by Peter Walker
‘If Henry VIII was alive now,’ he cried, ‘and if he called a parliament this day, and determined an act which, for example, made the present Queen a bastard and himself the Head of the Church again, then you,’ he said, pointing to Gardiner, ‘and you and you and you’ – pointing to all the other judges – ‘would say: “Oh, Amen to that!” and “Indeed, most excellent” and “If it please your Grace.” ’
‘Sit down, be silent,’ cried Gardiner. ‘You are here to be instructed by us, not us by you.’
‘I will not sit,’ said Rogers. ‘I stand. Shall I not be allowed to speak for my life?’
‘Shall we allow you to tell tales and prate?’ said Gardiner, coming to his feet and shouting ‘Silence!’ whenever Rogers opened his mouth.
‘Taunt on taunt, check on check – yet you will not make me afraid to speak,’ said Rogers.
‘See what a spirit the fellow has,’ said Gardiner, ‘finding fault with my earnest and hearty manner of talking!’
This was the first time I had seen Gardiner close up and I had time to gaze at him – his appearance was perhaps not as terrible as the picture painted by Ponet – ‘eyes an inch within the head, wide nostrils like a horse ever snuffing the wind, sparrow mouth, talons on his feet two inches longer than the natural toes, so he cannot suffer them to touch the stair’. Yet all the same his was one of those faces like a granite cliff against which men’s hopes are dashed. He had a harsh expression, and a lock of hair standing up at the top of his forehead which he continually smote with the heel of his hand.
‘I have a true spirit, obeying the word of God,’ said Rogers. ‘You have sent me to prison without any law and kept me there a year and a half and taken away my living – and I with a wife and ten children!’
‘Did you not preach against the Queen?’
‘That I did not,’ he said. ‘I can prove it, if I stand trial according to law.’
‘I sit as Bishop of Winchester – here in my own diocese, by the way – in my own church, and I may do this and more, lawfully,’ said Gardiner.
‘But against the law you have kept me in prison and never conferred with me until now, when you have got a whip to whip me with and a sword against my neck.’
‘Well, then,’ said Gardiner, ‘let us confer. Is the Church false and anti-Christian?’
‘Yea,’ said Rogers.
‘And the doctrine of the sacrament?’
‘False,’ cried Rogers, throwing up his hands. ‘The Church of Rome is the Church of Antichrist, with its false doctrine and tyrannical laws, and their maintenance by cruel persecution used by its bishops.’
‘Oh, did you hear that?’ cried Gardiner, turning to the audience. Everyone agreed that they had.
‘They agree only because they are your servants, they would agree to anything,’ said Rogers.
‘What?’ said Gardiner. ‘Did you not say just now the sacrament was false?’
‘I did’ said Rogers, ‘and will say it again.’
‘Ah, there is no reasoning with the fellow,’ said Gardiner, and he hit his forelock with the heel of his hand, and then read out the sentence of condemnation and Rogers was led away.
There was a long pause before the next defendant was brought in. He was a young man named Bradford, tall and spare and somewhat sanguine in complexion, with a fair beard. He had been a soldier who had fought before the gates of Boulogne and then gave up war and fighting in order to preach. He had already been a year in prison where, it was said, he had dreamt that the chains for burning him had already been purchased.
‘Six times in my life,’ said Bradford, ‘I have sworn that I shall never consent to the authority of the Bishop of Rome in England: three times at Cambridge, and three times after that. How can I do what you demand?’
‘Tush, those were Herod’s oaths which no one has to keep,’ said Gardiner.
‘Oh my lord, they were not Herod’s oaths, not unlawful oaths, but oaths according to God’s word, as you yourself affirmed in the book which you wrote in favour of the King and against the Pope, to which you gave a very good title, De Vera Obedientia: On True Obedience.’
At this, the Chancellor was silent.
‘Never mind that, sirrah,’ said another of the judges. ‘Have you not seditiously written and exhorted the people?’
‘I have written and spoken nothing seditiously, I have never had a seditious cogitation – I thank God for it – in my life, and trust I never shall,’ said Bradford.
‘But you have written letters from prison, calling Catholics antichrists, and mangy dogs, that should be shunned as Simeon shunned Ustazades, and not sons of God but bastards who live in the security of a Jezebel, by which you mean the Queen,’ said the judge.
Now Bradford fell silent.
‘Why don’t you speak?’ said Gardiner, ‘Have you or have you not written as he says?’
‘What I have written, I have written,’ said Bradford.
‘Lord God, what an arrogant and stubborn boy this is,’ cried Gardiner, ‘behaving stoutly and dallying before the Queen’s council!’
‘My lords,’ said Bradford, ‘the Lord God, who will judge us both, knows that I stand before you with reverence and I desire to behave myself accordingly and I shall suffer with all due obedience your sayings, and doings too, I hope.’
‘These are gay glorious words of reverence,’ said the Chancellor, ‘but as in all other things here, you do nothing but lie.’
‘I would God, the abhorrer of lies, pull my tongue out of my head if I have lied to you.’
‘Why then do you not answer? Have you written these letters objected against you?’
‘As I said: what I have written I have written. I stand before you and you may lay my letters to my charge, or you may not. If you lay anything to my charge which I have written, and I deny it – then I am a liar.’
‘Lord help us, I see that we shall never have done with you,’ said the Chancellor. ‘Be short, be short – will you have mercy?’
‘I pray God give me His mercy, and if you extend yours I will not refuse it, but otherwise I will not,’ said Bradford.
At that moment the sheriff’s men came in and whispered in Gardiner’s ear and then everyone rose and went away for their dinner.
‘You are a young man,’ said Gardiner at the next session in the afternoon, ‘and perhaps there is some good in you. We offer you the Queen’s pardon in consideration of the fact that Her Highness is wonderful merciful.’
‘My lords,’ said Bradford, ‘as you sit now in the seat of the Lord, who sits in the midst of judges judging, I beseech you to follow him in this session – that is, seek no guiltless blood.’
‘There is a true sentence,’ said Gardiner, ‘although by your manner you show you are full of vainglory and stubbornness. For all that, it is a true sentence: I seek no innocent blood.’
‘And I have taken my oaths,’ said Bradford, ‘and followed your teaching in your book, De Vera Obedientia. I shall never consent to the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. I am not afraid of death, thank God. I have looked for nothing else from your hands for a long time. But I am afraid of having perjury against my conscience.’
‘More gay and glorious words, full of hypocrisy and vainglory,’ cried Gardiner.
‘I have been now almost two years in your prison,’ said Bradford, ‘and all this time you never questioned me about these things, when I might have answered freely without peril. But now you have a law to hang up and put to death men who answer not to your liking. Ah, my lord, Christ used not this way to bring men to faith.’
Here the Chancellor looked somewhat shaken and was silent for a moment.
‘This was not my doing,’ he said in a low voice, ‘though there are some who think it is the best way. For my part, I have often been challenged for being too gentle.’
‘Far too gentle,’ said Bishop Bonner, who was sitting beside him.
And there was a general nodding in the audience. ‘Ever so gentle’, ‘none more so�
�, ‘gentleness itself’, said voices around me.
‘My lord, I pray you,’ said Bradford, ‘stretch out your gentleness so I may feel it. For up till now, never have I felt it.’
At that Gardiner looked uncertain. A silence fell over the court. Outside you could hear the voices of the gulls above the river.
Then Gardiner suddenly smiled and smote the lock of hair standing up on his forehead.
‘With all my heart!’ he said. ‘And not only I, but the Queen’s Highness will stretch out her gentle mercy to you, if you will only return to us.’
‘Return!’ said Bradford, with a look of horror. ‘I did not mean that! God save me from that! The dog may return to the vomit, but I will not.’
So they fell to wrangling again, and Bradford was sent down, to await further hearing, and more defendants were brought up.
By the end of the day, the sentence of excommunication had been read several times, and those convicted were consigned to Newgate Prison on the other side of the river. When the evening came I crossed the bridge behind a procession of prisoners and archers and guards with their bills and hooks and halberds. As we set off, the sheriff sent men ahead to put out the candles of the costermongers so that people should not see the prisoners pass. And so all the way over you could see the darkness spreading out in front of us as the costermongers’ candles winked out, one by one.
Chapter 5
The following Monday, at eleven in the morning, Rogers was burnt at Smithfield. At the end of that week, on Saturday, another of those condemned was burnt at Gloucester. Those were the first to die for religion in Mary’s reign. The next day, on Sunday, in the palace at Greenwich, there was a great sensation. In a sermon before the whole court, the King’s chaplain denounced the fires.
‘This was not the way that Christ won men to faith,’ he said. ‘The executioners did not learn this from Scripture. It is not through severity that men are brought into the fold, but by mildness and good example. Nor is it a bishop’s business to seek the death of those who have strayed. Bishops are in effect fathers of the people, and parents do not kill their children, even if they err or run away . . .’
There was a deathly silence. Mass was then heard and afterwards, outside, consternation, somewhat delayed, broke out. Some courtiers said it was the King’s doing, as he did not want to be blamed by the English people for the deaths.
Yet the King had been heard to say that, by and large, he approved of the ‘corrections’.
Others said it was only the private opinion of the chaplain, who was a Spanish friar named de Castro. Yet he was also known to approve of penal fires – if other measures failed – and had written a book to say so.
In short, no one knew who was behind the sermon. I myself heard about this only from a distance. But de Castro I remembered: he was an old acquaintance of Pole’s, and used to sit with him in the garden at Trent and argue about liberty and power and so on, while I stood on guard nearby, watching the campfires of unknown wayfarers twinkle on the hillsides above.
From my new and lowly vantage point – I was very far from the secret counsels of those in power – I guessed that this sermon was, in fact, the next shot fired by Pole in his contest with the Chancellor.
Whether that is true or not I never found out, but whatever its origin, it had some effect. There were no more charbonnades – or barbecues, as the French are good enough to call them – that week or the next or the next. A month went past, and it seemed that Pole had defeated the Chancellor and that his policy of mildness was in the ascendant.
Now the time really had come for me to return to Italy. Agnes Hide – as I still always think of my wife, mystery as that is to me – was infinitely patient and good but even in her letters a forlorn note could be detected. Was I ever coming home? I was. But there was one more slight delay. The Queen decided to send an embassy to Rome, the first from England for decades, and I was asked to go along with them, almost as if no one could remember the way after so long.
With Lord Thirlby, Lord Montagu and Sir Edward Carne, Mr White and others, I crossed the Channel and we made our way into Picardy in late March, just as the green of spring was beginning to creep over the ground and up the boles of the trees.
The moment we reached France I was in a fever to get home to Mantua: I looked back, I could not believe it – I must have fallen under an enchantment – nineteen months I had been away! So I rode forward and urged the party to hurry. But I had forgotten, if I had ever known, how slowly lords and wealthy gentlemen travel through the world when there is no danger behind them and none pending. They were ambassadors to Rome. Rome was eternal. What was the hurry? We moved south as slowly, I think, as the beautiful goddess of spring moves north. Three or four leagues a day satisfied the party. And in any case, they were eager to see the sights.
At Fontainebleau we were led into the presence of the King of France and received very genteelly. He had a grim countenance, but was gentle and meek in his manner, and their Lordships were very pleased with him.
At St Denis we saw a great crucifix of gold, the Christ lacking only an arm which had been melted down to pay for the war.
In the marketplace at Clermont were six gallows with a different portrait hanging from each. The six miscreants in question had run away, so their portraits had been commissioned and executed in their place. All parties, it seemed, were satisfied by this arrangement.
At length we came to the mountains, and ascended into winter again. We lost only one horse over an abyss – the bay belonging to Mr White, who fell a long way with it but then saved himself on a thorn bush. At places in those mountains the road between England and Rome is not twenty inches wide.
Further on we passed below to a waterfall with a throw of water as great as a mill which midway through the air turned to snow and fell continually in great heaps on the ground. Through this we trod and went on our way.
At last we came down to the plains of Italy, which, resigning myself to my destiny, I now must acknowledge as my home.
Flat, hazy, lined with poplars, and with no wild wood or forest for miles, that land is not entirely to my taste. My heart, I suppose, has always been in Warwickshire. But my wife and children, my ease and contentment and joy, were somewhere in the haze of the great plains stretching away like the sea, bush after bush, tree after tree, town after town, tower-girdled, as far as the horizon.
In every town we came to, the ambassadors were greeted with great demonstrations. Troops of handsome youths and beautiful maidens were assembled at the gates to lead us in, and on the street corners children were mustered, calling out ‘Vive, vive l’Inghilterra!’ with all the Italian vivacity.
At Mantua, I accompanied their Lordships to the ducal palace where a banquet was held and the first green almonds of the season were placed before them. Mr White and Lord Thirlby had never had green almonds before. It was there that, as agreed, I resigned my commission and hurried through the streets to the door of this very house, where, after twenty months apart, I embraced my wife and kissed my children.
Little Judith was just two years old. She had no idea who in the world I was. At the sight of me she wept great tears – never have I seen such tears – shining, spherical, rolling slowly on her cheeks. After a few minutes, however, she became somewhat resigned to my existence and, with tears still brimming, she climbed on my knee to pat my beard with the flat of her hand.
Chapter 6
Later that same day we rode out to Cerese, where my eldest son Francis took me by the hand and led me gravely round the whole establishment – stable, mangers, kennels, hay barn, chaff house, orchard and dwelling houses – to show me in what very good order everything had been maintained. It is a golden occasion in life to return home after a long absence and find nothing has been neglected. I almost ran out of terms of praise. I knew Agnes was a good wife but had not realised she was such an excellent manager and breeder of horses. Four yearlings I had never seen before were in the far paddocks, and the new
shaky-legged foals of that spring were nearby nuzzling their mamas. I am sorry to say I almost ran out of an inclination to praise. How well everything flourished! It seemed that they had no need for me there at all.
But this was unjust. On the way back to town, Francis rode in front of us, solemn and upright, like a page before a dignitary.
But as we passed some urchins of his acquaintance, he squeaked ‘Mio padre!’ – and jerked his thumb over his shoulder at me, like one of the stable lads, to show me off. I realised that my long absence had in some way impugned his dignity, and there and then I resolved never to leave them alone again as long as I lived.
This resolution I kept for a good long time; in fact I would have said that from then on I turned my back on the world and gave it no more thought, except that it now came visiting me so often there was no chance of that. Now that I was no longer a ‘dead man’, an attainted traitor condemned to death, it seemed that every Englishman who set foot in Italy beat a path to my door, coming to me for advice, food and shelter, even new horses. I soon heard everything that happened at home, the good and the bad. A month or two after I had left, the burnings had resumed. The King then departed from England, pleading pressure of business in his other realms, and leaving the Queen desolate. It was reported that he had no intention of returning. The tempo of burnings increased. Pole, meanwhile, devoted himself to foreign affairs and presided at a peace conference between the French and Imperialists in a great wooden city, built specially for the occasion in a field near Calais.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, and Latimer were put to death. Cranmer recanted and confessed his errors, but was burnt anyway, against all customary usage.
His great enemy, Stephen Gardiner, had gone before him into the grave.
‘Mortuus et sepultus est,’ said my guests cheerfully: ‘He’s dead and buried and gone to hell, so we’ll talk no more about him.’
