by Peter Walker
The procession consisted of a sheriff and six or seven guards, and twenty-two men and women who had been arrested in Colchester on suspicion of heresy and who were being marched to London to be examined by Bishop Bonner. It was just before harvest and it would have been easy for prisoners to run away and be hidden in the wheat which was moving this way and that in the wind. This, however, they assured the sheriff they did not wish to do. On the contrary, they were eager to meet their judge, and they sang hymns as they went across the fields. The sheriff was so pleased with their behaviour he saw no need to tie them up, except in the towns, where he might otherwise get into trouble.
When they reached London, the rope came out again and this time was properly tied around wrists and shoulders. The captives attracted immense attention. By the time they reached Bonner’s palace in Fulham, they were accompanied by several thousand people.
Bonner became alarmed. He wrote quickly to Pole, saying he had examined all the prisoners and found them all to be desperate heretics who should be despatched at once, but ‘fearing your Lordship’s wrath’ – which he had recently incurred in a like case – he sought permission first.
A reply came back forbidding this action and ordering the captives to be sent to the Lollards’ Tower at Lambeth Palace. There they languished for about a week. Then one day Pole himself appeared at the door of their cell. After talking to the prisoners for a while, he set them all free, on their swearing of an oath which he himself devised, of the lightest terms imaginable: ‘that they promised to be good Christians and subjects to the Queen’.
The twenty-two then set off and walked home through Essex. Their release, which took place on 22 October, occasioned much comment. Nothing like it could be recalled. But the story did not end there. A few months later, in December or January, their parish priest, Sir Thomas Tye, wrote to Bonner and to Lord Darcy, Lieutenant of Essex, about some of the prisoners released by Pole.
Since their coming home, they maliciously and seditiously have seduced many from coming to the church, mocking those that frequent the church, calling them church owls, and calling the blessed sacrament a blind god.
In the town of Colchester, ministers of the church are hemmed at in the open streets, and called knaves, the blessed sacrament of the altar is blasphemed and railed upon in every ale house and tavern.
At this, new warrants were sworn and three of them were re-arrested, taken to the moot hall and then to Colchester Castle, where they were examined again. They answered very stoutly, saying the mass was an abominable idol, that the bread and wine were not changed by consecration into the body and blood of Christ – if anything they were rather the worse for it – and that all these things stank in the nostrils of God.
‘So you will not be a member of us?’ asked Doctor Chadsey, the judge.
‘I am no member of yours,’ said one, a girl named Rose Allen, ‘for you are a member of Antichrist and will have the reward of Antichrist, unless you repent.’
‘Then what do you say of the Holy See and the authority of the Pope?’
‘I am none of his,’ she said, ‘and as for his sea – it is for crows, kites, owls and ravens such as you are to swim in and by the Grace of God I shall never swim in it as long as I live.’
All three were later taken out and burnt at the stake, calling out from amid the flames to beware of idolatry.
All of this was well known in England. My nephew Clement, for instance, who was eager for me to adopt his religious views, wrote and told me about it. But there is no reason to think the story would have ever reached Rome and come to the ears of the Pope except for one thing: Bonner informed him. The imperialist postmaster in Venice, who had a marvellous way with sealing-wax, had opened his letters and read them, and it was soon known all over Venice that a great English bishop had been sending ‘evil reports’ of Pole to Rome.
It was this tale of the twenty-two prisoners of Colchester which, I think, revived the Pope’s ancient suspicions. He, in any case, saw heresy everywhere without the slightest evidence. What then would he think of this story – Pole, the arch-heretic, beautifully disguised in the red robe of a cardinal, appearing in the prison door to set free his agents and send them forth to seduce many more, to mock church owls, blind gods and the blessed sacrament of the altar?
The Pope knew also that he must be nearing the end of his own life. Another conclave would soon be held. His greatest dread returned: at any hour, a certain English heretic might ascend the chair of Peter and induce everyone to lead his sorry life.
That was the calamity at hand, ‘as close as the lightning which follows the limbo’. For my part, I could not help noting that Pole had appeared at the door of the Lollards’ Tower and set the prisoners free at about the same time as my little book, The Fine and Witty Letter, reached London.
Chapter 14
Although the war had come to an end in Italy, in the north it was still thundering on, bringing a rain of calamities.
First came the news that Calais had fallen. At a stroke, we lost our mastery of the Channel, the power to harass France at will, three hundred artillery pieces and a great quantity of wool and other booty.
The French were in seventh heaven. Even here in Mantua the French party ran through the streets in velvet slippers carrying roast dinners to one another’s houses.
Next came the battle of Gravelines. This time the French army was attacked by Egmont with three thousand horses and all his German infantry. The French ran away and crossed the River Aa, thinking they would be safe, but the Imperialists kept them in sight, and eventually the two sides met.
The battle was fought on the seashore, in the presence of the English fleet, which, unable to assist in any other way, shot off its cannons from afar. The French cavalry were instantly routed; the infantry stood firm for an hour and were then utterly dispersed.
This news, reaching Paris, made everyone turn pale.
By that time, which was early this year, 1558, the Pope had completed his transit from the French to the Imperialist side. He now found himself delighted with Philip, the King of England.
‘He is as great a prince as any that has ever reigned in Christendom,’ he told Navagero, ‘and is soon to be even greater. Negotiating with him is much more secure and solid than with certain other persons whom we might name . . .’
The war against the Emperor and Philip, he added, had been a great mistake, foisted on him by certain wicked persons.
‘I should send their heads flying from their shoulders and it is greatly to my regret that I am too kind-hearted to do so,’ he added, staring hard at the French cardinals who were present.
He had quite forgotten, said Navagero, that it was his nephew Carlos who was the master spirit of the war.
Carlos was now sent to Philip in Brussels to undertake certain vital negotiations, chief among them the extradition of Pole to Rome. He came with a glittering retinue and set about a great round of banquets, gambling and hunting. He was also armed with a summary of the charges against the Cardinal of England.
He saw no need for discretion. On the contrary, he was a model of candour. Soon the whole court, and then the world, knew the extent of the depravity of Reginald Pole and his household.
Reginaldus Polus . . . an accomplice of heretics . . . a favourer of heretics . . . He approached people in conversation to find out their doctrine. He persuaded others to the heretical view . . . He broadcast it . . . He considered heretics his friends . . . He was commonly thought of by Catholics as a heretic . . . He defended Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone . . . He condemned the theology of the schools . . . He said there was no harm in what he believed . . . He argued that the gospel should be declared pure and simple . . . He asserted that a vow of chastity should not be observed unless it was a gift from God . . . He was the father and spiritual teacher of false doctrine to the Marchioness . . . He was chosen by her alone . . . and adored by her with excessive reverence and affection . . . and extolled excessivel
y by her . . . a lover of that man, as can be seen from many letters . . . whom she lavishly praised . . . and called her Elijah . . . and felt burning love for . . .
When I read this – for a copy soon reached Mantua – I almost laughed aloud. It sounded like nothing so much as the ancient complaints of a jealous lover. The Marchioness, I think, had once been a follower of Carafa. She devoted herself to mortification of the flesh, and wore rags and starved herself to an inch of her life – exactly the austerities that Carafa admired. But Pole laughed at all this, and she listened to him, and soon she moved to the centre of my master’s circle. Had Carafa been brooding over this all these years? Was there really a woman at the bottom of it all?
In any case, I thought, no one could take seriously the charges which Carlos brandished in Brussels. But I was wrong. King Philip was enchanted to find himself in the Pope’s good books and he meant to stay there. He was greatly tempted to assist him in this matter. In any case, he and his ministers were angry with Pole for their own reasons: they saw him as the chief obstacle to their power in England. It was Pole who stood against Philip’s coronation, and against the English fighting Philip’s wars, and against allowing Philip’s troops into England.
In short, here was a moment of grave danger for my master. He was suddenly surrounded by enemies. The Pope sought his life. The King and his ministers would like to see the back of him. The English ‘weathercocks’ hated him – those ministers of fury such as Bonner and Lord Rich, who once backed Henry and now persecuted and burnt on behalf of Mary. The English Protestants, as well, had no love for a Roman cardinal. The French saw him as an imperialist. Even the Queen could not be relied on. If it came to a choice between him and her husband . . . well, Pole was only her cousin, and she still passionately loved her husband.
It was strange to consider that now my master, once again, stood under threat of being trussed up and sent over the sea to his doom, this time in the opposite direction. It was also strange, I thought, that the two older men whom Pole had most revered in his life – one of them King of England and the other now Pope in Rome – both turned on him and sought his destruction. Whatever else you may say about fate, once she chooses a theme for a man she does not idly let it drop.
One day in spring this year I received the following document. It was sent by my nephew Clement, who appended no comment:
Cardinalis Polis commissio ad procedend. Contra haereticos.
REGINALDUS, miseratione divina tituli sanctae Mariae in Cosmedin, sanctae Romanae ecclesia cardinalis Polus, dilectis nobis in Christo filiis, magistris Nicolao Harpsfeld legum doctori . . .
In short, this was a commission issued by Pole to proceed against certain heretics. You have to understand what this meant: apart from the first one against Rogers and Bradford, etc., which had been placed in his hands when he first arrived in England, and whose harsh proceedings he tried to mitigate, Pole had never himself issued such a commission to prosecute heresy. All those that had followed over the next three years had proceeded from the Queen or her council or certain bishops.
At the sight of this document, then, a terrible thought came to me: Pole is in danger of the fire. So he has decided to push others in first, to save himself.
Such an evil suspicion . . . Once you’ve had a thought like that, things are never the same. Even if Pole was innocent, I felt I had been changed for the worse. But I still hoped I was wrong, and I had good reasons for doing so. There was something very odd about the wording of this new document. Anyone found guilty, it stated, was to be punished only si facti atrocitas – ‘if the atrocity of the case required it’. Here, perhaps, I thought, was a loophole invented by Pole himself. For although he never utterly denied the right to punish heretics, he had always avoided doing so.
It occurred to me that he had been trapped or forced into making this commission. By then – earlier this year – it was becoming plain that our Queen does not have long to live. All her ‘pregnancies’ have proved false. They say she spends hours lying with her knees drawn up to ease the pain. Something is amiss with her, and it is getting worse. And when she dies, then there will be a great reckoning. Someone will be held to account for the charbonnades. If Pole could be proved to have blood on his hands, that would be most convenient for those below him, especially the ‘weathercocks’, who have led the persecution.
I thought that Pole might have found a way to escape the trap. In short, I had high hopes of si facti atrocitas.
But then one day this summer, a copy of a writ arrived, sent by my nephew Clement. It states that John Cornfoth of Wrotham, Christopher Brown of Maidstone, John Hurst of Ashford, Alice Snoth of Beddenden, and Katherine Knight of Thornham had been found guilty of heresy, and should be punished in the usual way by the secular arm. It is signed by Pole.
There is nothing more to be said. Disappointed hopes are not as savage as sudden blows. In any case, I appear to have reached the end of my service to the illustrious Pole. I have carried on with my life as usual. And I have continued to write this account of all my deeds. Why stop now? It is a kind of cure for insomnia – if I don’t write everything down then I lie awake thinking about it, and sometimes I am even woken up, it seems to me, in order to think about it.
At some of these sessions, I have truly considered the possibility that my whole life in service to Pole has been wasted. Are the old charges against him – he is indifferent, too fond of ease, pusillanimous – true? Is he a coward? Was he, then, always a coward? Or did he just lose heart?
‘. . . and now he must eat his own heart, and be heartless as he is graceless’.
On this question, I can only turn to my secret doctrine: ‘I do not know’.
In September, two months ago, I went to Padua to stand at the grave of young Courtenay. I thought someone should perform that office. He died while I was still in Rome, and he went friendless into the tomb. Some people declare he died by misadventure. One day, they say, he went back to the island of Lio where I had once taken him to fly his hawk, and on the way home he got soaked in a storm, and then he did not change his clothes and then he slipped on the stair in his own house and then was shaken dreadfully in a coach on the road to Padua . . . These things together killed him. What a number of mishaps are needed to end a life nowadays! It amazes me anyone manages to die at all.
These many causes were listed for me by Peter Vannes, English ambassador in Venice, shaking his head very mournfully as he recited them. The state of Venice agrees and would shake its head mournfully too if that could be managed. Instead, it has seized Courtenay’s chest and papers, which might have thrown light on the matter and which will now never be seen again.
I stood by his grave at the church of Eremitani, in Padua – he is soon to be moved – but nothing happened in my heart as I looked at the stone. This is the way of things at the moment. The world, to tell the truth, seems rather flat and bare lately. I sometimes think of Bembo, as he grew old, saying: ‘Oh, that I were a shepherd, and could look down on Urbino again!’
At that, everyone would laugh merrily. Anyone less like a shepherd than the elegant Lord Bembo was impossible to imagine. But now I understand him better. Oh, that I were roaming over the hills behind Viterbo again . . . Sometimes in the summer Flamminio and I would stop on the heights and look at the headwaters of rivers far away and without names. But I don’t suppose I will ever go back up there again.
This month, however, we – Agnes Hide and I – have decided to go to England next spring, Pole or no Pole. I have a great desire to be in Warwickshire in May once again and see the woods in all their heavy green robes. The other day, when the Regent read out one of his reports from England, I felt – even at my age and after living here so long – the pangs of the young traveller far from home.
The largest city is built on the River Thames which here has the form of a bow, and therefore the town is shaped accordingly. At one extremity of it is a castle called the Tower, with a serraglio in which, from grandeur, they keep l
ions and tigers and cat-lions.
At the other end of the bow, in the great church of St Peter’s, there is a chapel much decorated with marble and gold, called the King’s Chapel, in which are the tombs of late kings and queens . . .
Of the women in England, this may be said: in general they are of ready wit, as shown by their prompt replies, and many of them are very learned in Latin and Greek. They have a handsome presence, fine complexions and great liberty of action, and no one enquires what they do, either at home or out, which causes them to be but slightly continent.
Englishmen do not hold women’s honour in account, and even if the lie is given, they cannot be induced to fight, but do so only from caprice. Then, after exchanging two or three stabs with a knife, they make peace at once, and go and drink together . . .
They are naturally very obstinate, but are also fickle, and most inconsiderate in their actions. They are extremely courageous, the more so in proportion to the difficulty of the undertaking.
They have often been seen going to the stake and gibbet laughing, and, as it were, ridiculing martyrdom; and many persons, members of whose families have been executed, are accustomed to boast of it.
Lately, a foreigner, having asked an English captain if any of his family had been hanged and quartered, answered ‘not that he knew of ’. Another Englishman whispered, ‘Don’t be surprised, for he is not a gentleman.’
As the Regent read this, he stopped and gazed at me several times with his usual expressions of amazement, which, for some reason, I always find most gratifying.
That was a month or two ago; it was the last time I was out of the house. Since then I have been unwell. Portaleone first diagnosed catarrh, then ague, followed by a general malaise, which he counters with egg whites and the ink of the squid. The ague is very severe this year. The Pope himself fell ill and the whole world held its breath, but then he came round.
