The saint himself was demoted and was only to be known as Bishop Becket; all of his images were removed from the churches and his festival day was no longer observed. He was tried in his absence, as it were, and was attainted of treason. He had not been a martyr but a traitor to his prince. It was in the king’s gift, therefore, to make and unmake saints. The bones of Becket were disinterred and burned on a fire lit in the middle of the city; the ashes were then discharged into the air from a cannon. It was at this moment that the pope decided to publish his Bill of Deposition against the English king, deeming him to be excommunicate and releasing his people from the duty of obeying him. It was of no practical consequence.
This demolition of holy sites did encourage, in the more profane sort, a tendency to ridicule and scoff at all the old certainties. It was said that ‘if our lady were here on earth, I would no more fear to meddle with her than with a common whore’. When a priest raised the sacred host, during the Mass, one of the parishioners held up a small dog. Some townspeople of Rye were reported as saying that ‘the mass was of a juggler’s making and a juggling cast it was’ and that ‘they would rather have a dog to sing to them than a priest’.
The dissolution of the friaries was followed by the burning of a friar. John Forrest, an Observant friar, had been imprisoned four years before on the charge of denying royal supremacy. On 22 May 1538, a cradle of chains was placed above a pile of wood in Smithfield. Upon the pyre would soon be placed the desecrated image of a saint, known as Darvel Gadarn, that had been esteemed by the people of North Wales. The image was that of a military saint, with a sword and spear. It was said that those who made offerings of money or animals to the wooden statue would be snatched from hell itself by the saint. It was also said that the image could set alight a forest. Now Darvel himself would erupt in flames.
The ceremony of execution itself was typical. Forrest was dragged on a hurdle from Newgate to Smithfield, where a crowd of 10,000 were in attendance. The bishop chosen to read the sermon was Hugh Latimer, who had written to Thomas Cromwell in high spirits that ‘if it be your pleasure that I shall play the fool after my customary manner when Forrest shall suffer, I would wish that my stage stood near to Forrest’. So his pulpit was placed next to the scaffold, from which height he preached for three hours. When he exhorted the friar to repent Forrest replied in a loud voice that ‘if an angel should come down from heaven and show me any other thing than that I had believed all my lifetime, I would not believe him’.
‘Oh,’ Latimer replied, ‘what errors has the pope introduced into the Church! And in order that you may the better understand this, you shall presently see one of his idolatrous images, by which the people of Wales have long since been deceived.’ On a signal from Cromwell eight men carried the image of Darvel Gadarn into the open space, eliciting a great yell from the citizens, and then the three executioners continued the comedy by tying it with ropes and chains to prevent its escape.
‘My lord bishop,’ Cromwell called out, pointing to Forrest, ‘I think you strive in vain with this stubborn one. It would be better to burn him.’ He turned to the soldiers. ‘Take him off at once.’
He was led to the cradle of chains and hoisted into the air. The wooden image, and other piles of wood, were placed beneath him and lit with torches.
The friar was suspended above the fire, and when he began to feel the flames he beat his breast and called out ‘Domine miserere me’ – ‘Lord have mercy on me’. He took two hours to die. In his mortal agony he clutched at a ladder to swing himself out of the blaze, but he did not succeed. The chronicler Edward Hall, remarked without pity that ‘so impatiently he took his death as never any man that puts his trust in God’. A ballad was soon circulating through the streets of London:
But now may we see,
What gods they be
Even puppets, maumets and elves;
Throw them down thrice
They cannot rise
Not once, to help themselves.
A few hours later the holy rood or crucifix close to the church of St Margaret Pattens, in Rood Lane, was attacked and demolished. It would not be so easy to remove or destroy the tenets of the old faith.
11
The old fashion
At the beginning of 1537 the bishops were ordered to draw up a statement of belief that would broadly fit Henry’s scheme for a middle way between orthodoxy and reform; the bishops themselves were divided on almost every matter under discussion, with the result that they produced what the bishop of Winchester called ‘a common storehouse, where every man laid up in store such ware as he liked’. Some said that there were three sacraments, others insisted that there were seven, and yet others believed that there were one hundred. They sat at a table covered with a carpet, while their priestly advisers stood behind them. Once they had agreed tentatively on a closing statement, they dispersed with alacrity; the plague had struck London, and the dead were lying close to the doors of Lambeth Palace.
The king went through the document and made copious emendations to the text. Thomas Cranmer then supervised the king’s work and was bold enough to correct his sense and his grammar. He told his sovereign that one word ‘obscureth the sentence and is superfluous’ and reminded him that ‘the preter tense may not conveniently be joined with the present tense’. It seems that Henry did not take offence at the archbishop’s presumption.
It was entitled The Institution of a Christian Man but it became better known as The Bishops’ Book. It was essentially a series of popular homilies to be preached from the pulpit, and was close enough to the injunctions of the old faith to be accepted and acceptable. The major difference of belief lay in the controversy between faith and works; those of a Lutheran persuasion believed that the only hope of human redemption reposed in the faith of Christ; all mankind was utterly corrupt, but Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross was sufficient to save the erring soul. If the individual placed all his or her faith and hope in Christ he or she would be saved. No work or act made any difference. It was a question of being reborn by God’s act of grace as if by a lightning flash, with the sinner then becoming utterly reliant upon divine mercy. Those who followed the tenets of the old Church profoundly disagreed with this doctrine, believing that acts of charity and good works were essential for salvation; they also reinforced the fervent belief that the administration of the seven sacraments by the Church was part of the process of redemption.
In The Bishops’ Book the issue was avoided in what may be called an act of creative ambiguity. In particular the king’s revision deleted and amended passages that Cranmer had written on justification by faith alone. Where Cranmer had stated that the believer became God’s ‘own son through adoption and faith’ Henry added the words ‘as long as I persevere in His precepts and laws’. The final text emphasized faith without endorsing Lutheran doctrine while at the same time reducing the role of good works without repudiating Catholic beliefs. But the book also supported such ancient practices as the bearing of candles at Candlemas and the hallowing of the font. Henry also demanded that the section on the three sacraments should be altered to include the missing four. It seems likely that, for most people, there was no reason to doubt that the ‘old ways’ would continue indefinitely.
It was said by a magistrate from Rainham in Kent that the new book ‘alloweth all the old fashion and putteth all the knaves of the New Learning to silence so that they dare not say a word’. Cranmer rebuked the magistrate by saying that ‘if men will indifferently read those late declarations, they shall well perceive that purgatory, pilgrimages, praying to saints, images, holy bread, holy water, holy days, merits, works, ceremony, and such other be not restored to their late accustomed abuses’. The Bishops’ Book, therefore, was open to interpretation.