Page 70 of 131

Henry was so much governed by passion, that nothing could have retarded his animosity and opposition against Rome, but some other passion, which stopped his career, and raised him new objects of animosity. Though he had gradually, since the commencement of his scruples with regard to his first marriage, been changing the tenets of that theological system in which he had been educated, he was no less positive and dogmatical in the few articles which remained to him, than if the whole fabric had continued entire and unshaken. And though he stood alone in his opinion, the flattery of courtiers had so inflamed his tyrannical arrogance, that he thought himself entitled to regulate, by his own particular standard, the religious faith of the whole nation. The point on which he chiefly rested his orthodoxy happened to be the real presence; that very doctrine, in which, among the numberless victories of superstition over common sense, her triumph is the most signal and egregious. All departure from this principle he held to be heretical and detestable; and nothing, he thought, would be more honorable for him, than, while he broke off all connections with the Roman pontiff, to maintain, in this essential article, the purity of the Catholic faith.

There was one Lambert,[*] a schoolmaster in London, who had been questioned and confined for unsound opinions by Archbishop Warham; but upon the death of that prelate, and the change of counsels at court, he had been released. Not terrified with the danger which he had incurred, he still continued to promulgate his tenets; and having heard Dr. Taylor afterwards bishop of Lincoln, defend in a sermon the corporal presence, he could not forbear expressing to Taylor his dissent from that doctrine; and he drew up his objections under ten several heads. Taylor communicated the paper to Dr. Barnes, who happened to be a Lutheran, and who maintained that though the substance of bread and wine remained, in the sacrament, yet the real body and blood of Christ were there also, and were, in a certain mysterious manner, incorporated with the material elements.

* Fox, vol. ii. p. 396.

By the present laws and practice Barnes was no less exposed to the stake than Lambert; yet such was the persecuting rage which prevailed, that he determined to bring this man to condign punishment; because of their common departure from the ancient faith, he had dared to go one step farther than himself. He engaged Taylor to accuse Lambert before Cranmer and Latimer, who, whatever their private opinion might be on these points, were obliged to conform themselves to the standard of orthodoxy established by Henry. When Lambert was cited before these prelates, they endeavored to bend him to a recantation; and they were surprised when, instead of complying, he ventured to appeal to the king.

The king, not displeased with an opportunity where he could at once exert his supremacy and display his learning, accepted the appeal; and resolved to mix, in a very unfair manner, the magistrate with the disputant. Public notice was given that he intended to enter the lists with the schoolmaster: scaffolds were erected in Westminster Hall, for the accommodation of the audience: Henry appeared on his throne accompanied with all the ensigns of majesty: the prelates were placed on his right hand: the temporal peers on his left. The judges and most eminent lawyers had a place assigned them behind the bishops; the courtiers of greatest distinction behind the peers; and in the midst of this splendid assembly was produced the unhappy Lambert, who was required to defend his opinions against his royal antagonist.[*]

The bishop of Chichester opened the conference, by saying, that Lambert, being charged with heretical pravity, had appealed from his bishop to the king; as if he expected more favor from this application, and as if the king could ever be induced to protect a heretic: that though his majesty had thrown off the usurpations of the see of Rome; had disincorporated some idle monks, who lived like drones in a beehive, had abolished the idolatrous worship of images; had published the Bible in English, for the instruction of all his subjects; and had made some lesser alterations, which every one must approve of; yet was he determined to maintain the purity of the Catholic faith, and to punish with the utmost severity all departure from it; and that he had taken the present opportunity, before so learned and grave an audience, of convincing Lambert of his errors; but if he still continued obstinate in them, he must expect the most condign punishment,[**]

* Fox, vol. ii. p. 426

** Goodwin’s Annals

After this preamble, which was not very encouraging, the king asked Lambert, with a stern countenance, what his opinion was of Christ’s corporal presence in the sacrament of the altar; and when Lambert began his reply with some compliment to his majesty, he rejected the praise with disdain and indignation. He afterwards pressed Lambert with arguments drawn from Scripture and the schoolmen: the audience applauded the force of his reasoning, and the extent of his erudition: Cranmer seconded his proofs by some new topics. Gardiner entered the lists as a support to Cranmner: Tonstal took up the argument after Gardiner: Stokesley brought fresh aid to Tonstal; six bishops more appeared successively in the field after Stokesley. And the disputation, if it deserve the name, was prolonged for five hours; till Lambert, fatigued, confounded, browbeaten, and abashed, was at last reduced to silence. The king, then returning to the charge, asked him whether he were convinced; and he proposed, as a concluding argument, this interesting question: Whether he were resolved to live or to die? Lambert, who possessed that courage which consists in obstinacy, replied, that he cast himself wholly on his majesty’s clemency: the king told him that he would be no protector of heretics; and, therefore, if that were his final answer, he must expect to be committed to the flames Cromwell, as vicegerent, pronounced the sentence against him.[*] 14

Lambert, whose vanity had probably incited him the more to persevere on account of the greatness of this public appearance, was not daunted by the terrors of the punishment to which he was condemned. His executioners took care to make the sufferings of a man who had personally opposed the king as cruel as possible: he was burned at a slow fire; his legs and thighs were consumed to the stumps; and when there appeared no end of his torments, some of the guards, more merciful than the rest, lifted him on their halberts and threw him into the flames, where he was consumed. While they were employed in this friendly office, he cried aloud several times, “None but Christ, none but Christ!” and these words were in his mouth when he expired.[**]

Some few days before this execution, four Dutch Anabaptists, three men and a woman, had fagots tied to their backs at Paul’s Cross, and were burned in that manner. Andaman and a woman of the same sect and country were burned in Smithfield.[***]

* See note N, at the end of the volume.

** Fox’s Acts and Monuments, p. 427. Burnet.

*** Stow, p. 556.

1539.

It was the unhappy fate of the English during this age, that, when they labored under any grievance, they had not the satisfaction of expecting redress from parliament on the contrary, they had reason to dread each meeting of that assembly, and were then sure of having tyranny converted into law, and aggravated, perhaps, with some circumstance which the arbitrary prince and his ministers had not hitherto devised, or did not think proper of themselves to carry into execution. This abject servility never appeared more conspicuously than in a new parliament which the king now assembled, and which, if he had been so pleased, might have been the last that ever sat in England. But he found them too useful instruments of dominion ever to entertain thoughts of giving them a total exclusion.