Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/60

46 the foundations of the Romish Church, yet, supported by the royal power, the hierarchy in England persecuted with a high hand. "We will trace with a rapid pen the great facts of this most important contest betwixt the church—which asserted that its laws and doctrines were the truth and could not change, therefore announcing that there could be no progress—and the people, who were changing from day to day, because they were getting more light, and advancing in it.

Thomas Fitzalan, or Arundel, as he was more commonly called, being the brother of the Earl of Arundel, had been banished by Richard II., and came back with Henry IV., as it would seem, determined to deal sternly will all who thenceforth dared to trouble the church with fear of change. But the Lollards, as they were called, most probably after the German reformer, Walter Lolhard, who was burnt at Cologne in 1322, were now become a numerous and resolute body, not likely to be put down without a sturdy struggle; and, as it proved, not at all. These people had boldly announced their doctrines in their petition to the House of Commons in 1395. In that they declared that the Church of Rome was not the church of Christ, and ought to be removed. They maintained that the possession of temporalities by the clergy was totally opposed to the law of Christianity; that outward rites and ceremonies have no warrant in Scripture; that the celibacy of the clergy was the manifest work of anti-Christ, and the root of all the immoralities of the church; that transubstantiation was a gross imposition; the blessing of bread, wine, salt, oil, &c., was not religion, but necromancy; that the clergy filling offices of state were hermaphrodites, endeavouring to serve God and mammon. They attacked in the same sweeping manner pilgrimages, auricular confession, worshipping of images, absolution of sins by the priests, war, and luxury, as all equally un-Christian. They went, therefore, far beyond the after reformation of the time of Henry VIII., and resembled in many of their doctrines George Fox.

It was clear that either the Lollards or the church could not stand, and the tug of internecine war commenced at once. The public was, during this century, divided into three religious parties: the church, which was for standing as it was, unmoved and unmoving for ever; the Lollards, who were for pulling it down stick and stone; and another large section of the public which saw the corruption of the church, and demanded its reform, but did not accord with the Lollards in the cry for its destruction. The Commons, and especially the famous Lack-learning Parliament in 1404, and the Parliament of 1409, strongly recommended the king to seize the revenues of the church, as inconsistent with its spiritual office, and filling it with arrogance and sensuality, and to apply these riches to the exigencies of the state. The church, during this century, was saved from this spoliation by the contending monarchs having too much need of its support; but that process was in operation which, by destroying the old nobility, and increasing the power of the crown, should, ere long, at the cry of a new and indigent noblesse, effect this in a more wholesale manner. Safe for the time, the hierarchy let loose its fury on the Lollards.

In 1401 they burnt in Smithfield, William Sawtre, the incumbent of St. Osith's, London, for this heresy. In 1407, William Thorpe, a clergyman celebrated for his learning and eloquence, was arraigned before Arundel and others at St. Paul's for like heresy. There Thorpe made a terrible onslaught on images and pilgrimages—the image of "Our Lady of Walsingham," especially, which was at that time, and long after, the most famous in all England. Thither flocked princes, nobles, and people of all degrees to pay their vows and make their offerings; and the most extraordinary miracles were attributed to this popular virgin. Camden says: "In the last age, whoever had not made a visit and an offering to the blessed virgin of this place, was looked upon as impious." Judges from the bench ascribed all their good fortune in the world to the good offices of Our Lady of Walsingham. Ladies of all ranks were enthusiastic votaries of Our Lady. The whole place was a-blaze with gold, silver, and precious stones. Henry VIII., as a boy, walked bare-footed to the shrine from Barham, and presented a necklace of great value. It seems he never forgot the riches of the place, for it was one of the first monasteries that he afterwards ransacked.

From Thorpe's account of the pilgrimages, they appear to have been precisely what they have continued to the present day on the Continent, the licentiousness of which has compelled some of the most Catholic governments in Germany to put them down. Men and women, of all ages and characters, went whole weeks, and even months, journeys on these pilgrimages, camping out in woods and fields, with pipers and singing men and women, "jangling of their Canterbury bells," and troops of barking dogs, and enacting scandals which spread demoralisation like a pestilence. It may be imagined with what indignation so daring an attack on these things, in the height of their popularity, would be received. Thorpe, however, was not consigned to the flames, but is supposed to have lain in the archbishop's dungeon at Saltwood Castle, in Kent, till he perished, for he never was heard of again.

Thomas Badby, a tailor, of Worcester, was the next victim. He was burnt in Smithfield in 1410. In 1444, Arundel died, and was succeeded by Archbishop Chicheley, who was a still more relentless persecutor of the new faith. He it was who built the Lollards' Tower attached to the palace at Lambeth, in which he confined his heretical prisoners, chaining them to iron rings, which are still in the walls, and upon the wainscot of which remains scratched some of their names. In 1415, John Claydon, a London furrier, and a relapsed heretic, having been confined two years in Conway Castle, and three years in the Fleet, was burned for having in his possession heretical books, especially one called "The Lanterne of Light." In the same year, Richard Turmin, a baker, of London, was sent to the stake. Lord Cobham, whose bold and unbending advocacy of the reformed religion we have related, as well as his escape from the clutches of Arundel, was again captured by Chicheley, hanged and then burnt at Tyburn, December, 1418. In 1423 William Taylor, Father Abraham, of Colchester, John White, and John Wadham, priests, were burnt for the same crime of daring to think for themselves on the subject of religion.

In 1443 Chicheley died, having burnt, imprisoned, and persecuted many, yet being as far as ever from extinguishing Lollardism. In 1457, Thomas Bouchier the foundations of the Romish Church, yet, supported by