After that, how could I tell Margaret that my interest in her husband’s death was at an end? For Locke’s benefit I went over again my censored account of events at Greenwich. The three of us talked until the great clock of St Paul’s struck eleven and the mercer scurried away to a business appointment. Before he said his goodbyes, he urged me to borrow the pamphlet. ‘It will give you a better idea of what these papist fanatics are capable of,’ he said.
That night I retired to my chamber to read the lamentable account of Richard Hunne’s last days. Whoever had compiled this record had had access to official documents, hitherto ‘lost’ or suppressed, and had set them out clearly with a commentary that revealed the full details of his conflict with church authorities and the horror of the revenge taken by those authorities. As I read, my thoughts went back to that small, bleak oppressive chamber in the Lollards’ Tower where I had spent dismal hours looking up at the hook from which that earlier occupant had been suspended. I identified with the poor man’s fate. It both repelled and fascinated me.
Hunne’s difficulties had begun in 1511 in a disagreement with his parish priest over a payment for professional services. The vicar took his stand on ecclesiastical law and Hunne countered with an appeal to civil law. Neither side would give way and the priest took the case to higher authority. The clergy closed ranks in support of their colleague and Hunne found himself facing a charge of heresy. He responded by bringing a civil case for slander against his accusers. It was to pre-empt this action that the bishop’s officers struck first and had Hunne thrown into the Lollards’ Tower, in October 1514. The whole City was now up in arms and waiting for Hunne’s civil action to come to court. There was only one escape route for his enemies — the ‘heretic’ must die. They concocted a plot and carried it out one night in December 1514. The coroner’s report set out all the vile details: the original plan was to make it appear that the prisoner had died from natural causes. They locked Hunne in the stocks in his cell while they made a last-minute attempt to persuade him to drop the charges. When this failed they dumped him on his bed with his arms bound behind him. There he stayed till past midnight, when William Horsey entered the cell, accompanied by John Spalding, a jailer, and Charles Joseph, a member of the bishop’s staff. They lost no time in setting about their grizzly task.
Joseph heated a long needle in a candle flame. While the others held their victim down, he thrust this up Hunne’s nose, aiming to pierce the brain and, thus, cause death without leaving any marks on the body. All this achieved was a massive effusion of blood, which stained Hunne’s shirt and Horsey’s jerkin. The prisoner was now screaming and writhing in agony, half on and half off the bed. The murderers panicked. They grabbed Hunne in an effort to silence him. They silenced him well enough: in the fracas they broke his neck.
Now they had to make the best of a bad job. That meant arranging a fake hanging. They cleaned the body and put a fresh shirt on it. Then they removed Hunne’s sash, formed a noose for his neck, hoisted him up and tied the other end of their makeshift rope to the hook in the wall. They tidied up the cell as best they could but were so anxious to get away that they bungled the job badly. The stool the suicide was supposed to have used was placed upon the bed. His bloodstained coat was left lying in a dark corner. There was more blood on the floor. And in their zeal to make everything appear as normal as possible, the criminals carefully extinguished the candle that Hunne would have had to have used in order to fix the rope to hang himself. The coroner’s jury could not fail to draw from all the evidence that Richard Hunne had been murdered.
While a search was instigated for the culprits, news of the atrocity gripped the capital. There were demonstrations of citizens, calling for justice against the clergy. The bishop and his accomplices were now so deeply mired that they could only press on in defiance of the evidence and the court proceedings. At a hastily convened tribunal, Hunne was posthumously declared a heretic, his body was duly burned and his goods confiscated, thus reducing his wife and children to penury.
It was late by the time I finished reading. I fell, fully clothed, upon my bed and extinguished the candle. My mind was still in a whirl. That was when the nightmares began.
Chapter 38
The dreams that invaded my sleep over the next few nights became so persistent that I scarcely dared close my eyes. The details varied but the main elements were constant. I was lying on the bed in the Lollards’ cell, unable to move or cry out. Hideous, distorted faces leered down at me. They were chanting, chanting, chanting and my silent screams could not drown their monotonous, tuneless formula: exitus acta probat, exitus acta probat, exitus acta probat!
For two or three days I wrestled with a pressing, unwanted inevitability. An accusing conscience insisted that, whatever well-meaning friends might advise, whatever Lord Cromwell might order, whatever dangers might threaten, that which I had begun I had to finish. God in heaven knows I tried to stop my ears to that nagging inner voice. I immersed myself in work. I refused to think about murderers and heretics and Bibles and when such subjects thrust their way into my mind I told myself that I had already done more than enough to avenge my friend.
Pragmatism would probably have won out in the end had it not come under attack, not only from my conscience but also from a very pronounced change of mood in the City. Locke was right. The anonymous pamphlet had stirred up virulent anti-clericalism. There was always an undercurrent of ill-feeling towards the senior clergy among the mercantile community but now the hostility was almost tangible. In every tavern, alehouse and marketplace, people were talking about the fresh revelations concerning the old Hunne case. Even Cromwell benefited from the change of attitude. People who had grumbled about the New Learning and its impact on their traditional activities now applauded the minister’s initiative in bringing the overmighty ecclesiastical establishment to heel. Robert’s murder offered proof that the arrogant and power-hungry senior clergy had not changed in the twenty or so years since they had done to death another respected London merchant. Thus it was that the conviction grew that I could not remain inactive; that I had a public duty to expose the crimes of the Incents and their accomplices. Perhaps I was being called to play a significant role in bringing about real reform.
As I brooded on this I could see only one way to achieve my objective. There was no one from whom I could obtain fresh evidence. The Seagraves might know something but if I approached them Cromwell would undoubtedly hear of it and exercise a firm veto. Doggett undoubtedly possessed the information I desired but I could see no way to obtain his cooperation. If Incent was to be delivered up to the magistrate, it would have to be with the support of his own confession. Slowly I put together a plan — admittedly desperate — to obtain his signature to such a document.
While I was still pondering this initiative, a messenger called with an unexpected letter. It read:
Master Treviot, be assured of my right hearty commendations.
Please be advertised that I have today had the pleasure to call upon Mistress Packington. Being in Westminster for the great council summoned by His Majesty’s Vicegerent in Spirituals, I took the opportunity to visit the lady in hope to bring her some comfort after the tragic loss of her husband. She received me graciously and was, I think, somewhat solaced by memories I shared with her of that fine gentleman. It was the lady’s wish that I might call upon you and impart to you my recollections of conversations between Master Packington and myself as we came together from Antwerp into England and of our subsequent correspondence. These presents are to desire you to agree your conformity and goodwill thereunto.