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IX. Anecdotes and Character of Archbishop Cranmer, by Ralph Morice, his Secretary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2010
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- Narratives of the Days of the Reformation
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- Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1859
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page 235 note a The family of Morice of Chipping Ongar afterwards assumed the name of Poyntz, sir John Morioe having married the daughter and heir of sir Gabriel Poyntz, and granddaughter of Thomas Poyntz esquire, the chief patron of William Tyndale. See Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, i. 525.
page 235 note b See also the memoir of Morice in Athense Cantabrigienses, vol. i. p. 293.
page 235 note c MS. Lansdowne 108, art. 8.
page 236 note a The deprived archbishop of York.
page 236 note b The deprived bishop of Ely.
page 236 note c Richard Cox.
page 236 note d William Barlow.
page 236 note e John Scory.
page 237 note a July 2, 1489.
page 237 note b First hand, Arseleton. It is commonly written Aslacton. Where second hand is mentioned in the ensuing notes it implies that the words so marked are above the line in paler ink, but it ia believed written by the same hand as the text.
page 237 note c Progeny, as is well known, was a word at this period applied rather to ancestry than posterity.
page 238 note a Who this was is not known. In the former biography he is termed “a rude parish clerk,” and Poxe supposed Cranmer's master to have been the clerk, or priest, of Aslacton. The place of Cranmer's early education was probably a country school indeed Morice presently speaks of his leaving a grammar-school for Cambridge. Thomas Tusser's verses on Nicholas Udall, the school-master of Eton, have been often quoted in illustration of the severity of the schoolmasters of that time.
From Paul's I went to Eton sent,
To learn straightways the Latin phrase,
Where fifty-three stripes given to me
At once I had;
For fault but small, or none at all,
It came to pass thus beat I was.
See, Udall, see the mercy of thee
To me poor lad.
page 238 note b The margin is torn off.
page 238 note c i, e. shoot with the long bow, as again mentioned a few lines lower.
page 240 note a The name of Cranmer's first wife has never been recovered: but she is said to have been a cousin of the good-wife of the Dolphin inn at Cambridge, with whom she lodged. On this subject see archdeacon Todd's Life of Cranmer, 1831, i. i—8. Morice hereafter tells the story of a priest's slandering the archbishop as having been once “a hostler.”
page 240 note b A name (remarks Dr. Thomas Fuller) utterly extinct in that town (where God hath fixed my present habitation) long before the memory of any alive. But, consulting Weaver's Funeral-Monuments of Waltham church (more truly then neatly by him composed),
I finde therein this epitaph.
Here lyeth Jon and Jone Cressy
On whose soulys Jesu hav mercy. Amen.
Puller's Church History, fol. 1655, book v. p. (179.)
page 241 note a Afterwards better known by the name of Stephen Gardyner; appointed secretary to the king 1529; consecrated bishop of Winchester 1531.
page 241 note b Edward Foxe, almoner 1531, bishop of Hereford 1535, died 1538.
page 241 note c This speech or argument of Cranmer is very much abridged by Foxe: but the subsequent communication of Foxe and Gardyner with the king very considerably amplified.
page 242 note a i.e. obviated their objections, and converted them to his- opinion. This remarkable circumstance ia unnoticed by Foxe, although it is asserted by the former biographer (p. 220) as well as by Morice.
page 243 note a This embassy left England in Dec. 1529, and repaired to Bononia, where the pope was then resident. The names of the ambassadors are already noticed in p. 220.
page 243 note b The date of his preferment is not recorded. Le Neve in his Fasti refers it to the year 1522, but without any authority. There is no mention of it in the episcopal register of the bishop of Bath and Wells of that period; nor in the chapter acts of Wells, which indeed commence not till 1533, according to information communicated by the bishop of Bath and Wells to the rev. Henry John Todd, M.A., Life of Cranmer, 1831, i. 23.
page 243 note c Moriee was mistaken in his supposition that Cranmer did not return to England between the embassy to the pope, and his being sent to the emperor. His commission as orator at the imperial court was dated in Jan. 1530–1; but mr. Todd shows that he was still in England in the following June. Life of Cranmer, i. 29, 30.
page 243 note d She was niece to Osiander pastor of Nuremburg. Strype says, “Whom when he returned from his embassy he brought not over with him: but in the year 1534 he privately sent for her.” This apparently is a misunderstanding of the text. Moriee plainly states that Cranmer sent his wife to England shortly before he became archbishop, not that he sent for her in 1534, a year after his elevation. The few existing particulars of mistress Cranmer have never hitherto been collected. In the pedigree prefixed to Todd's Life of the archbishop she is named Anne, as she was by Strype, and so in the works of the Parker Society, and most other places in which she has been mentioned; but her name was Margaret. Her children by Cranmer were, one son, Thomas Cranmer esquire, and two daughters, Anne, who died before her father, and Margaret who survived him. After the archbishop's death she had two other husbands: the first of whom was Edward Whitchurch the printer, who had suffered imprisonment in 1540 for printing the Bible, and again in the beginning of Mary's reign, together with his partner Richard Grafton. His burial ia supposed to be recorded in the register of Camberwell as “maister Wychurch,” Dec. 1, 1561; and at the same place was celebrated on the 29th Nov. 1564, the third marriage of the archbishop's widow with Bartholomew Scott esquire, also of Camberwell, and a justice of the peace for Surrey; in whose epitaph (after he had survived her and married two other wives,) she was described as Margaret “ye wido of ye right reverend Prel: and Martyr Tho: Cranmer, Archbishiof Canterburie.” (Collectanea Topogr. et Genealogiea, iii. 145.)
page 244 note a Warham died August 23, 1532.
page 244 note b Nominated by bull dated Feb. 22, 1532–3. He was consecrated at Westminster on the 30th March following.
page 245 note a Non videmus manticse quod in tergo est. Catullus, xxii. 21.
page 246 note a Poxe suppressed the name of doctor Heath, but gives the same sentiment as “a common proverb,” with the following introduction: “Few we shall find in whom the saying of our Saviour Christ so much prevailed as with him, who would not only have a man to forgive his enemies, but also to pray for them: that lesson never went out of his memory. For it was known that he had many cruel enemies; not for his own deserts, but only for his religion sake: and yet, whatsoever he was that sought his hinderanee, either in goods, estimation, or life, and upon conference would seem never so slenderly any thing to relent or excuse, himself, he would both forget the offence committed, and also evermore after, wards friendly entertain him, and shew such pleasure to him, as by any means possible he might perform or declare; insomuch that it came into a common proverb, Do unto my L. of Canterbury displeasure, or a shrewd turn, and then you may be sure to have him your friend whiles he liveth.” page 46 note b His treatment of the quondam abbat of Tower hill, related by Underbill, (before, p. 157,) was an instance of such conduct.
page 247 note a “Anacte whereby oertaine ohauntries, colleges, free chapelles, and the possessions of the same, be given to the kinges majestie,” was passed in 1 Edw. VI. cap. 14. (Statutes of the Realm, iv. 5.) A commission for their sale was issued in the summer of 1552, “for the payment of my dettes,” as the king states in his Journal (Literary Remains of Edward VI. p. 414.) It was probably on this occasion that Cranmer made the opposition which Morice describes: though his modern biographers refer to the earlier date. There is a chapter on Chantries in Fuller's Church History, book vi. § vi.
page 248 note a Upon the occurrence of this phrase we may place in juxta-position with the text the passage of Foxe which is evidently founded upon it. “At the time of setting forth the Six Articles, mention was made before in the storie of king Henry the eighth, how adventurously this archbishop Thomas Cranmer did oppose himself, standing as it were jposl alone against the whole parliament, disputing and replying three days together against the said Articles. Insomuch that the king, when neither he could mislike his reasons, and yet would needs have those Articles to pass, required him to absent himself for the time out of the chamber while the act should pass, and so he did, and how the king afterward sent all the lords of the parliament to Lambeth to cheer his mind again, that he might not be discouraged.” It will be observed that in this passage Foxe speaks largely of the stand made by Cranmer against the Six Articles, of which Morice says little; but borrows the singular phrase employed by Morice, where the archbishop is described as standing post alone in opposition to his fellow commissioners when revising “the book of Articles of our religion,” and transfers it to his conduct in parliament upon the former occasion. By “the book of articles of our religion” is intended the manual entitled, “A necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christen Man,” which was provided as a substitution for the “Institution of a Christian Man,” before noticed in p. 224. It was promulgated in 1543.
page 248 note b Nicholas Heath, afterwards archbishop of York, was elected bishop of Rochester, March 26,1540.
page 248 note c Nicholas Shaxton, consecrated bishop of Salisbury 1535, resigned that see in consequence of not subscribing to the Six Articles, 1539.
page 249 note a Thomas Thirleby, afterwards bishop of Norwich and Ely, was consecrated bishop of Westminster in 1540.
page 249 note b George Day, bishop of Chichester 1543.
page 249 note c Foxe tells this story also, but quite in a different way. He does not mention the names of Shaxton, Thirleby, or Day: but he states that it was with bishop Heath and bishop Skip (John Skyppe, bishop of Hereford 1539–1552) that the archbishop had principally to contend: these two prelates (he says) had Cranmer down from the rest of the commissioners into his garden at Lambeth, and there by all manner of persuasions they endeavoured to alter his determination, but without success.
page 250 note a MS. as of.
page 250 note b Trojan ? See in Nares's Glossary various examples of the use of the word Trojan in a familiar way.
page 250 note c The Rev. G. C. Gorham, in his Reformation Gleanings, 1857, 8vo., has stated, at p. 10, that the arms of Cranmer were probably first assumed when he was promoted to the see of Canterbury in 1533; and in a very singular way. He found on a seal of his predecessor Warham the coat of a chevron between three birds: these birds Cranmer chose to interpret as cranes, an-; therefore retained them on the seal, which he adopted for himself, adding on a second shield (which was plugged and re-engraved) his maternal coat of Aslacton. It is very probable that the Cranmers had previously used only the coat of the ancient family of Aslacton, whose property they had acquired by marriage in the reign of Henry VI. See the pedigree in Thoroton's Nottinghamshire. It was not until about the year 1540 that the archbishop changed the cranes into pelicans, which first appear on the title of the great bible printed in that year. (Gorham, p. 14.) The pelican in her piety was a favourite device in religious heraldry at this period; the arms of Richard Poxe bishop of Winchester, were, Azure, a pelican in her piety, and are still displayed as those of his foundation of Corpus Christi college, Oxford. “The like eoat of arms, (remarks Strype,) or much resembling it, I find several of queen Elizabeth's first bishops took, whether to imitate Cranmer or to signify their zeal to the Gospel, and their readiness to suffer for it, I do not determine.” Memorials of Cranmer, p. 390.
page 251 note a Parker has in the Manuscript underlined with his red pencil the words shoulde have moche adoo —— signifie.
page 251 note b Foxe borrows this phrase, though not in the same place. He says that “many wagers would have been laid in London, that he should have been laid up with Cromwell, at that time in the Tower, for his stiff standing to his tackle.” c Sir John Gostwick was for many years treasurer and receiver-general of the first fruits and tenths; but the information of his descendant sir William Gostwick (quoted in Wotton's English Baronetage, 1741, i. 239, and thence copied by various other writers,) that he was afterwards master of the horse to Henry VIII. is surely erroneous. He was knight in parliament for Bedfordshire in 1539, and sheriff of Beds and Bucks in 1541. Leland says of him, when noticing Willington in Bedfordshire, (where the family was settled as early as the year 1209,) “Mr. Gostewik, beyng borne at Willington, boute (bought) this lordship of the duke of Northfolk now living, and hath made a sumptuus new building of brike and tymbre a fundamentis in it, with a conduit of water derived in leaden pipes.”
page 252 note a Foxe has enlarged this into a more finished picture—“The king finding occasion to Solace himself upon the Thames, came with his barge furnished with his musicians along by Lambeth Bridge, towards Chelsey. The noise of the musicians provoked the archbishop to resort to the bridge to do his duty, and to salute his prince: whom when the king had perceived to stand at the bridge, eftsoons he commanded the watermen to draw towards the shore, and so came straight to the bridge. ‘Ah, my chaplain,' (said the king to the archbishop,) come into the barge to me.’ The archbishop declared to his highness that he would take his own barge, and wait upon his Majesty. ‘No, (said the king,) you must come into my barge, for I have to talke with you,’ When the king and the archbishop all alone in the barge were set together, said the king to the archbishop, ‘I have news out of Kent,’”–4, of Wells 1546, of York 1549; archdeacon of Colchester 1543; died 1553.
page 253 note b See a note before in p. 216.
page 253 note c Dr. William Butts, the king's favourite physician; see Athena? Cantabrigienses, i. 87.
page 253 note d Sir Anthony Denny, another favourite attendant of Henry VIII. See his memoir in the same work, i. 99.
page 253 note e Foxe states that the king sent to York for doctor Lee, in order that he might proceed into Kent for this business. This was Thomas Legh, a master in chancery, who was much employed as one of the visitors of religious houses. He was knighted before his death, which occurred in 1545: see Athense Cantabrigienses, i. 87.
page 254 note a Sir Anthony Denny.
page 255 note a This phrase, which was one in frequent use, was equivalent to “tried to persuade him.” I bearehym in hand, Je Inyfais accroyre. Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement de laLangue Franooyse, 1530.
page 255 note b Foxe's version of this speech affords a good example of the liberties he took with Morice's narrative, and certainly often with little or no improvement either in force or probability of expression:—“The king perceiving the man's uprightness, joined with such simplicity, said, ‘O Lord! what maner of man be you! what simplicity is in you! I had thought that you would rather havo sued to us to have taken the pains to have heard you and your accusers together for your trial, without any such indurance (i. e. imprisonment). Do you not know what state you be in with the whole world, and how many great enemies you have ? Do you not consider what an easy thing it is to procure three or four false knaves to witness against you ? Think you to have better luck that way than your master Christ had ? I see by it you will run headlong to your undoing if I would suffer you. Your enemies shall not so prevail against you; for I have otherwise devised with myself to keep you out of their hands. Yet notwithstanding, tomorrow, when the council shall sit, and send for you, resort unto them, and if in charging you with this matter they do commit you to the Tower, require of them, because you are one of them, a counsellor, that you may have your accusers brought before them without any further indurance, and use for yourself as good perswasions that way as you may devise, and if no entreaty or reasonable request will serve, then deliver unto them this my ring (which then the king delivered unto the archbishop), and say unto them, ‘If there be no remedy, my lords, but I must needs go to the Tower, then I revoke my cause from you, and appeal to the king's own person by this his token unto you all;’ for (said the king then unto the archbishop) so soon as they shall see this my ring, they know it so well that they shall understand that I have resumed the whole cause into mine own hands and determination, and that I have discharged them thereof.”
page 256 note a Of the custom of sending a ring by way of token some examples have been before given in p. 56. The present passage is still more remarkable: “and so incontinently, (as Foxe words it,) upon the receipt of the king's token, they all rose, and carried to the king his ring, surrendering that matter, as the order and use was, into his own hands.”
page 257 note a John Russell, afterwards earl of Bedford.
page 258 note a Thomas Howard, second duke of Norfolk, at this time the leading ma n of the king's council: see Athense Cantahrigienses, i. 118.
page 258 note b In the year 1539.
page 259 note a The lady Mary's overt act of disobedience to her father consisted in her refusal to relinquish the title of Princess, with which he had previously invested her. The struggle occurred soon after queen Anne Boleyne had given birth to the lady Elizabeth, in the year 1533.
page 259 note b to his—lengethe in second hand over an erasure. The words erased seem to have been: one of theym shoulde see cause to repente.
page 259 note c unlawfull in second hand.
page 259 note d Francia Derham.
page 261 note a These words have been erased in the MS. and the words “my brother” in the next line altered to “they,” in order to suppress the name of mr. William Morice.
page 261 note b Foxe has rewritten this passage thus—“the hall, which was thoroughly furnished and set, both with the household servants and strangers, with four principall head messes of officers, as daily it was accustomed to be.” The MS. had originally iiij, but the first i. has been erased with a knife.
page 261 note c made to the king in second hand.
page 262 note a “Richard Nevel, gentleman, tbe steward of the houshold.” (Foxe.) He was the son of sir Alexander Neville of Nottinghamshire, and brother to sir Anthony Neville; and his son Thomas Neville, D. D., became dean of Canterbury in 1597. See Hasted, History of Kent, folio edit. iv. 534, 591.
page 262 note b he departid and, in second hand.
page 262 note c before ye came, in, second hand.
page 263 note a Parker has marked this paragraph (Than — likewise) with a stroke of his red pencil down the margin. Foxe has translated the latter clause—“and now that all is gone, you would fain have me make another chevance with the bishops’ lands, to accomplish your greedy appetites.”
page 263 note b Todd thinks this was a mistake, and that Cranmer's widow enjoyed no abbey in Nottinghamshire, but merely the rectories of Aslacton and Whatton, which had belonged to the abbey of Welbeck. Life of Cranmer, ii. 513. There is, however, extant a petition of Thomas Cranmer, son of the archbishop, stating that his father had purchased of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. the monastery of Kirkstall and nunnery of Arthington (Ibid. p. 515,) which is perhaps the purchase to which Morice refers.
page 263 note c This paragraph also is scored with the red pencil.
page 263 note d was in, second hand.
page 264 note a hadd in second hand.
page 264 note b The manor of Wingham was one of the residences of the archbishops of Canterbury (see Hasted, History of Kent, folio edit. iii. 695), but was ona of those exchanged to the crown in 29 Hen. VIII., as mentioned in a subsequent note.
page 264 note c Sir Edward Baynton was vice-chamberlain to queen Anne Boleyne, and it is said to two others of king Henry VIII.'s queens. See Latimer's Works, (Parker Society,) ii. 322. He is mentioned in a letter of Hooper in 1546 as one of the chief supporters of the Gospel in England then recently deceased. Zurich Letters, 1846, iii. 36.
page 264 note d i. e. Canterbury.
page 264 note a Edward lord North, sometime treasurer and afterwards chancellor of the court of augmentations, was one of the greatest traffickers in church lands.
page 264 note b Sir James Hales, of the Dungeon, Canterbury, (see Hasted, iv. 440,) made one of the judges of the common pleas and knighted 1547. He suffered persecution for his religious principles under Mary, after having been especially signalised among the judges for his loyalty at her accession; and, his mind becoming impaired, committed suicide in the Fleet prison. See the treatise on this catastrophe written by bishop Hooper, printed by Strype, Eccles. Memorials, iii. Appendix xxiv. Hooper's Works, (Parker Soc.) ii. 374; and for the judge's biography see Foss's Judges, vol. v. p. 370.
page 264 note c The archbishop became possessed of the late priory of St. Gregory's in Canterbury in exchange for the late abbey of St. Radegund near Dover. Richard Neville of Canterbury esquire, (see before, p. 262,) died possessed of the lease in 5 Edw. VI., and by his will gave it, after his wife's death, to Alexander Neville esquire His son. Hasted, iv. 634.
page 264 note d i. e. archbishop Parker, to whom these anecdotes were addressed by Morice. He was elected archbishop Aug. 1, 1559.
page 265 note a Against-said, hence the word gainsay.
page 265 note b oneles altogethers, in second hand.
page 265 note c By indenture, dated 30 Nov. 29 Hen. Vllt. (15-J7) the archbishop and the prior and convent of Christ church in Canterbury conveyed to the king and his successors all those his manors of Otford, Wrotham, Bexley, Northflete, Maidstone, and Knoll, with other lands and appurtenances, as particularised by Hasted in his History of Kent, folio edition,;. 340 See a letter of Cranmer to Cromwell on this exchange, in Jenkyns, i. 203.
page 265 note d Knole was granted in the reign of Edward VI. successively to the duke of Somerset and the duke of Northumberland. By queen Mary it was restored to the archbishop of Canterbury, then cardinal Pole; but, being conveyed to him personally, it returned to the crown on his death, and when queen Elizabeth stayed there for five days in 1573 it was called her own house. (Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, i. 333, 347.) She granted it first to her favourite Leicester, and it afterwards became the property of the Sackvilles, under whose care this interesting specimen of ancient magnificence has been handed down little altered to our own times.
page 265 note e The palace of Otford had been largely repaired by Cranmer's immediate predecessors Deane and “Warham; but soon after it came into lay hands, it was allowed to fall into total ruin. The Duke of Northumberland was resident there towards the close of the reign of Edward VI.; and it became the property of his son-in-law sir Henry Sidney.
page 266 note a Chislet Park, seven miles from Canterbury, had belonged to the abbat of St. Augustine's. It was granted in 29 Hen. VIII., in exchange for other lands, to the archbishop and his successors. Hasted, iii. 627.
page 266 note b Aylmer bishop of London wag afterwards, from necessity or choice, a great destroyer of timber, and in consequence acquired the punning nickname of Mar-elm. Such satirical transpositions were not unusual. Archbishop Grindal's name was converted, by no less a person than the poet Spenser, into Al-grind; and sir Richard Sackville, chancellor of the augmentations, the careful father of the lord treasurer Dorset, was thought to be properly characterised when his name was inverted into Fill-sack.
page 267 note a The forest of Blean was given to the church of Canterbury by Richard I. in the first year of his reign. (Somner's Canterbury, 4to., 1640, p. 221.) It extended from the suburbs of the city, where there is a church named St. Cosmos and Damian of the Blean, to the neighbourhood of Feversham, where lies the parish of Boughton under the Blean.
page 267 note b and in secondhand.
page 267 note c Sir Christopher Hales, solicitor-general 1525, attorney-general 1529, master of the rolls 1536, died 1541. Hasted, History of Kent, ii. 576; Foss, History of the Judges, v. 183.
page 269 note a Here the remainder of the MS. page 43G is covered by a strip of paper containing six lines, which is all that has been preserved of the leaf which in Morice's original came between the pages numbered (by Parker) 436 and 437. Probably Parker cut away the the parts now wanting, as thinking them of little general interest. Some rash hand has partially raised the patch, so that one can read a few words beneath. The text ran: “And suerlie there [was never any ?] committed to the porter's lodge oneles it were [for ?] sheding of bloodde, picking, or stealing.” The same subject seems to have been continued at the bottom of the opposite page.
page 269 note b Now Magdalene college.
page 269 note c It may be presumed that originally an hosteler was the master of on hostel or inn, of which term host was an abbreviation. At the period before us the hosteler appears to have been the principal servant or chamberlain, (see a former note in p. 100,)—whilst the function of serving liquor was usually performed by a woman, whence we read so much of alewives. In a third stage, the term ostler was transferred exclusively to servants in the stable.
page 270 note d honest second hand.
page 270 note a Foxe says that the archbishop “sent his ring to the warden of the Fleet, willing him to send the prisoner unto him, with his keeper, at afternoon,” and that the parson was brought into the garden at Lambeth, where the archbishop received him, sitting under the vine. This tale, like other parts of the original, is considerably worked up and amplified by Foxe.
page 271 note a The Rota.
page 271 note b Either R has been hidden by the binding, or Rome omitted altogether.
page 271 note c hym second hand.
page 272 note a open in second hand.
page 272 note b this preiste in second hand.
page 272 note c for it in second hand.
page 272 note d This refers to the first edition of Foxe's great work, printed in 1563.