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XXIX.]

MORE SWEEPING RESTRICTIONS.

411

treatise.1 After granting that the clergy should have the Bible, the royal words in reference to the laity are, "It ought to be deemed certainly, that the reading of the Old and New Testament is not so necessary for all those folks, that of duty they ought, and be bound to read, but as the prince and policy of the realm shall think convenient, so to be tolerated or taken from it. Consonant whereunto the politic law of our realm hath now restrained it from a great many, esteeming it sufficient for those so restrained to hear and truly bear away the doctrine of Scripture taught by the preachers, and so imprint the lessons of the same, that they may observe and keep them inwardly in their heart."2 But this graduated toleration must have defeated its own ends, for the law could be evaded in hundreds of ways, so that three years afterwards, on the 8th of July, 1546, the Act was renewed in a more relentless and sweeping form: "No man or women, of what estate, condition, or degree, was after the last day of August to receive, have, take, or keep, Tyndale's or Coverdale's New Testament." Other works were also condemned: the whole Bible of Miles Coverdale, and the works of Fryth, Wycliffe, Joye, Roye, Turner, Tracy, &c., and were to be delivered up to be burned, the only mercy allowed being that "no bishop, chancellor, commissary, mayor, bailiff, sheriff, or constable, shall be curious to mark who bringeth forth such books." In December, 1546, a year before his death, and on his last personal meeting with his Parliament, the king, calling himself God's "vicar and high minister here," for he had taken the place of the Pope, complains of abuses in Bible reading: "For the book was disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same." The royal discourse was touching, the king wept, and many of his audience were in tears, and yet, such was the perverseness of the times that, after this last and earnest discourse on charity, "spoken so sententiously, so kingly, or rather fatherly," the next dark tragedy of his closing reign was the cruel martyrdom of Anne Askew, who had often been seen reading the Bible in 1 London, 1537. reign of Henry VIII, ed. Cardwell,

2 Formularies of Faith during the Oxford, 1825.

the aisles of Lincoln Cathedral, and who, after sentence of death had been pronounced upon her, was so tortured on the rack, that she had to be carried to the stake, at which she was burned with three companions. Bonner, Wriothesly, Rich, and Gardyner (the king being apparently passive), were the chief agents in this lady's heartless murder.1

But, though the true remedy was not to forbid the study or possession of a Bible, it was resolved to put the divine book out of existence, though fire had failed before, Bonner, who had been so kind to Coverdale and Grafton in Paris, while they were superintending the press, and who had helped to transmit to England the endangered sheets of the Great Bible, took naturally to the pastime of Bible burning. Numerous copies must have perished, and to prevent identification the title-pages of many must have been torn off. The "Supplication of the Poor Commons" 2 offers this comment:- The remnant of the sturdy beggars not yet weeded out," they say, 'tell us that vice, uncharitableness, lack of mercy, diversity of opinions and other like enormities, have reigned ever since men had the Scriptures in English. And what is this, other than to cause men's consciences to abhor the same, as the only cause and original of all this? They say it sufficeth a layman to believe as they teach, and not to meddle with the interpretation of Scripture; and what meaneth that, but that they would have us as blind again as we were? They have procured a law that none shall be so hardy as to have the Scripture in his house, unless he may spend £10 by the year" (i. e., equal to £150 now)," and what meaneth this but that they would famish the souls of the residue, withholding their food from them? Had God put immortal souls in none other, but such as be possessioners in this world? Did not Christ send word to John the Baptist that the poor received the Gospel?—Why do these men disable them from reading of the Scriptures, that are not endued with the possessions of this world? Undoubtedly, most gracious Sovereign, because they are the very same

1 See page 195.

2 There was also printed with it, "The Supplication of Beggars,"

which appeared originally many years before. Strype's Memorials, vol. I, pt. I, p. 608, Oxford, 1832.

XXIX.]

SUPPLICATION OF THE POOR COMMONS.

413

that shut up the kingdom of heaven before men. They enter not in themselves; nor suffer they them to enter that would. They are like to a cur dog lying in a cock of hay: for he will eat none of the hay himself, nor suffer any other beast that comes to eat thereof." 1

The statement of Mr. Anderson, that Tunstall and Heath omitted the motto "A Domino factum est istud" is not according to fact. It occurs in both editions-twice, indeed, in that of 1540, at the end of the colophon and at the end of the Table.

1 The following is an example of the working of the Act, the note being found on a spare leaf of a copy of Polydore Vergil's "History of Invention."

." "When I kepe Mr. Letymers shepe I bout thys boke when the Testament was oberragated, that shepeherdys myght not rede hit. I

pray God amende that blyndness. Wryt by Robert Wyllyams, keppying shepe upon Seynbury hill, 1546.” This book had been printed by Grafton during the same year. Camden's Annal, ed. Hearne, vol. I, p. xxx.

2 See p. 395.

CHAPTER XXX.

SCOTTISH History, contemporary with the last years of

Henry VIII, and the circulation of the Great Bible in his kingdom, has many stirring incidents. Scotland produced no divine or scholar that engaged in the sacred and responsible work of translation. The supply of Bibles therefore came from beyond the realm; but the enmity of the popish ecclesiastics was as rancorous against the English Scriptures in the north. as it was in the south. Cardinal Beaton had at this time prepared a list of intended victims, to the number of more than a hundred of the nobility and gentry, because, in the words of Sir Ralph Sadler, the English Ambassador, they were "gentlemen all well minded to God's Word"-the Earl of Arran, heir-presumptive to the crown, being among the number. The king could not stand even the sight of the list; but the ecclesiastics, alarmed at the proposed interview of James with his uncle, Henry VIII, pledged themselves to grant him an enormous sum of money if he would give them a secular judge to sentence criminals, for there were "many thousands who did not hesitate to study the books both of the Old and New Testament." The reading of the New Testament at this period is frequently referred to; and the authorities, so alarmed and blindly wrathful, ordered that all persons having the books, the importation of which both by foreigners and natives had been now forbidden by statute, should deliver them up to their ordinary, on pain of confiscation and imprisonment. Especially the reading of the New Testament in the vulgar tongue was for

THE VICAR OF DOLLAR.

415

mally denounced and prohibited.1 That such an act should have been deemed necessary shows that there must have been throughout the country numerous copies of the New Testament, and numerous students of it. Through the influence of Cardinal Beaton, five persons were burned on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, on the 1st of March, 1539, the king himself being present at the martyrdom. The trial of one of them, Dean Thomas Forrest, a canon regular of the Augustinian Monastery of St. Colme's Inch, and Vicar of Dollar, on the charge of having and using the New Testament in English, brings out that he had been in the habit of doing a novel thing; for though he was a dignitary, he preached out of the Scripture, and committed every day three chapters to memory. It was brought against him, not merely that he would not take the cow and corpse cloth, but that he taught his parishioners to say the Paternoster, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments in English, "which is contrary to our

Acts, that they should know what they say." When, in vindication, he quoted the declaration of the apostle, that "he would rather speak five words with the understanding than ten thousand in an unknown tongue," he was challenged by his interrogators, "Where foundest thou that?" and his reply was, "In my book here in my sleeve." It was at once plucked from him, and his accuser, holding it up, shouted, "Behold, sirs, he has the book of heresy in his sleeve that has made all the din and play in our kirk." At this trial the Bishop of Dunkeld, who, eleven years before, had sat in judgment on Patrick Hamilton, merrily exclaimed, "I thank God that I never knew what the Old or New Testament was." In 1540, under the primacy of Beaton, Sir John Borthwick, a younger son of William third Lord Borthwick who fell at Flodden, was charged with having in his possession Novum Testamentum in vulgari Anglico impressum.2 He escaped, however, but was burned in

1

Despatch by Lord Howard, and Barlow. State Papers, vol. V, p. 48. Barlow, at the time Bishop of St. Davids, writes to Crumwell, that he would preach, with the king's license,

God's Word as he had opportunity; "whereat, though the clergy shall repine, yet many of the lay people will gladly give hearing."

2 He returned, however, in better

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