Church was regularly organized. Four Popish bishops were publicly consecrated, and, under the title of Vicars Apostolic, sent down to the provinces to exercise their functions in the dioceses to which they had been appointed. Their pastoral letters, printed by the king’s printer, were openly dispersed over the kingdom. The regular clergy appeared in their habits at Whitehall and St. James’s, and openly boasted that “they hoped in a little time to walk in procession through Cheap-side.” A mighty harvest of converts was looked for, and that it might not be lost from want of laborers to reap it, regulars and seculars from beyond the sea flocked to England to aid in gathering it in. The Protestant Church of England was rapidly losing her right to the title of “national;” she was gradually disappearing from the land under the operation of the law referred to above, by which her preferments and dignities were being swallowed up by Popish candidates. Preferment there was none, unless one was of the religion of the king and of Edward Petre, Clerk of the Closet, and Father Confessor to his Majesty.

The dispensing power, while daily enlarging the sphere of the Romish Church, was daily contracting that of the Protestant one. A royal order, directed to the bishops, enjoined them “to discharge all the inferior clergy from preaching upon controverted points in divinity.” While the Protestant pulpit was lettered, an unbounded license was given to the Popish one. The priests attacked the Protestant faith with all the rigor of which they were capable, and their sermons, printed by authority, were dispersed over the kingdom. This order was modeled on a worthy precedent. One of the first acts of Queen Mary, for the restoration of Popery, was a proclamation forbidding all preaching upon controverted points, for fear, it was said, or awakening animosities among her subjects. The same tender regard for the peace of his kingdom moved James II to issue his edict.

The king’s order had just the opposite effect of that which he intended. It called forth in defense of Protestantism a host of mighty intellects and brilliant writers, who sifted fear, it was said, of awakening animosities among her subjects. The same tender regard the claims of Rome to the foundation, exposed the falsehood of her pretensions, and the tyrannical and immoral tendency of her doctrines, in such a way that Popery came to be better understood by the people of England than it had ever been before. The leaders in this controversial war were Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Tennison, and Patrick. “They examined all the points of Popery,” says Burner, “with a solidity of judgment, a clearness of arguing, a depth of learning, and a vivacity of writing far beyond anything that had before that time appeared in our language.”[11] Against these powerful and accomplished writers was pitted, perhaps the shallowest race of Popish controversialists that ever put on harness to do battle for their Church. They could do little besides translating a few meager French works into bad English. On their own soil these works had done some service to Rome, backed as they were by Louis XIV and his dragoons; but in England, where they enjoyed no such aids, and where they were exposed to the combined and well-directed assaults of a powerful Protestant phalanx, they were instantly crushed. Hardly a week passed without a Protestant sermon or tract issuing from the press. Written with a searching and incisive logic, a scathing wit, and an overwhelming power of argument, they consumed and burned up the Romanist defenses as fire does stubble. The exposure was complete, the rout total; and the discomfited Romanists could only exclaim, in impotent rage, that it was exceeding bad manners to treat the king’s religion with such contempt. Tillotson and his companions, however, did not aim at playing the courtier; they were in deadly earnest; they saw the Protestantism of England and of Christendom in danger of perishing; they

[11]Burnet, vol. 2., p. 346.

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beheld scaffolds and stakes coming fast upon them; they felt assured that the horrors of Mary’s reign were about to renew themselves under James; and they resolved to wield voice and pen with all the energy they possessed, before they should be stifled in dungeons and strangled at stakes. The moral courage and dialectic power of these men largely contributed to the saving of England, for, while on the one hand they diffused among the people a clear and full intelligence on the point at issue, on the other they threw the court on measures so desperate by way of defending itself, that they proved in the end its own undoing.

To silence these Protestant champions, a new Court of Inquisition was established, styled a “Commission for Ecclesiastical Affairs.” The members nominated were the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, the Earls of Rochester and Sunderland, the Bishops of Rochester and Durham, and Lord Chief Justice Herbert. All the persons named refused from the first to act upon it, save Jeffreys and the Bishop of Durham, in whose hands was thus left the business of the newly-created court. The members of the commission were empowered to “exercise all manner of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the fullest manner” in other words, to put the Church of England quietly into its grave.

A beginning was made with Dr. Sharp. He was a learned divine, and an eloquent preacher, and had distinguished himself by his able defenses of Protestantism and his vigorous attacks on Romanism in the spirit. This was interpreted into “an attempt to beget an ill opinion in the minds of his hearers of the king and his Government, and to lead the people into schism and rebellion,” and consequently a contempt of “the order about preachers.” The king sent an order to the Bishop of London to suspend Dr. Sharp. The bishop excused himself on the ground that the order was contrary to law, whereupon both the Bishop of London and Dr. Sharp were suspended by the Court o£ Ecclesiastical Commission.[12]

This incident convinced the Jesuits that the dispensing power was not safe so long as it rested solely upon the opinion of the judges, The prerogative might be, and indeed was, disputed by the divines of the Church of England. The army would be a much firmer basis for so great a fabric. Accordingly, the Jesuits represented to the king what great things Louis of France was at that hour accomplishing by his dragoons, in the way of converting men to the Romish faith; and James, zealous of rivaling his orthodox brother, and fore-seeing how efficient dragonnades would be for upholding the dispensing power, assembled his army to the number of about 15,000 at Hounslow Heath. Erecting a chapel, he had mass said daily at head-quarters, although the great majority of the soldiers were Protestants. The nation saw a cloud gathering above it which might burst upon it any hour in ruin. Its forebodings and alarms found expression in a tract which a learned divine, Mr. Samuel Johnson, addressed to the army. “Will you be aiding and assisting,” asked he, “to set up mass-houses, to erect that kingdom of darkness and desolation amongst us, and to train up all our children to Popery? What service can you do your country by being under the command of French and Irish Papists, and by bringing the nation under a foreign yoke? Will you exchange your birth-right of English laws and liberties for martial and club law, and help to destroy all others, only at last to be eaten up yourselves?”[13] For this patriotic advice, Mr. Johnson was degraded from his office, whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, and made to stand three times in the pillory. He had sown seeds, however, in the army, which bore fruit afterwards.

It was while the king was pursuing this course-trampling down the laws, subjecting some of the most eminent of his subjects to barbarous indignities, and preparing the army to deal the final coup to the Protestant religion and the liberties of England that he published (April 4th, 1687) his “Gracious Declaration for Liberty of Conscience.” In this edict his Majesty declared it to be his opinion that “conscience ought not to be constrained,” and accordingly he suspended all oaths and tests for office, and all penal laws for nonconformity to the established religion, and in general removed all disabilities from every one, in order that all fit to serve him might be eligible to public employment. All this James granted solely in virtue of his royal prerogative.

To the Nonconformists this Indulgence was the opening of the prison doors. They had been grievously harassed, and having a natural right to their liberty, it does not surprise us that they were willing to part with their fetters. They could now walk the streets without the fear of having their steps dogged by an ecclesiastical bailiff, and could worship in their own houses or in their churches without the terror of incurring the ignominy of the pillory. The change to them was immense; it was

[12]Burnet, vol. 2, pp. 347, 348. Bowyer, History of James II, pp.77-83.

[13]Bowyer, pp. 85, 86.

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freedom after slavery, and their joy being in proportion, the arms in which they thanked James were warm indeed, and in some cases extravagant; though it might be confessed that had this Indulgence been honestly meant, it would have been worthy of all the praises now lavished upon its author. But the gift was not honestly intended. James’s Toleration was a sweetened cup holding a deadly poison. The great majority of the Nonconformists perfectly understood the motive and object of the king in granting this Indulgence, and appreciated it at its true worth. It rested solely on the royal prerogative. It did not establish liberty of conscience; it but converted that great principle into a pedestal of arbitrary power. James had given the English nation a year’s liberty, or a month it might be, or a day, to be succeeded by an eternity of servitude.

Having set up the dispensing power, James proceeded to use it for the overturn of all institutions and principles, not excepting that liberty for the sake of which, as he said, he had assumed it. The bolt fell first on the two universals. The king sent his mandate to Cambridge, ordering the admission of one Allan Francis, a Benedictine monk, to the degree of Master of Arts, without taking the usual oaths. The senate replied that they could not do so without breaking their own oaths, and besought the king not to compel them to commit willful perjury. The king insisted that the monk should be admitted, and, the senate still refusing, the vice-chancellor was deprived of his office. The storm next burst over Oxford. The presidency of Magdalen College being vacant, the Romanists coveted exceedingly this noblest and richest of the foundations of learning in Christendom. The king ordered the election of Anthony Farmer, a man of bad reputation, but who had promised to become a Papist. The authorities of Oxford must either violate their oaths or disobey the king. They resolved not to perjure themselves; they refused to admit the king’s nominee. James stormed, and threatened to make them feel the weight of his displeasure, which in no long time they did. The president and twenty-five fellows were extruded from the university, and declared incapable of receiving or being admitted into any ecclesiastical dignity, benefice, or promotion. The nation looked on with just indignation. “It was accounted,” says Burnet, “an open piece of robbery and burglary when men, authorized by no legal commission, came and forcibly turned men out of their profession and freehold.”[14] The more tyrannical his measures, the louder James protested that he would uphold the Church of England as by law established, and hence the submission of the nation to these attacks upon its rights. But the next step on which the king ventured threw the people into greater alarm than they had yet felt. This was the imprisoning of seven bishops in the Tower. This bold act grew out of a new Declaration of Liberty of Conscience which the king thought right to issue. This declaration was accompanied with an order enjoining the bishops to distribute it throughout their dioceses, and cause it to be read during Divine service in all the churches of the kingdom. Several of the bishops and vast numbers of the clergy refused to read this paper, not because they were opposed to liberty of conscience, but because they knew that under this phrase was couched a dispensing power, which the king was using for the destruction of the laws and institutions of the kingdom, and to read this paper was to make the Church of England accessory indirectly to her own ruin. Six bishops,[15] with the archbishop of Canterbury, were summoned before the Ecclesiastical Commission, and, after being hectored by Jeffreys, were sent (June 29, 1688) to the Tower. London was thunderstruck.

To prevent tumult or insurrection, the bishops were conveyed by water to their prison. But the thing could not be hid, and the people in vast numbers crowded to the banks of the Thames, and by loud demonstrations extolled the constancy of the bishops, while some, falling on their knees, invoked their blessing as their barge passed down the river. When they arrived at the Tower, the bishops ascended the stairs between a double row of officers and soldiers, who, receiving them as confessors, kneeled to receive their blessing.[16]

While armed force was being put forth to extirpate the Protestant faith, Jesuitical craft was busily exerted to propagate the Roman creed. The city and the country were filled with catechisms and manuals, in which the grosser errors of Popery were glossed over with a masterly skill, and the two faiths were made to wear so close a resemblance that a vulgar eye could scarce discern the difference between them. A Popish orphanage was erected; noblemen were closeted with the king and solicited to be converted; Father Petre was designed for the See of York. At last, almost all disguise being thrown off, the Papal Nuncio made his entry into London in open day, passing through the streets in great pomp, preceded by a cross-bearer, and followed

[14]Burnet, vol. 2., p. 381. Bowyer, p. 123.

[15]They wereKen, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Lloyd of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chichester, White of Peterborough, and Trelawney of Bristol. The primate was William Sancroft.

[16]Burnet, vol. 2., p. 436. Bowyer, pp. 162, 163.

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by a crowd of priests and monks in the habits of their orders.

To these signs was added another yet more remarkable. The Jesuits had foretold that should the king abolish the penal laws, a work so acceptable to Heaven would not fail to be rewarded with a Prince of Wales. It was now that the prophecy was fulfilled. Rumors had been spread through the nation some time before that the queen was pregnant. On Saturday, the 9th of June, 1688, after playing cards at Whitehall till eleven of the clock at night,[17] the queen made herself be carried to St. James’s, where a bed had previously been prepared, and the public were not a little surprised to be told that next morning, between the hours of ten and eleven, she had there given birth to a son. This was the one thing wanted to complete the program of the Jesuit James was growing into years; his two daughters were both married to Protestant princes; and however zealous for Rome, without a son to inherit his crown and his religion, the Papists considered that they but reposed under a gourd, which, like that of sacred story, might wither in a night; but now they were secured against such a catastrophe by a birth which they themselves called miraculous. The king had now been provided with a successor, and the arrangement was complete for securing the perpetuity of that Romish establishment in England which every day was bringing nearer.

There was but one little trouble in store for the Jesuits. On the 30th of June the bishops were acquitted. The presence of the judges could not restrain the joy of the people, and the roof of Westminster Hall resounded with the shouts that hailed the sentence of the court. The echoes were caught up by the crowd outside, and repeated in louder demonstrations of joy. The great news was speedily communicated to the cities of Westminster and London: “Not guilty!” “Not guilty!” passed from man to man, and from street to street; the enthusiasm of the citizens was awakened as the words flew onwards, and so loudly did the two cities rejoice that their shouts were heard at Hounslow Heath. The soldiers now burst into huzzahs, and the noise of the camp fell on the king’s ear as he was being that day entertained in the Earl of Feversham’s tent. Wondering what the unusual noise might mean, the king sent the earl to inquire, who, speedily returning, told the king, “nothing but the soldiers shouting upon the acquittal of the bishops.” “And do you call that nothing?” replied the king, evidently discomposed. There was cause for agitation. That storm, the first mutterings of which had been heard at the Market Cross at Sanquhar, was rolling darkly up on all sides.

But the king took not warning. He was stead-fastly purposed to pursue to the end those projects which appeared to him and his Jesuit advisers to be rapidly approaching the goal. He had set up the dispensing power: with it he was overturning the laws, filling the judicial bench with his own creatures, remodeling the Church and the universities, and daily swelling the Popish and murderous elements in the army by recruits from Ireland; Parliament he had dissolved, and if it should please him to re-assemble it, the same power which had given him a subservient army could give him a subservient Parliament. The requisite machinery was ready for the destruction of the religion and liberties of England. Is the work of two centuries to be swept away? Has the knell of Protestantism rung out? If not, in what quarter is deliverance to arise? and by whose arm will it please the great Ruler to lift up a sinking Christendom, and restore to stability the cause of liberty and truth?

[17]Bowyer, p. 164.

Chapter 30: Protestantism Mounts the Throne of Great Britain

The Movement Returns to the Land of its Birth—England Looks to William of Orange—State of Parties in Europe—Preparations in England against Invasion—Alarm and Proclamation of James II—Declaration of William of Orange—The Dutch Fleet Sails?A Storm—The Dutch Fleet Driven Back—William’s Appeals to the English Soldiers and Sailors—The Fleet again Sets Sail—Shifting of the Wind—Landing at Torbay—Prince of Orange’s Address—The Nation Declares for him—King James Deserted—His Flight—The Crown Settled on the Prince and Princess of Orange—Protestantism on the Throne

Picture: View of the Interior of the Chapel Royal, St. James’s

Picture: William III.

After the revolution of three centuries, Protestantism, in its march round the countries of Christendom, had returned to the land from which it had set out. On the very spot where Wicliffe had opened the war in 1360, Protestantism was now fighting one of the most momentous of its [618] many great battles, inasmuch as this conflict would determine what fruit was to remain of all its past labours and contendings, and what position it would hold in the world during the coming centuries?whether one of ever-lessening influence, till finally it should vanish, like some previous premature movements, or whether it was to find for itself a basis so solid that it should spread abroad on the right hand and on the left, continually gathering fresh brightness, and constantly creating new instrumentalities of conquest, till at last it should be accepted as the ruler of a world which it had liberated and regenerated.

The first part of the alternative seemed at this moment the likelier to be realized. With an affiliated disciple of the Jesuits upon the throne,[1] with its institutions, one after another, attacked, undermined, and overthrown, England was rapidly sinking into the abyss from which Wicliffe’s spirit had rescued it, and along with it would descend into the same abyss the remains of the once glorious Churches of Geneva, of France, and of Scotland. Help there appeared not in man. No voice was heard in England powerful enough to awaken into life and action that spirit which had given so many martyrs to the stake in the days of Mary. This spirit, though asleep, was not dead. There were a few whose suspicions had been awake

[1]See Burnet, vol. 2. p. 395, 396.

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ever since the accession of James II; and of those who had sunk into lethargy many were now thoroughly aroused by the violent measures of the king. The imprisonment of the bishops, and the birth of the “Prince of Wales,” were two events which the nation interpreted as sure portents of a coming slavery. The people of England turned their eyes in search of a deliverer beyond the sea, and fixed them upon a prince of the illustrious House of Orange, in whom the virtues, the talents, and the self-sacrificing heroism of the great William lived over again, not indeed with greater splendor, for that was impossible, not even with equal splendor, but still in so pre-eminent a glory as to mark him out as the one man in Europe capable of sustaining the burden of a sinking Christendom. Besides the cardinal qualification of his Protestantism, William, by his marriage with the daughter of James II, was the next heir to the throne, after that mysterious child, at whose christening the Pope, through his nuncio, stood god-father, and on whom it pleased the king to bestow the title of “Prince of Wales.”

Many had ere this opened correspondence with the Stadtholder, entreating him to interpose and prevent the ruin of England; the number of such was now greatly increased, and among others the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed him from the Tower, and the Bishop of London from his retirement in the country. Others crossed the sea, some on pretext of visiting friends, and some, as they said, to benefit by the German spas. A majority of the nobility favored the intervention of William, and found means of letting their wishes be known at the Hague. Dispatches and messengers were constantly crossing and recrossing the ocean, and James and his Jesuits might have known that great designs were on foot, had not their secure [620] hold on England, as they fancied it, blinded them to their danger. The representatives of most of the historic houses in England were more or less openly supporting the movement. Even so early as the death of Charles II, the Elector of Brandenburg is said to have urged William to undertake the tolerance of English Protestantism, offering to assist him; but the prince answered that he would attempt nothing against his father-in-law without an absolute necessity, “but at the same time he protested that, if he could not otherwise prevent the subversion of the laws and religion of England, he would undertake the voyage, though he should embark in a fishing-boat.”[2] In a survey of the case, it appeared to William that an absolute necessity had arisen, and he proceeded to make preparations accordingly.

In weighing the chances of success, William had to take into account the state of parties in Europe, and the forces, both friendly and hostile, that would come into play the moment he should set sail for England. Ranged against him were Austria, Spain, France, and, of course, the monarch to be attacked, James II These powerful kingdoms, if not bound in actual treaty, were all of them leagued together by a common faith and a common interest. Austria had held the balance in Europe for five centuries, and was not prepared to resist it. Spain, fallen from the height on which it stood a century before, was nevertheless ready to devote what strength it still possessed to a cause which it loved as dearly as ever. France, her exchequer full, her armies numerous, and her generals flushed with victory, had never been more formidable than now. Louis XIV might take a diversion in favor of his ally, James II, by attacking Holland as soon as William had withdrawn his troops across the sea. To guard himself on this side, the Prince of Orange sought to detach Austria and Spain from France by representing to them the danger of French ascendancy, and that Louis was not fighting to advance the Roman religion, but to make himself universal monarch. His representations were so far successful that they cooled the zeal of the Courts of Vienna and Madrid for the “Grand Monarch,” and abated somewhat the danger of William’s great enterprise.

On the other hand, the prince gathered round him what allies he could from the Protestant portion of Europe. It is interesting to find among the confederates around the great Stadtholder the representatives of the men who had been the chief champions of the Protestant movement at its earlier stages.

The old names once more appear on the stage, and the close of the great drama carries us back as it were to its beginning. At Minden, in Westphalia, William of Orange met the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and the Princes of the House of Luneburg, who, on a mutual exchange of sentiments, were found to be of one mind, that the balance of Europe as settled at the Peace of Westphalia after the Thirty Years’ War had been grievously disturbed, and that it urgently needed to be redressed by upholding the Protestant Church, restoring the ancient liberties of England, and setting bounds to the growing power of France.[3]

At this moment an event happened which furnished William with a pretext for the warlike preparations he was so busy pushing forward with a view to his English expedition, and also closed the door by which the French might enter Holland in his absence. On the 2nd of June, 1688, the Elector of Cologne died. This principality commanded twenty leagues of the Rhine, and this placed the keys of both the Netherlands and Holland in the hands of its chief. It was therefore a matter of grave importance for the peace and safety of the Dutch States who should fill the vacant electorate. Germany and France brought forward each its candidate. If the French king should succeed in the election, war was inevitable on the Rhine, and for this it behoved William of Orange to be prepared, and so his naval armaments went forward without exciting suspicion. It was the German candidate who was eventually elected, and thus an affair which in its progress had masked the preparations of the Prince of Orange, in its issue extended protection to an undertaking which otherwise would have been attended with far greater difficulty.[4]

Early in September, however, it began to be strongly suspected that these great preparations in Holland both by sea and land pointed to England. Instantly precautions were taken against a possible invasion. The chief ports, and in particular Portsmouth and Hull, then the two keys of England, were put into Popish hands, and the garrisons so modeled that the majority were Papists. Officers and private soldiers were brought across from Ireland and drafted into the army, but the king lost more than he gained by the offense he thus gave to the Protestant soldiers and their commanders. The rumors from the Hague grew every day more certain, and the fitting out of the fleet went on at redoubled speed. Orders were dispatched to Tyrconnel to send over whole regiments from Ireland;

[2]Bennet, Memorial, p. 337.

[3]Bowyer, p. 191. Burnet, vol. 2., p. 456.

[4]Ibid., p. 191. Burnet, vol. 2., pp.457-462.

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and meanwhile to allay the jealousies of the people another proclamation was published (September 21st), to the effect that his Majesty would call a Parliament, that he would establish a universal liberty of conscience, that he would inviolably uphold the Church of England, that he would exclude Romanists from the Lower House, and that he would repeal all the tests and penalties against. Nonconformity. It had happened so often that while the king’s words breathed only liberty his acts contained nothing but oppression, that this proclamation had little or no effect.

The king next received, through his envoy at the Hague, certain news of the prince’s design to descend on England. At the same time James learned that numerous lords and gentlemen had crossed the sea, and would return under the banners of the invader. “Upon the reading of this letter,” says Bowyer, “the king remained speechless, and as it were thunder-struck. The airy castle of a dispensing arbitrary power, raised by the magic spells of Jesuitical counsels, vanished in a moment, and the deluded monarch, freed from his enchantment by the approach of the Prince of Orange, found himself on the blink of a precipice, whilst all his intoxicating flatters stood amazed and confounded at a distance, without daring to offer him a supporting hand, lest his greater weight should hurry both him and them into the abyss.”[5]

The first device of the court was an attempt to prepossess the nation against their deliverer. A proclamation was issued setting forth that “a great and sudden invasion from Holland, with an armed force of foreigners, would speedily be made,” and that under “some false pretenses relating to liberty, property, and religion, the invasion proposed an absolute conquest of these his Majesty’s kingdoms, and the utter subduing and subjecting them, and all his people, to a foreign Power.” Besides this proclamation other measures were taken to rally the people round the sinking dynasty. The bishops were courted; the Anabaptist Lord Mayor of London was replaced by a member of the Church of England; the Duke of Ormond, who had been dismissed from the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, had the garter bestowed upon him; and a general pardon was issued, from which, however, a score of persons were excepted. These measures availed not their author, for late and forced amnesties are always accepted by the people as signs of a monarch’s weakness and not of his clemency.

On the 3rd of October, the bishops, at the king’s command, waited on him with their advice. They strongly counseled an entire reversal of his whole policy, and the now docile monarch conceded nearly all their demands. The reforms began to be put in execution, but news arriving in a few days that the Dutch fleet had been driven back by a storm, the king’s concessions were instantly withdrawn. James sank lower than ever in the confidence of the nation.[6] No stay remained to the king but his fleet and army; the first was sent to sea to watch the Dutch, and the latter was increased to 30,000, by the arrival of regiments from Ireland and Scotland.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the German Ocean, the Prince of Orange was providing transports and embarking his troops with the utmost diligence. To justify his undertaking to the world, he published, on the 10th of October, a declaration in six-and-twenty articles, comprehending, first, an enumeration of the oppressions under which the English nation groaned; secondly, a statement of the remedies which had been used in vain for the removal of these grievances; and thirdly, a declaration of the reasons that moved him to undertake the deliverance of England. “His expedition,” he said, “was intended for no other design but to have a free and lawful Parliament assembled,” to which all questions might be referred, touching “the establishment of the Protestant religion, and the peace, honour, and happiness of these nations upon lasting foundations.”

All things being ready, the Prince of Orange took solemn leave of the States. Standing on the threshold of his great enterprise, he again protested that he had no other objects than those set forth in his declaration. Most of the senators were melted into tears, and could only in broken utterances declare their love for their prince, and their wishing for his success. “Only the prince himself,” says Burnet, “continued firm in his usual gravity and phlegm.”

On the 19th of October, William went on board, and the Dutch fleet, consisting of fifty-two men-of-war, twenty-five frigates, as many fire-ships, with four hundred victuallers, and other vessels for the transportation of 3,660 horse, and 10,692 foot, put to sea from the flats near the Brielle, with a wind at south-west by south.[7] Admiral Herbert led the van, and Vice-Admiral Evertzen brought up the rear. The prince placed himself in the center, carrying an English flag, emblazoned with his arms, surrounded with the legend, “For the Protestant Religion and Liberties of England.” Underneath was the motto of the House of Nassau, Je Maintiendray (I will maintain).

[5]Bowyer, p. 204.

[6]Bowyer, pp. 206-210.

[7]Ibid., p. 227.

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Gathered beneath the banners of William, now advancing to deliver England and put the crown upon many a previous conflict, was a brilliant assemblage, representative of several nations. Besides the Count of Nassau, and other Dutch and German commanders, there came with the prince those English and Scottish noblemen and gentlemen whom persecution had compelled to flee to Holland. Among these were men of ancient family and historic name, and others distinguished by their learning or their services to the State. The most illustrious of the French exiles joined in this expedition, and contributed by their experience and bravery to its success. With the prince was the renowned Marshal Schomberg and his son, Count Charles Schomberg, and M. la Caillemote, son of the Marquis de Ruvigny. Moreover, 736 officers, mostly veterans, accustomed to conquer under Turenne and Condé, commanded in William’s battalions. Besides these was a chosen body of three regiments of infantry and one squadron of cavalry, composed entirely of French refugees. Each regiment numbered 750 fighting men.[8] Marshal Schomberg commanded under the orders of the Prince of Orange, and such was the confidence reposed in his character and abilities that the Princess of Orange gave him, it is said, secret instructions to assert her rights and carry out the enterprise, should her husband fall. Two other refugee officers were similarly commissioned, should both the prince and the marshal fall.[9] Thus had his two greatest enemies provided William with an army. Louis of France and James of England had sent the flower of their generals, statesmen, and soldiers to swell this expedition; and Popish tyranny had gathered out of the various countries, and assembled under one avenging banner, a host that burned to fight the great crowning battle of Protestantism.

The first night the fleet was at sea the wind veered into the north, and settled in the north-west. It soon rose to a violent storm, which continued all next day. The fleet was driven back, some of the ships finding refuge in Helvoetsluys, from which they had sailed, others in the neighboring harbors, but neither ship nor life was lost, save one man who was blown from the shrouds. It was rumored in England that the Dutch armament had gone to the bottom, whereupon the Romanists sang a loud but premature triumph over the fancied disaster, which they regarded as a compensation for the destruction of the Armada exactly a hundred years before. To keep up the delusion, and make the English Court more remiss in their preparations, the Amsterdam and Haarlem gazettes were ordered to make a lamentable relation of the great damage the Dutch fleet and the army had sustained, that nine men-of-war, besides smaller vessels, were lost, Dr. Burner and several English gentlemen drowned, the States out of humor with the expedition, and, in fine, that it was next to impossible for the prince to resume his design till next spring.[10]

While waiting for the re-assembling and refitting of his fleet, the Prince of Orange issued a declaration to the army in England, in which he told them, “We are come to preserve your religion, and restore and establish your liberties and properties, and therefore we cannot suffer ourselves to doubt but that all true Englishmen will come and concur with us in our desire to secure these nations from Popery and slavery. You must all plainly see that you are only made use of as instruments to enslave the nation and ruin the Protestant religion, and when that is done, you may judge what you yourselves may expect... We hope that you will not suffer yourselves to be abused by a false notion of honour, but that you will in the first place consider what you owe to Almighty God, and next to your country, yourselves, and your posterity.” Admiral Herbert addressed a similar letter, at the same time, to his Majesty’s navy, exhorting them to join the prince in the common cause. “For,” said he, “should it please God for the sins of the English nation to suffer your arms to prevail, to what can your victory serve you, but to enslave you deeper, and overthrow the true religion in which you have lived and your fathers died?” These appeals had the best effect upon the soldiers and sailors; many of whom resolved not to draw a sword in this quarrel till they had secured a free Parliament, and a guarantee for the laws, the liberties, and the religion of England.

The storm continued for eight days, during which the fleet was re-fitted and re-victualled. When all was ready the wind changed into the east. With this “Protestant wind,” as the sailors called it, the fleet a second time stood out to sea. It was divided into three squadrons. The English and Scottish division of the armament sailed under a red flag; the Brandenburghers and the guards of William under a white; and the Dutch and French, commanded by the Count of Nassau, under a blue. The tack chosen at first was northerly; but the wind being strong and full from the east, the fleet abandoned that course at noon of the second day and steered westward.[11] Had the northerly course

[8]Weiss, French Protestant Refugees, p. 231.

[9]Ibid., p. 232.

[10]Bowyer, p. 229.

[11]Burnet, vol. 2., p. 497.

[623]

been persisted in, the fleet would have encountered the English navy, which was assembled near Harwich, in the belief that the prince would land in the north of England; but happily the wind, rising to a brisk gale, carried them right across to the mouth of the Channel, and at the same time kept the English fleet wind-bound in their roadstead. At noon on the 3rd of November, the Dutch fleet passed between Dover and Calais. It was a brave sight-the armament ranged in a line seven leagues long, sailing proudly onwards between the shores of England and France, its decks crowded with officers and soldiers, while the coast on either hand was lined with crowds which gathered to gaze on the grand spectacle. Before night fell the fleet had sighted the Isle of Wight. The next day was Sunday: the fleet carried but little sail, and bore slowly along before the wind, which still kept in the east. It was the anniversary of the prince’s birth, and also his marriage, and some of his officers, deeming the day auspicious, advised him to land at Portsmouth; but William, choosing rather to give the fleet leisure for the exercises appropriate to the sacred day, forbore to do so. The Bay of Torquay was under their lee, and here William resolved to attempt a landing. The pilot was bidden be careful not to steer past it, but a haze coming on he had great difficulty in measuring his course. When the mist cleared off, it was found that the fleet was considerably farther down-channel than the intended point of debarkation, and as the wind still blew from the east it was impossible to return to it. To go on to Plymouth, the next alternative, involved considerable hazard, for it was uncertain how the Earl of Bath, who commanded there, might receive them. Besides, Plymouth was not nearly so commodious for landing as the Bay of Torquay, which they had passed in the haze. While the prince was deliberating, the wind shifted; there came a calm of a few moments, and then a breeze set in from the south-west: “a soft and happy gale,” says Burnet, who was on board, “which carried in the whole fleet in four hours’ time into Torbay.” Scarcely had the ships dropped their anchors when the wind returned, and blew again from the east.[12]

The landing was safely effected; the Peasants of Devonshire flocked in crowds to welcome their deliverer and supply his troops with provisions; the mild air refreshed them after their sea-voyage. The landing of the horses, it was feared, would be a matter of great difficulty; but they were shown a place, says Burner, “so happy for our landing, though we came to it by mere accident, that if we had ordered the whole island round to be sounded we could not have found a properer place for it.” There was, moreover, a dead calm all that morning, and a business which they had reckoned would occupy them for days was got through in as many hours. When the prince and Marshal Schomberg had stepped on shore, William, says Bishop Burner, “took me heartily by the hand, and asked me if I would not now believe predestination.” “He was cheerfuller than ordinary,” he adds, “yet he returned soon to his usual gravity.”

They had no sooner effected the debarkation of men, horses, and stores, than the wind changed again, and setting in from the west, it blew a violent storm. Sheltered by the western arm of the bay, William’s ships suffered no damage from this tempest; not so the king’s fleet, which till now had been wind-bound at Harwich. They had learned that William’s ships had passed down the Channel, and the commander was eager to pursue them. The calm which enabled William to enter Torbay, had also allowed the king’s navy to leave their roadstead, and setting out in pursuit of the enemy they had come as far as the Isle of Wight when they were met by this storm. They were tossed on the rollers of the Channel for some days, and though at last they managed to enter Portsmouth, it was in so shattered a condition that they were unfit for service that year. “By the immediate hand of Heaven,” says Burner, “we were masters of the sea without a blow. I never found a disposition to superstition in my temper; I was rather inclined to be philosophical upon all occasions. Yet I must confess that this strange ordering of the winds and seasons, just to change as our affairs required it, could not but make deep impressions upon me, as well as on all who observed it.”[13]

For the first few days it was doubtful what reception England would give its deliverer. The winds were “Protestant,” every one acknowledged, but would the currents of the political and social firmament prove equally so? The terror of the executions which had followed the rising under Monmouth still weighed on the nation. The forces that William had brought with him appeared inadequate, and on these and other grounds many stood in doubt of the issue. But in a few days the tide of Protestant feeling began to flow; first the people declared in favor of William-next the gentry of the neighboring counties gave in their accession to him; and lastly the nobles gathered under his banners. Of soul too magnanimous and strong to

[12]Burnet, vol. 2., p. 499. Bowyer, History of King William III, vol. 1., pp. 235, 236.

[13]Burnet, vol. 2., pp. 499, 500.

[624]

be either easily elated or easily cast down, this tardiness of the people of England to assert their liberties, which William had come across the sea to vindicate, drew from the prince a dignified rebuke. Addressing the gentlemen of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire (November 15), we find him saying, “You see we are come according to your invitation and our promise. Our duty to God obliges us to protect the Protestant religion, and our love to mankind your liberties and properties. We expected you that dwelt so near the place of our landing would have joined us sooner; not that it is now too late, nor that we want your military assistance so much as your countenance and presence, to justify our declared pretensions, in order to accomplish our good and gracious design... Therefore, gentlemen, friends, and fellow Protestants, we bid you and all your followers most heartily welcome to our court and camp. Let the whole world now judge if our pretensions are not just, generous, sincere, and above price, since we might have even a bridge of gold to return back; but it is our principle rather to die in a good cause than live in a bad one.”[14] Courage is as contagious as fear. The first accessions to the prince were followed by crowds of all ranks. The bishops, the great cities, the nation at large declared on his side. The king made hardly any show of opposition. The tempests of the ocean had disabled his fleet; a spirit of desertion had crept in among his soldiers, and his army could not be relied on. The priests and Jesuits, who had urged him to violent measures, forsook him now, when he was in extremity, and consulted their own safety in flight. The friends on whom formerly he had showered his favors, and whom he believed incapable of ever deserting him, proved false; even his own children forsook him. No one stood by him at this hour but his queen, and she deemed it prudent to retire to France. The man who but a few days before stood at the head of one of the most powerful kingdoms of Europe, who had fleets and armies at his command, who had around him so numerous and powerful an aristocracy, was in a moment, with hardly a sword unsheathed against him, stripped of all, and now stood alone, his friends scattered, his armies in revolt, his kingdom alienated and his power utterly broken. Overwhelmed by the suddenness and greatness of his calamities, he fled, no man pursuing, throwing, in his flight, the great seal into the Thames; and having reached the sea-coast, the once mighty monarch threw himself into a small boat, crossed the Channel, and sought the protection of the man whose equal he had been till this unhappy hour, but on whose bounty he was henceforth content to subsist.

The throne being thus vacated, a Convention was held, and the crown was settled on the Prince and Princess of Orange. William ascended the throne as the representative of Protestantism. That throne, destined to become the greatest in the world, we behold won for the Reformation. This was the triumph, not of English Protestantism only, it was the triumph of the Protestantism of all Christendom. It was the resurrection of the cause of the French Huguenots, and through them that of Calvin and the Church of Geneva. It was the revival not less of the cause of the Scots Covenanters, whose torn and blood-stained flag, upheld at the latter end of their struggle by only a few laymen, was soon to be crowned with victory. William the Silent lives once more in his great descendant, and in William III fights over again his great battle, and achieves a success more glorious and dazzling than any that was destined to cheer him in his mortal life. Protestantism planting herself at the center of an empire whose circuit goes round the globe, and whose scepter is stretched over men of all kindreds, languages, and nations on the earth, with letters, science, colonies, and organized churches round her as her ministers and propagators, sees in this glorious outcome and issue the harvest of the toils and blood of the hundreds of thousands of heroes, confessors, and martyrs whom she has reared. One sowed, another reaped, and now in the accession of William III both rejoice together.

We found Protestantism at the bar of the hierarchy in St. Paul’s in the person of John Wicliffe, we leave it on the throne of England in the person of William III. While the throne of England continues to be Protestant, Great Britain will stand; when it ceases to be Protestant, Britain will fall. The end

[14]Bowyer, History William III, vol. 1., p. 241, 242.

[625] [626] [627] [628] [629] [630] [631] [632] [633] [634] [635] [636] [637] [638] [639] [640] [641] [642] [643] [644] [645] [646] [647] [648]

Chronology

Attaching to wylie’s “history of protestantism”

With additional dates. compiled by d. h. boggis.

43 Roman Invasion of Britain.

61 Nero becomes Emperor of Rome.

64 Great fire of Rome blamed on Christians.

68 Suicide of Nero. Accession of Marcus Aurelius.

70 Jerusalem destroyed by Roman general Titus.

96 Christians persecuted by Roman Emperor Domitian.

177 Persecution of Christians in Europe.

250 Persecution of Christians under Roman Emperor Decius.

284 Diocletian becomes Emperor of Rome.

300 Christianity introduced into Armenia.

303 Beginning of persecution of Christians by Diocletian.

305 Constantine the Great succeeds Diocletian as Roman Emperor.

311 Constantine made king of Italy.

312 Constantine declares belief in the God of the Christians.

313 Edict of Milan-Constantine establishes toleration of Christianity.

325 300 fathers of the Roman church meet at Nicea. Evangelical Martin of Tours born.

330 Constantinople founded in honour of Constantine and dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

331 Seat of Roman Empire moved to Constantinople.

364 Roman Empire divided into East and West divisions.

374 Ambrose made bishop of Milan, Italy.

381 Church council of Constantinople asserts Deity of the Holy Spirit.

397 Death of Ambrose. Northern Italy severs connections with the Church of Rome.

430 Persecution of Christians in Persia.

431 Church council of Ephesus declares the Divinity and Humanity of Christ.

440 Accession of Pope Leo the Great during whose reign the church of Rome became an ecclesiastical principality.

445 Manifesto of Emperor Valentine III makes bishop of Rome supreme among bishops.

455 Rome sacked by vandals.

461 Death of Leo the Great.

481 Accession of Clovis the Great as king of France.

496 Baptism of Clovis king of the Franks, with 3,000 of his subjects at Rheims, France.

555 Pope Pelagius I complains that the bishops of Turin do not go to Rome for ordination.

563 St. Columba in lone to convert the Picts.

590 Gregory I made Pope- promulgated the doctrine of purgatory.-Nine bishops of northern Italy reject the communion of the Pope.

596 Pope Gregory sends the monk Augustine to England.

606 Edict of Phocas declaring the bishop of Rome the successor of Peter and therefore Vicar of Christ.

653 Beginning of Paulicians-a break-away from the corrupt Eastern church.

664 England attached to the Roman church.

732 Charles Martel, ruler of the Franks assists the Pope by subduing the Muslim Saracens advancing on Rome.

751 Pepin, son of Charles Martel crowned king of the French.

754 Pepin subdues the Lombards advancing on Rome from northern Italy and donated lands to the papacy thus creating a papal state.

771 Accession of Charlemagne as king of France.

774 Charlemagne, son of Pepin subdues Lombards again and ceded their territory to Rome.

776 ‘Discovery’ of the testament of Emperor Constantine in which he is alleged to have given imperial power the Lateran Palace and the city of Rome to the see of Peter.

792 The worship of images decreed by the second council of Nice, Italy.

800 Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the West.-Sale of indulgences in Rome by Pope Leo III.

824 Emperor Louis the Pious of France summons council to Paris to discuss Matthew 16:16 and the question of images, the eucharist, etc.

829 Anschar takes the gospel to Sweden.

831 Abbot of Corbel publishes treatise saying that the actual body and blood of Christ are present in the sacraments. This refuted by Claudius, bishop of Turin, northern Italy.

838 Picts and Scots unite under one crown.

845 Decretals of Isidore allegedly found. (These were forged letters of early pastors of the church of Rome speaking of the supremacy of the pope.

845-880 The Paulicians wage civil war in Constantinople because of persecution.

863 Request from king of Moravia (Czechoslovakia) to the Greek Emperor for teachers of the Bible.

911 King of the Franks makes treaty with the Northmen who then settle in Normandy.

973 Christianity permitted in Bohemia.

1022 Massacre by burning of Christians in Orleans, France.

1049 Council of Vercelliunder, Pope Leo IX denounces Berengarius of Tours, France who opposed doctrine of transubstantiation-again 1050 in Paris, 1055 in Tours, 1059 in Rome, 1063 in Rouen and 1075 in Poitiers.

1059 Bishops of Milan submit to Rome but Waldenses refuse to do so.

1066 Norse pirates, having settled in Normandy, cross over to England. William of Normandy becomes William I of England.

1073 Dictatus of Pope Gregory VIII (27 theses on papal omnipotence).

1076 Emperor Henry IV of Germany submits to Pope’s temporal authority.

1079 Pope Gregory VIII forbids Scripture in native tongue to Hungary.

1080 Emperor Henry IV of Germany quarrels with Pope Gregory VIII and sets up anti-Pope Clement III.

1087 Death of William I. Accession William II of England.

1088 Death of Berengarius of Tours, France.

1096 First Holy Land crusade instigated by Pope Urban II.

1100 The Nobla Leycon-confession of faith in verse taught by the Waldenus.-Arnold of Brescia, Italy born-he urged return to the simplicity of the New Testament.-Death of William II. Accession of Henry I of England.

1106 Tauchinus preaches the true gospel in Antwerp, Holland.- Henry V of Germany becomes Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

1119 Council of Toulouse, France, called by the Pope, excommunicates all who hold the sentiments of the Albigenses of N. France.

1123 First Lateran council in Rome suppressed simony and the marriage of priests. Marcuscheck [649]

1126 Peter de Bruys burned to death for his faith in God at St. Giles, Toulouse, France.

1135 Death Henry I of England. Accession of Stephen.

1139 Excommunication of the Albigenses of France renewed at the second general council of the Lateran under Pope Innocent III.

1145 Pope Eugene III proclaims second Holy Land crusade.

1150 circa. Swedish Church linked with Rome.

1153 Treaty of Constance. King Frederick of Germany and Pope Eugene III allied against Arnold of Brescia, Italy.

1154 Death of King Stephen of England. Accession of Henry III of Anjou.-Nicholas Breakspeare of England becomes Pope Adrian IV.

1155 Arnold of Brescia, Italy seized and burnt at the stake.

1170 Peter Waldo of Lyons, France preaches from the Scriptures.-Rules for canonization of saints set out by Pope Alexander III.-Dominic, founder of the Dominicans born at Arragon, Spain.

1179 Third general council of the Lateran, Rome under Pope Alexander III enjoins princes to make war on heretics.

1180 Romaunt version of the New Testament published in France,

1181 Crusade launched against the Albigenses of France.

1182 Francis, founder of the Franciscans, born at Assissi, Italy.

1189 Death Henry II. Accession Richard I of England. Third Holy Land crusade.

1198 Pope Innocent III wins victory over Germany and assumes the triple crown (over bishops, kings and people).

1199 Death Richard I. Accession King John of England.

1204 Fourth Holy Land crusade.

1205 Dispute between King John of England and the Pope as to who should be supreme.

1209 Pope Innocent III excommunicates King John of England.-Destruction of Beziers, France and annihilation of the Albigenses. Inquisitors sent out from Rome.

1213 King John of England cedes the crown of England and Ireland to the Pope.

1215 Magna Carta. The English Barons force King John to revoke the vow of vassalage to the Pope.-Franciscan order of monks formed at Rome.-Dogma of transubstantiation formed at the fourth Lateran council at Rome.-Fourth Lateran council, Rome confirm order of inquisition.

1216 Death of King John, Accession of infant Henry III of England.

1218 Dominican order of monks formed at Rome.

1219 Albigensian war renewed in France. Franciscan friars come to England.

1224 Accession Louis IX of France, Sixth Holy Land crusade.

1229 Carmelite friars come to England. Council of Toulouse, France under Cardinal of St. Angelo places inquisitors in every city of France and condemns Bible reading.

1233 Work of inquisition given to Dominicans.

1270 Seventh and last Holy Land crusade.

1272 Death Henry III. Accession Edward I of England.

1276 Year of the three popes of Rome-Innocent V, Gregory X and Adrian V.

1290 Archbishop Henry of Ghent, Netherlands publishes a book denouncing the papacy.

1294 Accession Pope Boniface VIII who declared it necessary to salvation to be subject to the Roman pontiff.

1296 Pope forbids clerics to pay taxes to temporal powers.

1302 Papal Bull declares papal authority supreme.

1307 Death Edward I. Accession Edward II of England.

1309 Pope changes residence to Avignon, France.

1316 Election of Pope John XlII of Rome.

1321 Dominican (Black) friars enter England.

1322 Nicholas of Lyria preaches the gospel in the Netherlands.

1324 John Wicliffe born in Wicliffe, Yorkshire, England.

1327 Edward II of England deposed. Accession Edward III.

1332 Pope John XVII orders inquisitors to rout out the Waldenses.

1333 Fitzralph, Chancellor of Oxford, England opposes the Black Friars.

1334 Accession Pope Benedict XII at Rome.

1340 Beginning of Waldenses settlement in Calabria, S. Italy.

1347 Fitzralph made Bishop of Armagh, Ireland. Charles IV, Emperor of Germany founds University in Prague, Austria.

1348 Outbreak of plague that swept Asia and Europe.

1349 The plague reaches England.

1352 Pope Clement VI sends inquisitors to the Waldenses in the Cottian Alps.

1353 Statute of Praemunire asserts the supremacy of the crown in the management of church affairs in England.

1360 Wicliffe made Master of Balliol College, Oxford, England.

1360 Wicliffe begins opposition to mendicant friars in England. Annual payment to the Pope, promised by King John of England terminated. Death of Fitzralph in Ireland.

1362 Urban V becomes Pope of Rome.

1365 Wicliffe made head of Canterbury Hall, Oxford, England.

1366 Pope demands annual payment from England. Edward III’s parliament in England refuses payment to the Pope.

1373 Commission from English King Edward III to the Pope with complaints about benefices. Birth of John Huss in Hussinetz, Bohemia. Pope Gregory XI complains to Charles IV of Germany about the Waldenses.

1374 Royal commission in England to enquire into the number of benefices of the church held by aliens and to estimate their value. Death of Milicius, Protestant Canon of Prague Cathedral.

1375 Waldenses attack popish city of Susa.

1376 Death at the stake decreed by Pope in Bohemia for those who celebrate communion in their own tongue,

1377 Formation of Lollards in England. Wicliffe cited to appear at St. Paul’s, London, England to answer for his teaching. Pope issues three Bulls designed to silence Wicliffe in England. Death of Edward III of England. Accession Richard II aged eleven. Pope returns to live at Rome.

1378 Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, England summons Wicliffe to appear before him. Two popes in Peter’s chair at Rome-Clement VII a Frenchman and Urban VI an Italian-following [650] death of Gregory XI.

1380 English parliament forbids sending of revenues from English benefices abroad.

1381 Wicliffe posts up at Oxford, England twelve propositions denying transubstantiation.

1382 Synod under Archbishop Courtenay convened in England to try Wicliffe. Wicliffe appeals to King and parliament against his sentence.-Act of heresy passed by King Richard II of England empowering bishops to imprison Lollards. Wicliffe’s English translation of the Bible completed.

1384 Death of Wicliffe in England.

1390 Writings of Wicliffe reach Bohemia.

1393 John Huss attains B.A. degree in Bohemia. Accession Henry IV who passed a law to burn Heretics. Huss made B.D. in Bohemia.

1395 Lollards petition English parliament for a reformation in religion.

1396 Huss becomes M.A. in Bohemia.

1397 Settlement of Calmar-union of Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

1398 John Huss preaches Wicliffism in Prague, Bohemia.

1399 Richard II of England deposed. Accession Henry IV. John Alasco born in Poland.

1400 Inquisitor Boreill attacks Waldenses at the Pragelas. Three popes reigning, one Italian, one French, one Spanish.-Jerome of Prague takes Wicliffe writings to Bohemia.-John Huss begins to preach in Bohemia against miracles, relics, indulgences, etc. William Sawtree, first martyr in England burnt at the stake in London.

1402 Huss appointed preacher at Bethlehem Chapel, Prague, Bohemia.

1404 James and Conrad of Canterbury, England arrive in Prague, Bohemia.

1406 James Risby, follower of Wicliffe martyred-first Scots martyr.

1407 William Thorpe martyred in England.

1408 Constitution of Archbishop Arundel against heretics published in Oxford, England.

1409 John Badby of Worcester, England burnt at the stake in London.

1409 Cardinal of Bordeaux comes to England to persuade King Henry IV to help France to compel Pope Gregory XII to resign.-General council at Pisa, Italy deposes two popes and elects Cardinal of Milan as Pope Alexander V. John Huss leaves Prague, Bohemia on account of Pope’s summons to answer for his doctrine.

1410 Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury, England commands church bells to ring in praise of the Virgin Mary.

1410 Archbishop Arundel visits Oxford, England to stamp out Lollards. Two Bohemians killed for opposing indulgences.

1413 Death Henry IV England. Accession Henry V. Evangelical Lord Cobham arraigned before Arundel in London, England.-Lollards in England increasing in numbers.-Lord Cobham imprisoned in Tower of London, England. Wicliffe’s writings condemned by Pope John XXIII. Emperor Sigismund comes to throne in Bohemia.

1414 Law passed in England condemning all who read the Bible in English.-Death of Archbishop Arundel in London, England. Edict of English Archbishop Chicheley condemning Lollards as heretics. Egged on by Chicheley, on orders from the Pope, Henry V of England wages war on the French and wins battle of Agincourt. Council of Constance called by Emperor Sigismund of Bohemia to heal the schism in the Roman church and put down heresy. Emperor Sigismund guarantees safe conduct to Constance for John Huss of Bohemia to attend the council.

1415 John Claydon condemned by Archbishop Chichaley of England and burnt at the stake. Pope John XXIII deposed by general council of Christendom. John Huss, 26 days after his arrival in Constance, arrested, tried and burnt at the stake. Arrest of Jerome, friend of Huss of Bohemia. Jerome of Bohemia tried before the Council of Constance and burnt at the stake.

1417 Lord Cobham recaptured in Wales and martyred. Henry V of England again makes war on France and captures Normandy. Council of Constance deposes Benedict XIII and elects Martin V as Pope of Rome-end of schism. Pope Martin V condemns Wicliffe’s writings.

1419 Beginning of the Hussite wars between Bohemia and the armies of the Roman church. First crusade sponsored by the Pope led by Sigismund against Ziska, captain of the Bohemian army.

1420 Second Hussite- Bohemia- crusade.

1421 Diet at Czaslau Bohemia for the setting in order of national affairs.

1422 Wm. Taylor accused of heresy in England and burnt at the stake. Death in France of Henry V of England. Accession Henry VI.

1425 Beginning of printing in Europe.

1426 Third Hussite crusade and triumph of Hussite forces over German.

1427 Fourth Hussite crusade-Pope incites Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, England, to fight Bohemians.

1429 Procopius, Hussite commander of Bohemian forces marches into Germany.

1430 William Hovendon burnt near Tower of London, England.

1431 Englishman named John Huss martyred. Thos. Baglay vicar of Monendon burnt at Smithfield, London, England. Fifth popish crusade against Hussites in Bohemia. Paul Crawar, follower of Huss, martyred in Bohemia.

1432 Pope and Emperor Sigismund send letters of peace to the Hussites.

1434 Revolt in Rome. Pope flees to Florence. Diet of Bohemia-peace terms re-opened. Civil war in Bohemia-Battle of Lipan.

1436 Sigismund becomes Emperor of Bohemia.

1437 Death of Sigismund: Podiebrad succeeds as Emperor of Bohemia.

1447 Death Pope Eugene IV. Accession Nicholas V.

1452 Beginning of wars of the Roses in England.

1455 Taborites in Bohemia form church under the name of United Brethren and link with Waldenses.

1460 Henry VI of England defeated in civil war. Printing press set up in Basel, Switzerland. 1461 Edward of York becomes King Edward IV of England.

1469 Marriage of Ferdinand of Arragon, Spain to Isabella of Castile thus creating one kingdom in Spain.

1471 Birth of Cardinal Wolseley in England. [651] - Henry VI of England murdered.-Death of Podiebrad in Bohemia. Succession of Vladislav.

1472 Birth of Hugh Latimer in England.

1476 Caxton begins printing in London, England

1478 Birth of Wolfgang Capito at Hagenen, Germany.

1482 Birth of Oecolampadius at Weisberg, Germany.

1483 Death of Edward IV. Accession of Edward V, replaced by Richard III of England.

1483 Birth of Martin Luther at Eisleben, Germany. Spanish inquisition by church and state. Birth of Ulrich Zwingle in Switzerland.

1485 Richard III killed in battle. Accession Henry VII of England.

1487 Pope Innocent VIII appoints Albert Cataneo to effect the extermination of the Waldenses.

1488 Birth of Myconius at Lucerne, Switzerland. Cataneos first expedition against the Waldenses.-Louis XIV of France and Duke of Savoy, Italy, attacks Waldenus.

1489 Birth of Thos. Cranmer at Alsacton, nr Nottingham, England. Birth of Wm. Farel nr Grenoble, Switzerland.

1491 Birth in Spain of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.

1494 Birth of Johannis Taussanus, reformer of Denmark.

1497 Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Pauls, London begins to teach the Scriptures in the cathedral.-Birth of Melancthon in Germany.-Luther sent to Franciscan school in Magdeburg, Germany. Birth of Olaf Paterson in Sweden.

1498 Savanarolla burnt at stake in Florence, Italy for denouncing corruptions in the Roman Church.

1499 Birth of John Alasco in Holland. Birth of Lawrence Paterson in Sweden.

1500 Zwingle goes to university in Vienna, Austria.

1501 Luther enters university at Erfurt, Germany.

1502 University of Wittemberg, Germany founded by King Frederick the Wise. Zwingle teaching at Basle, Switzerland: gains M.A. degree.

1503 Luther finds a Bible in the College library at Wittemberg, Germany.

1504 Birth of Patrick Hamilton at Kincavel, Scotland. Luther gains M.A. degree. Birth of Cardinal Hosius of Poland.

1505 Latimer enters Cambridge university, England. Birth of John Knox at Haddington, Scotland. Luther enters Augustinian convent at Erfurt, Germany.

1506 Zwingle becomes pastor at Glarus, Switzerland.

1507 Luther ordained to the priesthood of the Roman church.

1508 Luther on the teaching staff of Wittemberg university, Germany.

1509 Latimer made fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, England. Death of Henry VII of England. Accession of Henry VIII. Birth of John Calvin, Picardy, France. Birth of John Servitus, Spain.

1510 Luther in Rome sees the vanity of the Roman system.-French parliament summoned by Louis XI at Tours to decide whether or not to go to war against the Pope. Farel goes to the Sorbonne in Paris to study. Julius II succeeds as Pope in Rome.

1512 Birth of Geo Wishart in Scotland. Luther returns from Rome and gains D.D. degree in Germany.-LeFevre preaches justification by faith alone in the Sorbonne, Paris, France. LeFevre’s commentary on Paul’s epistles published in France.

1513 James IV of Scotland killed in battle on Flodden field. Death of Julius II. Accession Pope Leo X in Rome. Christian II becomes King of Denmark.

1515 Wolseley made Cardinal by the Pope and appointed legate a latere to the English court. Later made Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England. Death of Louis XII of France. Accession Francis I.-Oecolampadius preaches the true faith in Basle, Switzerland.-Bernard of Lublin declares the Protestant faith in Cracow, Poland. Pope Leo X sends delegate to Denmark and Sweden to sell indulgences.

1516 Erasmus’ Greek and Latin New Testament printed at Basle, Switzerland. Zwingle accepts post as teacher in convent of Elsieden, Switzerland. Myconius becomes rector of a small school in Zurich, Switzerland.

1517 Patrick Hamilton appointed Abbot of Ferne, Ross-shire, Scotland. Pope Leo X begins sale of indulgences in Europe using Tetzel.-Luther nails 75 theses to church door at Wittemberg, Germany.-Briconnet, friend of LeFevre becomes Bishop of Meaux near Paris, France and makes this a centre of evangelical witness.

1518 Luther summoned to Rome to answer charges AGAINST HIM: Venue to try Luther changed to Augsberg, Germany before Cardinal Cajetan.-Elector Frederick asks Luther to leave Saxony, Germany. Melancthon arrives at Wittemberg, Germany to teach Greek in university.-Zwingle elected preacher in the College of Canons, Zurich, Switzerland.-Bernadin Samson sent by Pope to Switzerland to sell indulgences. Monk James Knade of Dantzig, Poland becomes evangelical.

1519 Charles I of Spain elected Emperor of Germany. Duke Ulrich of Wertemberg expelled. Disputation between Dr. Eck and Carlstadt in Leipsic, Germany, Luther being a spectator.-Luther’s commentary on Galatians published.-Printing press set up in Zurich, Switzerland.-Great plague reaches Switzerland.-Jacob Spring arrested in Norway for confessing Lutherism.

1520 Melancthon marries Catherine Krapp in Germany. Luther publishes an appeal for the reformation of Christianity.-Bull of excommunication issued against Luther.-Elector Frederick of Saxony, Germany decides to protect Luther from the Pope.-Luther publicly burns the Pope’s Bull.-The Great Plague reaches France.-Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux, France becomes Protestant and publishes in his diocese a mandate to bad-living priests.-Myconius preaches in the cathedral at Berne, Switzerland.-Zwingle, Swiss priest joins Luther.-Protestant doctrines preached at Thorn, Poland.-Taussanus gains D.Theo. degree and returns from college in Wittemberg to Denmark [652] - King Christian II of Sweden appoints Protestant Martin Reinhart as Professor of Theology at Stockholm, Sweden.

1521 Cardinal Wolseley of England publishes a Bull against Luther. English King Henry VIII writes a denunciation of Luther and is rewarded by the Pope with the title ‘Defender of the Faith’.-Diet called at Worms, Germany by Emperor Charles V.-Second Bull of excommunication of Luther from Rome this time including his followers.-Luther summoned to appear before the Diet of Worms, Germany.-Luther abducted and taken to the castle of Wartburg, Germany.-Melancthon’s ‘Commonplaces’ published.-Conversion of Marguerite de Valois sister of the French King Francis I.-Calvin appointed to the chaplaincy of church at Noyon, France.-Death of Pope Leo X.-Ignatius Loyola seriously wounded in battle in Spain.-Start of a series of edicts against the Lutherans in Netherlands.-Carlstadt succeeds Martin Reinhart as Professor of Theology in Stockholm, Sweden.

1522 John Knox enters Glasgow univerity, Scotland. Luther’s German New Testament published. Pope Adrian VI demands Luther’s death. Diet of Nuremberg, Germany provoked the ‘100 Grievances’. Luther returns to Wittemberg to stand against the Annabaptists.-LeFevre’s French New Testament completed.-Civil council of 200 in Switzerland accuses Zwingle of preaching novelties subversive to peace.-Myconius, thrust out of Lucerne, joins Zwingle in Zurich, Switzerland. Convent of Augustin monks abolished in Poland.

1523 William Tyndale goes to London to begin work on the English Bible.-Bull of Pope Clement VII confirming Henry VIII of England as Defender of the Faith.-Battle of Pavia-Charles V of Spain becomes Emperor of France.-Henry Voes, John Esch and Lambert Thorn burnt at Brussels.- Bishop Briconnet of France faced with the stake, renounces Protestantism.-The Black Death at Noyen-Calvin goes to Paris, France.-Louis de Berquin imprisoned for his faith-France.-Louis II publishes an edict confiscating the property of Lutherans in rance.-Council of Zurich, Switzerland frees nuns from monasteries.-Mass abolished in Switzerland.-Great Council meets in Zurich, Switzerland to discuss the Protestant beliefs.-Printing press set up in Geneva, Switzerland.-Death Pope Adrian VI. Accession Clement VII.-Twenty articles of faith promulgated by Bohemian churches in Prague.-Loyola in Spain turns beggar and monk.-Beginning of Protestant martyrdoms in Netherlands.-Grynaus and Viezheim teach Lutherism in Hungary.-Frederick I made King of Denmark.-Christian II of Sweden deposed. Accession Gustavus Vasa.

1524 Copies of Tyndale’s gospels sent from Holland to England.-Tyndale flees from Hapsburg to Germany. The Ratisbon reformation-a meeting of the Roman Catholics to enforce the Edict of Worms against Luther. Martyrdom of Protestants in Germany following the Ratisbon reformation.-Pope Clement VII send Cardinal Campeggio to Nuremberg diet, Germany.-LeFevre’s French New Testament published.-Valley of Tockenburg, Switzerland turns Prot estant.-Resolution passed to destroy all Swiss monastic orders. Zwingle marries Anne Reinhart in Switzrland.-Images removed from Zurich, Switzerland churches. Scripture exposition begun in Swiss churches in place of choir service. Five churches in Dantzig, Poland turn Protestant.-Edict in Netherlands forbidding publishing of books without consent of government. King Christian of Denmark orders New Testament in Danish.-Taussau, shut up in a monastery in Viborg, Denmark preaches the gospel through a grating in the window and Erasmus and others are converted.

1525 Tyndale’s complete New Testament finished and sent to England. English translation of the Bible circulated in Scotland.-German peasants revolt.-Emperor Charles V summons German princes to Augsberg.-Death of Frederick the Wise of Saxony, Germany.-LeFevre’s French Psalms completed. Pavanne burnt at the stake in France.-Swiss pastors before the Council of 200 demand the Lord’s Supper instead of the Mass.-The Lord’s Supper celebrated at Easter in Switzerland and the confessional abolished.-Zwingle’s successful disputation with the Annabptists in Switzerland.-Alasco of Poland in Basle with Erasmus.-Roman Catholic ‘Holy League’ formed.-John de Bakke burnt at the stake in Holland.-Law passed in Hungary that all Lutherans with their goods should be burned. Protestant school set up by Georgius Johannus in Viborg, Denmark.

1526 Diet at Spiers, Germany recognises the legal existence of Protestants. Luther marries Catherine von Bora. Calvin at college in Montaigne, Paris, France. Treaty between France and Spain. Francis Lambert, ex-monk of Avignon, France travels through Germany and Switzerland teaching Protestantism.-Farel goes to Switzerland.-Pastor Martin sent by Waldenses to Germany to enqire about the Reformation.-Swiss Roman Catholic cantons call a diet at Baden to discredit Zwingle.-Alasco made to swear allegiance to the Roman church in Poland.-Royal decree restores Roman Catholic worship in Dantzig, Poland.-Loyola at University of Alcala, Spain.-Charles V of Spain makes war on the Pope.-New Testament in Swedish published.-Edict in the Netherlands ordering Lutheran books to be burnt. [653] - Turks advance on Hungary.-Taussan, xpelled from the monastery, preaches the gospel openly in Denmark. Conference at Uppsala, Sweden to discuss the Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths.

1527 Thomas Bilney and Arthur arrested and brought before Cardinal Wolseley and burnt at the stake in England.-Patrick Hamilton returns to Scotland from College in Marburg, Germany.-Emperor Frederick I decrees in Germany that both faiths are to be tolerated.-Calvin converted through reading the Bible brought to him by his cousin Olivetan-France.-Great Council of Berne, Switzerland holds conference on religion.-Sack of Rome by German and Spanish troops under Emperor Charles V.-Synod of Lenezyca recommends the restoration of the inquisition in Poland.-Dr. Eck invited to Denmark by Roman Catholic bishops to help silence Taussannus.-First Danish hymnbook published.-Swedish diet adopts Protestantism as the national religion.-King Gustavus Vasa summons meeting of the Estates of Sweden to compel the clergy to pay taxes.-Frederick I of Sweden cals a meeting of the Estates to force the R.C. bishops to get rid of fables and preach only the Bible. Reformation in Denmark and Sweden.-Henry VIII of England seeks annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Arragon.

1528 Patrick Hamilton martyred in Scotland. Luther’s smaller catechism printed in Germany. Loyola in College in Paris, France. Berne, Switzerland becomes Protestant. Images removed from churches in Constance, Switzerland.-Council of 200 in Switzerland appoint two synodal meetings per year.-France and England declare war on Spain.-Pope makes peace with Emperor Charles V at Barcelona, Spain.-Psalms translated for singing in Danish.-Coronation of Protestant King Gustav Vasa in Uppsala, Sweden.

1529 Commission in London, England to debate the divorce of King Henry VIII.-Accusation, founded on the Act of Praemunire against Cardinal Wolseley of England.-King Henry VIII of England asks his universities what the Bible says about divorce.-Diet convoked at Spiers, Germany to repeal the Edict of Spiers of 1526.-Declaration of PROTEST at Diet of Spiers that “God speaking through His Word and not Rome speaking through her priests is the one supreme law for all mankind”.-Confession of Marburg signed by Zwinglians and Lutherans to heal the breach over the ‘real presence’ in the sacraments.-Protestors send copy of their Confession to Emperor Charles V.-Arrest of the three messengers to Charles V-Germany.-Invasion of the Turks repelled at Vienna, Austria.-Louis de Barquirt martyred in France.-Death of Calvin’s father. Calvin leaves Bourges, France.-Schaffhausen, Switzerland turns Protestant.-Basle, Switzerland becomes Protestant and all images destroyed.—League of five Swiss cantons with Astria.-Completion of Christian Co-burghery in Switzerland.-Martyrdom of the reformed Pastor Keysa in Switzerland.-New state of reformed federation formed in Switzerland.-Zwingle declares war on Roman Catholic cantons in Switzerland and later the same year’ peace treaty made.-Luther’s translation of the Scriptures into Low Dutch published.-Theological college established at Malmoe, Denmark.-New translation of Danish New Testament printed at Antwerp. Taussan moves to temple of St. Nicholas, Copenhagen, Denmark.

1530 Death of Cardinal Wolseley of England. Protestant confession read before the King at Diet of Augsberg, Germany.-. Torgau articles of Protestant faith drawn up just prior to the Augsberg Diet.-League of Schmalkald formed-a Protestant confederacy of nations and states in Europe.-Ban of Augsberg, Germany against Lutheranism.-Farel at Neuchatel, France.-George Morel of the Waldenses visits the Swiss reformers.-Charles V Emperor of Spain is crowned King of Lombardy and Emperor of the Romans.-Frederick I of Denmark calls heads of both religions to Copenhagen to discuss the different faiths.

1531 Cromwell, at the bidding of King Henry VIII of England declares all the English bishops in violation of the law of praemunire.-Protestant League of Schmalkald renewed in Germany.-Margaret, Queen of Navarre orders preaching in Paris, France.-Death in battle of Zwingle, of Switzerland.-War between Forest and Reformed cantons in Switzerland.-Matthias Devay returns from Wittemburg to Hungary and preaches the gospel.-Olag Paterson’s ‘Missal’ (Protestant liturgy) pub- lished in Sweden.-Protestant Lawrence Paterson made Archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden. Inquisition in Portugal.

1532 Law against heretics laid down by Henry IV of England repealed.-Henry VIII declared Head of the Church of England. Newecclesiastical laws formed.-League between Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France.-Martyrdom of Henry Forest at St. Andrews, Scotland.-Peace of Ratisbon in Germany gives Lutherans freedom of worship.-Duke Ulrich and his son Christopher restored to Wurtemberg, Germany (after the R.C.s had driven them from home) by Protestants and join the Schmalkald League.-Farel, thrown out of Geneva, Switzerland sends in Froment who opens a school.-Liberty of worship proclaimed in Switzerland.-Synod of Protestants with the Waldenses meet at Chamforans.-Ex-King Christian II of Denmark attempts to recover the throne. [654] Frederick I of Denmark joins Schmalkald League.

1533 John Fryth martyred in England. Cranmer made Archbishop of Canterbury, England.-Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn in London, England.-Pope excommunicates Henry VIII of England.-Birth of Elizabeth I of England.-The Gospel preached in the Sorbonne, Paris, France.-Calvin escapes from Paris and goes to Angouleme, France.-Marriage of Catherine de Medici and Prince Henry, Duke of Orleans, France.-William Farel in Geneva, Switzerland again.-Council of Geneva. Switzerland swear to kill all Protestants.-People of Lausanne, Switzerland prefer 23 charges against canons and priests.-Taussan of Denmark proscribed by the priests but this action prevented by the people. Death of Frederick I of Sweden.

1534 Act passed in England that bishops may be consecrated without authority from Rome.-Payments of money to Rome from England forbidden.-Paper denouncing the mass placarded in Paris, France and many Protestants burnt at the stake in consequence.-French parliament passes law to burn all Protestants.-300 Lutherans imprisoned in Paris, France,-Calvin at Poictiers, France, thenc to Paris and then to Germany.-Calvin resigns all positions in the church of Rome and breaks allties with the papacy.-Protestant churches in Paris, France closed and people flee the country.-Francis I of France calls Council at Arragon, Spain with proposal to unite Protestantism with Rome.-Priests in Geneva, Switzerland order all Bibles to be burnt.-Plot by R.C. bishops in Geneva, Switzerland arid Duke of Savoy, Italy, to kill all Protestants, discovered and foiled.-Death of Pope Clement VII. Paul III succeeds.-Loyola with nine disciples vows to convert the saracens. Forms the Society of Jesus-the Jesuits. Accession of Christian III to the Swedish throne.

1535 The Prior of Charterhouse, England with his monks executed at Tyburn. Execution of Dr. John Fisher and Sir Thomas More in England.-Anabaptists at Munster, Germany defeated by princes of the Rhine provinces.-Margaret de Valois escapes from Paris and goes home to Berne.-King Francis I of France processes through Paris and witnesses martyrdoms. Olivetan’s French Bible printed at Neuchatel by Picard.-The mass forbidden and the popish faith ceases to be the religion of Geneva, Switzerland. Duke of Savoy, Italy blockades Geneva.

1536 Coverdale’s English Bible printed. Report of the commission investigating the state of abbeys and monasteries in England.-Act of Dissolution of English monasteries passed.-Anne Boleyn beheaded. Henry VIII of England marries Jane Seymour.-Tyndale burnt at the stake in Belgium.-Death of Erasmus in France.-Calvin’s Institutes first published in Switzerland.-Calvin arrives again in Geneva, Switzerland,-Geneva accepts Calvin’s confession of faith.-Soldiers from Berne and other Swiss towns go to the relief of Geneva.-John Alasco renounces Romanism-in Poland.-Diet of the Estates in Copenhagen, Denmark. Reformed faith established.

1537 Charles III of Savoy, Italy gives consent to the Archbishop of Turin to hunt down the Waldenses.-Norway submits to King Christian III of Sweden.-First printing press set up in Hungary prints rudiments of the Gospel for children.

1538 Royal order by Henry VIII of England to place an English Bible in every church.-Farel and Calvin banished from Geneva, Switzerland because of their refusal to dispense the Lord’s Supper to the libertines. Conference between Roman Catholics and Protestants at Schasburg, Hungary.

1539 Bonner made Archbishop of London, England. Emperor Charles III invites Protestants to a meeting to try to effect conciliation between the two faiths.-Death of George, Duke of Saxony, Germany. Succession of his Protestant brother Henry.-Saxony joins the Schmalkald League.-Calvin marries Idelette de Bure.-Royal decree in Poland establishes liberty of the press.

1540 Cromwell hanged in England. Convention called by Roman Catholics at Worms, Germany. presided over by King Ferdinand of Spain to try to effect conciliation with Protestants.-Parliament of Aix, France passes law to extermin- ate the Waldenses settled in Provence.-Council of 200 at Geneva, Switzerland vote to ask Calvin to return to deal with the riotous city and to resume his station as preacher.-Loyola at Rome forms the constitution of the Order of, Jesuits.-Edict formulated by Emperor Charles V forbidding any rights to the Protestants of the Netherlands.-Danish Protestants send Huetsfield to Iceland to preach the gospel which eventuates in that land turning Protestant.

1541 John Knox begins reformation in Scotland. Petition by Austrian states to Ferdinand for freedom of religion in Germany.-Diet of Ratisbon again tries to effect conciliation between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Germany.-Some of the Psalms translated into French verse and published for singing. John Calvin goes to Geneva, Switzerland. Publication of the New Testament in Hungarian.

1542 Birth of Mary Stewart in Scotland, Brunswick, Germany adopts the Protestant faith. Court of Morals, formulated by Calvin, adopted in Geneva to deal with the troubles there. Jesuit college founded in Venice, Italy. Bull of Pope Paul III re-establishing the inquisition. Synod of Poitrkow, Poland decrees prohibition of students to attend Protestant universities.

1543 Act passed in the English parliament to make Bible reading lawful. George Wishart begins preaching the Gospel in Scotland. Ac in Scottish parliament to make Bible reading lawful. Twenty more Psalms in French verse published.

1544 Complete French psalter published by Calvin.

1545 Towns in Provence, France burned and sacked to [655] kill Waldenses.

1546 George Wishart arrested by Roman Catholics in Scotland and burnt for heresy. Mass abolished in the cathedral church at Heidelburg, Germany.-Death of Luther at Eiselben, Germany.-Council of Trent called by Roman Catholics to overthrow Lutheranism.-War between Emperor Charles V and the Protestant League. Libertines again make trouble in Geneva, Switzerland.

1547 Death of King Henry VIII of England. Accession Edward VI. Act of Six Articles promoting Roman Catholic worship in England abolished.-Order to remove all images from churches in England.-John Knox made Preacher in the Castle of St. Andrews, Scotland.-Castle of St. Andrews, Scotland besieged by Roman Catholic armies. Knox captured and taken to France.-Death of Francis I of France. Accession Henry II.-King Ferdinand I brings an army to Prague and shuts Bohemian Protestant churches.-Constitution of Danish Protestant churches drawn up. King Christian III crowned in Denmark.

1548 Cranmer’s catechism published in England. Mass abolished in England and a liturgy provided for the Communion Service.-Prayer Book of Edward VI published in England.-Calvin in correspondence with Archbishop Cranmer of England.-Interim creed presented to Germany by Charles V.-Bohemian Protestant refugees welcomes at Posen, Poland.-Some Bohemians settle in Prussia.-Continued persecution of the follower of Ziska of Bohemia.-Accession of Sigismund Augustus to the Polish throne.-John Alasco of Poland accepts Cranmer’s invitation to England. Jesuits enter Spain.

1549 Joan of Kent burnt for heresy in France. Death of Margaret de Valois in France. Death in France of Idelette de Bure, wife of Calvin. Calvin at Zurich, Switzerland to debate the Eucharist.-Zurich confession unites Protestantson the question of the real presence in the Eucharist. Death of Pope Paul III.

1550 John Alasco nominated by King Edward VI to be Superintendent of European congregations in England.-Julius IV elected Pope.-Nicholaus, rector of Knrow, Poland preaches salvation by faith alone.

1551 Quarrel between Henry II of France and Pope Julius IV.-Edict of Chateaubriand, France which re-enacted severities against Protestants. Jesuits established as teachers in Venice, Italy.

1552 Second English Prayer Book printed. Protector Somerset executed in London, England following false accusations by Roman Catholics.-Articles of religion for English churches drawn up.-Peace of Passau, Germany which decreed liberty of worship for Protestants.-Servetus publishes ‘Christianity Restored’, is arrested in Vienna, Austria and tried by the inquisition.-Revolt of Germans against Emperor Charles V.-Servetus escapes to Geneva, Switzerland where he is arrested again at the instigation of Calvin.- Land purchased in Geneva, Switzerland for the erection of a Protestant academy.-Theodore Beza joins Calvin in the work in Geneva, Switzerland. National Diet of Poland restricts judgment of church matters to the clergy.

1553 Death Edward VI of England. Accession ‘Bloody’ Mary Tudor. England reconciled with Rome. John Alasco flees from England because of the persecutions under Queen Mary.-Cardinal Pole made legate at the English court.-Ridley, bishop of London, England imprisoned.-Cranmer under house arrest and then taken to the Tower of London, England.-Prince Radziwell of Poland becomes Protestant.- Diet in Transylvania votes in favour of Protestantism.

1554 Ridley and Latimer martyred in England. Queen Mary of England marries King Philip of Spain. Servetus the Libertine burnt at the stake in Geneva, Switzerland.

1555 The reign of the stake in England-Rogers, Hooper and many others burnt for their faith in God.-John Knox returns to Scotland and then retires to Geneva.-Treaty of Augsberg, Germany ratifies the Peace of Passau 1552.-Emperor Charles V abdicates the throne of the Netherlands and Germany n favour of Philip II of Spain. Protestant church established in France. Attempt by Amy Perrin to execute all foreigners in Geneva.

1556 Cardinal Pole made Archbishop of Canterbury, England. Cranmer martyred in England. Death of Loyola in Spain. John Alasco recalled to Poland by King Sigismund Augustus.

1557 First Covenant drawn up by the Protestant church in Scotland. Martyrdom of Philibert Hamelin at Bordeaux, France.

1558 Death of Queen Mary of England. Accession Queen Elizabeth I. Death of Cardinal Pole in England. Martyrdom of Walter Mill at St. Andrews, Scotland. John Knox advises the English court of the popish plot to overthrow first Scotland and then England.

1559 Protestant laws re-enacted in England. Act of Supremacy in England makes the monarch head of the church.-Act of Uniformity in England demands that all must join in one form of worship.-Authority of the Pope abolished in England.-Lord Cecil comes forward to help Queen Elizabeth of England.-John Knox returns to Scotland from Geneva an is declared a rebel and an outlaw.-National synod formed by Protestants in Paris, France to formulate a basis of faith.-Treaty of Chateau Cambresis between Henry II of France and Philip of Spain.-Death of King Henry II of France at a tournament. [656] Accession Francis II.-Charles V edict of 1540 renewed by Francis II of France.-Secret Protestant church synod held in Paris, France which approved Calvin’s confession of faith.-Completion of the Protestant academy in Geneva, Switzerland.-Philip II returns to Spain.-Estates of the Netherlands demand from Philip II of Spain the removal of Spanish soldiers from their country. Margaret of Parma made Regent in the Netherlands.

1560 States of Scotland agree suppression of Romanism. Book of Discipline of the Scottish Protestant church drawn up.-Jean D’AIbert daughter of Margaret de Valois makes profession of Protestant faith in France.-Death of Francis II of France and Spain. Accession Charles IV.-Conspiracy of Ambrose to overthrow the uise brothers in France.-Persecution of the Waldenses in Calabria, Southern Italy.-Trial and martyrdom of John Paschale, pastor of the Waldenses in southern Italy, by the inquisitors.-Roman Catholic landlords attack Waldensee in Bioclareto.-Duke of Savoy declares war on the Waldensee.-Death of John Alasco in Poland.-Death of Gustavus Vasa in Sweden. Accession Eric XIV.-Jesuit mission to Mozambique.

1561 Mary Stuart arrives in Scotland to become Queen.-Queen Mary of Scotland celebrates mass in Holyrood Palace.-Victory against La Trinita and the Duke of Savoy by the Waldenus in the valleys.-Treaty of peace signed at Cavour between Duke of Savoy andthe Waldenses.-Charles IV of France complains of missionaries in his country sent from Geneva.-Flaveau and Moffat, two ministers of the Gospel, rescued from the stake at Valencienne, Nether- lands. Subsequent indiscriminate revenge by Roman Catholic faction.-Confession of faith published by Protestants in the Netherlands. Jesuits enter Hungary.

1562 Forty-two articles of the Church of England reduced to thirtynine.-Edict of January-Huguenots in France granted freedom of religion.-Massacre of Huguenot worshippers at Vassey, Paris, Meaux, Amiens, Toulouse and elsewhere in France. First Huguenot war-Duke of Conde seizes Orleans, France.

1563 John Knox put on trial for treason in Scotland and is acquitted. Pacification of Ambrose between Huguenots of France and the Roman Catholics.-Edict of Jean D’Albret, Queen of Navarre, France abolishing popish services in her country.-Confession of faith of the Netherlands pro- tectorate published. Prince Radziwell pays for the first edition of the Protestant Bible in Polish.

1564 Procession of Catherine de Medici through France and her meeting with the Duke of Alva with whom she discussed a plot to exterminate the Huguenots.

1565 Death of Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland.

1566 Death of Prince Radziwell, in Poland. Netherlands confession of faith revised and reprinted at Antwerp. Copy sent to King Philip II.-Compromise, a league of Netherlands noblemen, formed.-Field preachings begin in the Netherlands.-Treaty of Accord signed between Duchesse of Parma and the Protestants.-King Philip II collects an army to make war on the Protestants of the Netherlands. Vandals destroy images in churches throughout the Netherlands.

1567 Abdication of Roman Catholic Queen Mary of Scotland. Accession of Protestant James VI under regency of Earl of Murray.-Ratification of the decree of 1560 in England.-Jesuits enter England.-Prince of Orange returns home to Nassau, Germany.-Second Huguenot war. Battle of St. Denis fought near Paris, France. Victory for the Huguenots.-Duke of Alva appointed governor of the Netherlands in place of Margaret of Parma. Council of Tumults set up by Duke of Alva in the Netherlands.

1568 Protestant Count of Nassau, Germany wins battle at the Bay of Dollant, Netherlands. Philip II of Spain passes sentence of death upon the whole nation of the Netherlands.-Prince of Orange refuses to answer the summons of the Duke of Alva to appear before the Council of Tumults, Netherlands.-Prince of Orange raises an army to liberate the Netherlands.-Count Louis of Nassau defeated in battle at Groningen, Netherlands.-Synod of the Netherlands Protestant church at Embden.-Counts Egmont and Horn beheaded by Philip II of Spain in the Netherlands.-Death of Eric IV. Accession John of Sweden.-Publication of the ‘Red Book’ (semi-popish liturgy) in Swedenat the instigation of the King’s Roman Catholic wife.

1569 Third Huguenot war. Battle of Jarnac. French Huguenots defeated. Battle of Montcontour, France. Huguenots again defeated.

1570 Pope excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England. Assassination of Murray, regent to James VI of Scotland.-Peace again declared between Huguenots in France and the Roman Catholics.-Act of religious union signed by Protestants in Poland.-Death of Lawrence Paterson in Sweden.

1571 English parliament prohibits importation of Papal Bulls. Synod of the reformed church at La Rochelle, France.

1572 Death of John Knox in Scotland. Queen Mary of Scotland executed. Marriage of King of Navarre, France to Catherine de Medici.-Massacre of Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day in Paris, France.-Death of Pope Plus V. Accession Gregory XIII.-The ‘Sea Beggars’ of the Netherlands capture Brill. [657] - Prince of Orange made Stadtholder in Netherlands.-Prince of Orange takes Roarmonde, Netherlands.-Mechlin, Zutphen and Naarden in Netherlands sacked by Philip II of Spain.-Prince William of Orange flees to north of Holland to make a last stand against the Spanish forces of Philip.

1573 Huguenots present new demands to the French court. Capitulation of Haarlem to the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands.-Alkmaar, Netherlands withstands the Duke of Alva. Spanishfleet defeated off Amsterdam.-States of Holland prohibit Romish religion.-Henry of Valois, Duke of Anjou elected King of Poland. Protestant convocation at Cracow, Poland.

1574 James Melville returns to Scotland to take place of Knox to help the fight against the ‘tulchan’ bishops.-Death of Charles IV of France. Accession Henry III.-Surrender of Middleburg, Netherlands to the Prince of Orange.-Leyden, Netherlands blockaded by Spanish troops. Laydon relieved by Protestants.

1575 Pastors of four Protestant communions in Poland make common creed.-Stephen Barthory crowned King of Poland.-Count Louis of Nassau slain in battle at Brabant, Netherlands.-Emperor Maximillian of Bohemia mediates between Philip II of Spain and Prince of Orange to secure peace in the Netherlands but to no avail.

1576 Treaty signed in France giving rights to Huguenots. Death of Emperor Maximillian of Bohemia. Accession Rudolph II.-Spaniards gain Netherlands off-shore islands.-Pacification of Ghent-Netherlands States unite under Prince William of Orange to fight the Spaniard under Philip II. New semi-popish liturgy published in the Netherlands.

1577 Perpetual Edict of Don John of Austria, Roman Catholic governor of the Netherlands under Philip II of Spain.-Roman Catholic synod at Poitrkow, Poland excommunicates all who hold the doctrine of religious toleration.-Formula o concord drawn up in Hungary to try to keep the peace between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

1578 Protestant preachers expelled from Vienna, Austria. Death of Don John of Austria. Succeeded in Netherlands by Duke of Parma.-Amsterdam, Netherlands declares for Prince of Orange. First National Synod of Dutch reformed church. Magistrate and monks of Amsterdam, Netherlands forbidden entry into the city.

1579 Protestant union of Utrecht uniting several states of the Netherlands under the Protestant banner. Congress at Cologne. King Philip II of Spain meets Netherlands National States.

1580 Tulchan bishops in Scotland replaced by Pastors. Death of Emmanuel Philibert of France. King Philip II of Spain fulminates ban against Prince of Orange and offers reward for his assassination.

1581 Scottish National Covenant signed by King and people to resist popery. Prince of Orange made King of Holland and Zealand and Philip of Spain rejected.

1582 Duke of Anjou made sovereign over the central states of the Netherlands. Attempt made on the life of Prince of Orange-Netherlands.

1583 Birth in the Netherlands of Wallenstein. Somerville attempts to kill Queen Elizabeth I of England.

1584 Parry executed for treason in England. Scottish parliament decrees that no ecclesiastical assemblies should meet without Royal permission. Prince of Orange of the Netherlands assassinated.

1585 English Earl of Leicester goes to Holland. Netherlands makes treaty with Elizabeth I of England.

1586 Babington Plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I of England. The perpetrators, including Mary Stewart, executed. Death of Stephen Bathory of Poland. Accession Sigismund III.

1587 Earl of Leicester’ returns from Holland to England. Death of Henry III of France. Prince Maurice of Nassau made Governor of the Netherlands.

1588 Spanish Armada defeated by the English fleet. Two brothers Guise assassinated in France.

1589 Death Catherine de Medici. Accession of Henry of Navarre as Henry IV of France.

1590 Duke of Parma goes to the Netherlands from Spain to try to gain lost territory. Battle of Ivry. Henry of Navarre regains Paris, France.

1592 Death of Duke of Parma in the Netherlands. End of Spanish rule. Death of King John of Sweden. Accession Sigismund. Swedish parliament restores Presbyterian church government.

1593 Henry IV of France turns Roman Catholic. Church synod called by Duke Charles at Uppsala, Sweden accepts Luther’s catechism. Rejection of the ‘Red Book’ by church synod in Sweden.

1594 Jesuits banished from France after the failure of their plot to kill Henry IV. King Sigismund of Sweden reluctantly signs the Uppsala declaration.

1598 Edict of Nantes, France giving liberty of conscience to Protestants and Catholics alike.

1602 Arminius becomes Professor of Divinity at Leyden, France.

1603 Death of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Accession James VI of Scotland as James I of England.

1604 Puritan ministers ejected from livings in England. Accession Charles IX of Sweden.

1605 Gunpowder plot to blow up the English parliament and restore popish government.

1608 Formation in Germany of the Protestant union to help maintain the Pacification Treaty.

1609 Formation of Catholic League to counter the Protestant union.

1610 Orders of church government called the ‘Prelacy’ set up in Scotland. Murder of Henry IV of France. Succession Louis XIII.

1611 Authorised Version of the Bible printed in England. Protestant nobles meet at Saumur, France to elect two men to represent them in parliament. Disputation at the Hague, Holland between Calvinists and Arminians. [658]

Death Charles IX of Sweden. Accession Gustavus Adolphus.

1612 Last recorded burning of heretics in England.

1617 Protestant Navarre annexed to Roman Catholic France.

1618 Five articles of Perth, Scotland drawn up to pave the way for a return to Romanism. Beginning of 30 years war between Romanists and Protestants in France and Germany. Jesuit trained Ferdinand II crowned King of Bohemia. Protestants in Bohemia arm themselves and attack council members for violating the Royal Charter. National Synod held at Dort, Netherlands to examine the reformation in view of the rise of Arminianism.

1619 Protestant Prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bethlen, captures Kaschau, Piesburg and Olden-burg and makes truce with Ferdinand.

1620 Pilgrim Fathers leave England for America in the ‘Mayflower’. Protestants in Bohemia beaten in battle with Ferdinand.

1621 French Roman Catholic armies advance on Protestant Berne and Navarre. Peace arranged between Bernese and the French. Society for ‘the propagation of the faith and the extirpation of heretics’ established in Italy by Pope Gregory XV.

1625 Death James I of England. Accession Charles I. Treaty between England and Holland. Cardinal Richlieu attacks the Huguenots. Beginning of assault on Protestant city of La Rochelle, France.

1627 Second siege of La Rochelle, France.

1628 Surrender to Romanists of La Rochelle, France.

1629 Edict of restitution in France restoring church buildings to the Romanists. Death of Louis XIII of France. Accession Louis XIV aged under 4. Regency of Queen Mother helped by Cardinal Mazorin, disciple of the now deceased Cardinal Richlieu. Death Prince Bethlen, Bohemia.

1630 The Plague comes to the Waldense valleys. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden brings an army to Germany to oppose the Catholic league.

1631 Magdeburg, Germany, captured by armies of the Catholic league. Treaty of Balwarde-Cardinal Mazorin of France grants subsidy to Gustavus of Sweden.

1632 Death of Sigismund King of Poland. Accession Vladislav IV. Gustavus King of Sweden captures Augsburg, Germany. Death of Gustavus in battle. Accession Oxenstierna as general.

1633 Senate of Sweden passes resolution to prosecute war against Romanism.

1634 Death of Wallenstein of Bohemia.

1637 Introduction into Scottish church of near Romanist liturgy only for it to be rejected by the people. Death of Ferdinand II of Bohemia. Accession Ferdinand III.

1638 Charles I of England and Scotland forced to call a General Assembly of Scotland to dissolve the prelacy and divorce church rule from the crown.

1639 Scottish National Covenant amended to fit the present need and again subscribed.

1640 Charles I of England calls the ‘Long Parliament’ to vote him supplies for war with Scotland. Star Chamber abolished in England. Battle of Newburn on Tyne. Peace Treaty signed with Charles I of England. Scottish National Covenant ratified by Charles I.

1641 Massacre of Protestants by Catholics in Ireland.

1642 Beginning of English civil wars. Solemn League and Covenant drawn up by Scots and English to secure a free Parliament and Church.

1643 Westminster Confession of Faith drawn up in England.

1644 Battle of Marston Moor-Scots and English parliamentary forces win battle from the English crown.-Prince George Rakotzy of Transylvania declares war on Ferdinand III of Bohemia.

1645 Execution of Archbishop Laud of England.

1646 Charles I of England taken prisoner by Cromwell.

1647 Westminster Confession of Faith accepted by Church of Scotland. Death of Cardinal Mazorin of France.

1648 Peace of Westphalia-end of Thirty Years War.

1649 Charles I of England beheaded.

1650 Capuchin monks descend on Waldense valleys.

1653 Cromwell appointed Lord Protector of England.

1655 Cromwell of England proclaims a fast on behalf of the Waldenses and writes to the Protestant princes of Europe for help for them.-Gastaldo orders the Waldenses to retire to the valleys of Bobbio, Angrona and nora.-Great massacre of Waldenses by Marquis of Piancza.-Gianovello-soldier, pastor of the Waldenses goes to Geneva. Joshua Gianovello defends nora in the Waldense valleys.

1656 Death Ferdinand III of Bohemia. Accession Leopold I.

1658 Cromwell writes to Roman Catholic King Louis XIV of France on behalf of the Waldenses. Death of Cromwell. Protectorate in England of his son Richard.

1659 French King Louis XIV forbids the calling of any more Protestant Church Synods.

1660 Charles II crowned King of England. Treaty of peace between Catholic King Casimere of Poland and Polish Protestants.

1661 Charles II of England restores the government of the church to the bishops. Marquis of Argyle and James Guthrie, Protestants, beheaded in Scotland. Louis XIV begins persecution of Protestants in France.

1662 English and Scottish pastors vacate their livings rather than submit to the Act of Uniformity.-Drunken Act of Glasgow, Scotland by which the bishops tried to enforce their rule over the Protestant ministers. Protestants bring their grievances to the Diet at Presburg, Bohemia.

1664 Conventicle Act in England forbidding religious assemblies other than Church of England.

1666 Beginning of the Covenanter War in Scotland.

1669 James, Duke of York, England becomes Roman Catholic.

1670 England breaks the terms of the Triple League and sides with Catholic France against Protestant Holland. Archbishop of Gran, with the Jesuits persecute Hungarian Protestants.

1672 Proclamation of Indulgence towards Roman Catholics signed in England. Charles II of England and Louis XIV of France declare war on Holland.-Second William of Orange made Stadtholder in [659] Netherlands.

1674 France defeated and England forced to make peace with Holland. Protestant pastors in Bohemia arrested and put in dungeons and thence to the galleys.

1676 Bohemian Protestant pastors released.

1677 William Prince of Orange comes to England to negotiate marriage with Mary, daughter of the Duke of York.-Popish plot to kill Charles II and put Duke of York on English throne. Duke of York, brother of Charles II of England marries Catholic Princess of Moderna.

1678 Titus Oates revealed the Popish plot in England.

1679 Assassination of Sharp, primate of Scotland. Defeat of John Graham of Claverhouse by Scottish Covenanters. Battle of Bothwell Bridge, Scottish Covenanters defeated.

1681 Dragonnades billeted on Protestants in Southern France to force them to turn papist.

1684 Death Charles II of England. Accession James II, Duke of York. Judge Jefferies sent throughout England and Scotland to apprehend and punish those not in favour of the king.-Protestant Lord Lieutenant of Ireland commanded by King James II to deliver up the Sword of State.-Parliamentary vote denied to Protestants in Ireland. Irish army disbanded and replaced by Catholics.

1685 James II of England demands a standing army with Roman Catholic officers.-Huguenots flee from France to England.-Louis XIV of France revokes the Edict of Nantes and sends word to the Duke of Savoy, Italy to help exterminate the Waldenses.

1686 Further attack on Waldenses valleys. Some escape to Geneva but 3,000 imprisoned in dungeons.

1687 James II dissolved parliament in England because it disagreed with him. James II of England without parliament publishes ‘Declaration of Liberty of Conscience’. Survivors of the 3,000 imprisoned Waldenses released from dungeons, reach Geneva.

1688 Seven English bishops imprisoned in the Tower of London for refusing to read the King’s ‘Declaration of Indulgence for Roman Catholics’ in church.-Birth of Prince of Wales, England.-Papal Nuncio in London, England.-William of Orange invited to England by English Protestants.-William of Orange and the Dutch fleet land at Torbay, Devon. William of Orange and Mary of York made King and Queen of England.

1689 Toleration Act of William and Mary in England gives help to the Protestants. Circa the church in the desert formed in France. The ‘Glorious Return’ of the Waldenses refugees from Geneva to their valleys under Henri Arnaud.

1690 De Catinat, commanding the French army of Louis XIV assaults the Waldenes at the Basiglia and is repulsed by Waldenses under Henri Arnaud.-Duke of Savoy, Italy, urged by a Protestant coalition from Germany, Britain, Holland and Spain makes peace with the Waldenses.

1694 Death of Queen Mary, wife of William III of England.

1695 Birth of Antoine Court who organized the underground Protestant church in France.

1702 Death of William III of England. Accession Queen Anne. Beginning of the French Protestant’s revolt against the persecution by the Roman Catholics.

1707 Act of Union united England and Scotland.

1713 Antoine Court of France convokes a synod to restore church order.

1714 Death of Queen Anne in England. Accession George I.

1715 Death of Louis XIV of France.

1721 Death of Henri Arnaud of the Waldenses.

1727 Death of George I of England. Accession George II. Act passed in England removing the disabilities of Protestant dissenters.

1729 Antoine Court in France sets up a theological college at Lausanne, Switzerland.

1732 Law passed in Poland excluding all except Romanists to hold public office.

1735 Conversion of George Whitfield in England.

1741 Bull of Pope Benedict IV forbidding Jesuits to trade.

1759 Jesuits expelled from Portugal.

1760 Death George II. Accession George III of England. Death of Antoine Court in France.

1762 Jesuit order extinguished in France.

1767 Jesuits expelled from Spain.

1770 Money collected in England to help the Waldenses.

1773 Expulsion of Jesuits from Austria. Jesuit order dissolved by Pope Clement XIV.

1774 Death Pope Clement XIV. Accession Pius VII.

1780 ‘No Popery’ riots in London, England.

1781 Authority of the papacy in Austria reduced.

1787 Edict of Tolerance in France giving more freedom to Protestants.

1789 The French Revolution.

1801 Bonaparte takes office and makes covenant with the Pope in Italy.

1803 Beginning of the Napoleonic wars in France.

1804 Coronation of Bonaparte as Emperor Napoleon in France.

1806 Napoleon abolishes the Holy Roman Empire.

1808 French occupy Rome.

1809 Rome added to the French Empire. Pope Pius VII excommunicates Napoleon.

1814 Pius VII returns to Rome. Papal authority restored. Jesuit order restored by Pope Pius VII

1815 Napoleon banished.

1820 Death of George III. Accession of George VI of England. Inquisition finally abolished in Spain.

1823 Formation of Catholic Association in Ireland.

1825 Irish Catholic Association suppressed.

1827 General Beckwith of England interests himself in the Waldenses.

1828 Dr. William Gilly visits the Waldenses valleys and founds Protestant college at La Torre.

1830 Death of George IV. Accession William IV of England.

1837 Death of William IV of England. Accession Queen Victoria.

1848 Second French Revolution. Waldense church recognized in Piedmont Constitution.

1853 Roman Catholic bishops permitted in Holland.

1858 First recorded ‘miracle’ at Lourdes, France.

1859 France declares war on Austrians in occupation of Italy.

1864 Italy recognizes the temporal authority of the papacy.

1869 Vatican Council summoned at Rome. [660]

1870 King of Prussia becomes Emperor of Germany.-Victor Emmanuel made King of Italy.-Waldenses enter Rome carrying Bibles.-The end outwardly, of the temporal power of the pope. The Vatican Council promulgates the doctrine of papal infallibility.