In this session, likewise, an act was passed reciting and ratifying the oath of obedience to the king and his heirs by Queen Anne, required by the statute 25 Henry VIII. ch. 22, sect. 9;* and another act, granting to the king and his heirs the payment of the first fruits, heretofore given to the pope, and the yearly tenths of all spiritual livings; † and still another, making it high treason, and taking away all sanctuaries from persons who should "wish, will, or desire, by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to the king's most royal person, the queen's, or their heirs apparent, or to deprive them of the dignity, title, and name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously publish and pronounce, by express writing or words, that the king our sovereign lord, should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, usurper of the crown." + This parliament further proceeded at once to a practical application of the principles established by previous acts in reference to the appointment and institution of bishops, by making provision for the nomination and consecration of twenty-six new suffragan bishops. § It likewise passed acts of attainder against Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, ex-chancellor of the kingdom, and several others, for refusing to take the oath relating to the succession of the crown. || *Statutes, 26 Henry VIII. ch. 2. § Ib. ch. 14. Zb. ch. 13. † Ib. ch. 3. || Ib. chaps. 22 and 23. THE years 1535-1541 were filled with transactions and events of deep moment to the Reformation. In 1535 the memorable visitation of the monasteries began. These "religious houses" were found to be, generally, cages of unclean birds or beasts, and the lesser ones were suppressed in 1536, and the greater ones in 1539.* In 1535, also, fell those great props of popery, Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More.† Another of the signs of the Statutes of the Realm, 27 Henry VIII. chaps. 27 and 28; and 31 Henry VIII. ch. 13; Burnet, vol. 1. pt. 1. bk. 111. pp. 388, 445; Fuller's Church History, bk. vI.; Froude's Hist. Eng., vol. II. ch. x. ↑ Burnet, vol. 1. pt. 1. bk. 11. p. 321. For calls More, " 'a bitter persecutor of good men." - Acts and Mons., 11. 293, 294. Froude's account of More and Fisher is very full and graphic, in vol. 11. ch. IX. For examples of More's cruel and persecuting temper, see particularly pp. 72-88, and 229. Burnet says of More: He was one of the bitterest enemies of the new preachers, not without great cruelty when he came into power, though he was otherwise a very good-natured man."- Vol. I. pt. 1. bk. 1. p. 32. " It is but common justice to his memory to add, that More ex times was the appearance, by royal authority, of "A Goodly Prymer" in the English language, pressly denied having perpetrated some of the specific acts of cruelty which were charged on him. Lewis, in his preface to Roper's Life of More, states fairly the charges against More, and gives the best answers made to these by him and his friends. He does not, however, attempt to exonerate him from the charge of harsh treatment of the persons of those reformers who fell into his hands, and of vituperative and scurrilous language when speaking of them. Singer, in his preface to Sir Thomas More's life, says: "The only serious and unrefuted charge which can be brought against his [More's] memory, is the severity of misguided zeal with which he sought out and punished the early reformers, whom he unrelentingly persecuted with the pen and scourge, as pernicious heretics." Bishop Atterbury says of More's Latin answer to Luther, that in it he had forgotten himself so far that he had there "thrown out the greatest heap of nasty language that perhaps ever was put together," and that "the book throughout is nothing but downright ribaldry, without a grain of reason to support it, and gave the author no other reputation but that of having the best knack of any man in Europe at calling bad names in good Latin; though his passion is sometimes so strong upon him, that he sacrifices even his beloved purity to it." Tyndale's Doctrinal Treatises, and his answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue, etc., abound in illustrations of the violent and even scurrilous language commonly used by More in speaking to or of the reformers, and of his persecuting spirit towards all of them within his reach. - Parker Society's Publications. For furnishes an illustration of More's special hatred of Tyndale. He tells us, that More, having any poor man before him who had been at Antwerp, where Tyndale was supposed to be, employed in translating the Scriptures and in other labors of love," most studiously would search and examine all things belonging to Tyndale where and with whom he hosted; whereabout stood the house; what was his stature; in what apparel he went; what resort he had," etc. - Acts and Mons., 11. 303. The fruits of this bitter enmity finally ripened into the betrayal and death of the good man, by the hands of a pretended friend, introduced from : commonly called the "King's Primer," and characterized by its generally evangelical character, and by its bold attacks on the cherished dogmas and practices of the Romish church. In this primer the popes are called "the cursed and wicked bishops of Rome, that heretofore have been and are but lies and vanities." The saying of prayers before images or pictures is condemned, as involving, in some instances, "the most highest blasphemy and shameful villany that can be devised to the merits of the most precious death and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ." Praying to saints and the Virgin Mary, if not condemned with all the pointedness that image-worship is, is yet treated as unnecessary, and not required by the Scriptures. Jesus Christ is spoken of throughout this primer as "our only sufficient and eternal Mediator"; and England, after being hunted from place to place for years. Any one who would understand what pains were taken, and what sums of money were expended by the English government, to stop the labors of Tyndale and to bring his life to an untimely end, should read the biographical sketch of the great translator which prefaces Tyndale's Doctrinal Treatises, in the Parker Society's Publications; or For's Story of Tyndale, 11. 301-8; or, above all, Anderson's Annals of the English Bible. A very able and comprehensive review of Sir Thomas More's life and character may be found in No. 59 of the North British Review. It was republished in Littell's Living Age, No. 776. More seems to have sympathized with the church reformers until about the time of the Anabaptist outbreak and insurrection in Germany. The radicalism of those reformers probably alarmed him, and made him fear for the safety of the State, if the new doctrine prevailed. the popish substitution of the Virgin, in place of her Son, as vile idolatry. Praying for the dead is denounced and ridiculed, "as amongst all other works of darkness and deep ignorance, not one of the least." The year 1535 is specially memorable for the appearance in print of the first entire English Bible. Wickliffe's translation had been circulating, very secretly, in manuscript, for more than a hundred and fifty years, or since about 1380, when he began the work; Tyndale's translation of the New Testament had been finding its way, for nine or ten years, all over England,† prohibited and con See the "Admonition to the Reader," introductory to the Primer, in Formularies of Faith; Preface to the Litany, ib.; and "Admonition and Warning," which precedes the "Dirige," ib. From 1534 to 1539, this primer must have been extensively circulated; for another edition was required in 1538. Though but a small volume, yet it accomplished a great work in preparing the minds of the people for the total rejection of the errors of the Church of Rome." —. - Lathbury, p. 4. 66 † Between 1525, when Tyndale's New Testament was first printed, and 1535-36, fifteen distinct impressions of this excellent translation found their way covertly into England, and they were not small editions either; and in 1536 alone, there were ten editions. Tyndale first published the gospel of St. Matthew, "printed as it was written by the Evangelist"; then, the gospel of St. Mark, probably at Hamburg, in 1525; though no fragment of this first fruit of Tyndale's scriptural labors is known to be remaining." Then followed, the same year, "The Newe Testament in Englysshe," with glosses and a prologue — begun at Cologne, by P. Quentel, and finished at Worms, by Peter Schoffer. Only thirty-one leaves of this edition are now to be found. The same year, another edition of the same appeared, - |