Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/365

 , Nicholas Lechmore, one of the barons of the exchequer, had found evidences among his family apers that Bonner was born in lawful wedlock. About the year 1512 he studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, then called Broadgate Hall. In 1519 he took on two successive days (12 and 13 June) the degrees of bachelor of canon and of civil law, and was ordained about the same time. On 12 July 1525 he was admitted doctor of civil law. In 1529 we Find him in Cardinal Wolsey’s service as his chaplain, conveying important messages to the king and to the king`s secretary, Gardiner, sometimes with formal instructions drawn up in writing. After the cardinal’s fall he still remained in his service, and was sometimes, it appears, employed to communicate with Cromwell, of whose good offices the once great minister stood then so much in need. In 1530 he went with Wolsey to the north, and was with him at Cawood when he was arrested. Not long before, while with the cardinal at Scrooby, he wrote to Cromwell for some Italian books which Cromwell had promised to lend him to improve his knowledge of the language ( Letters. 3rd series, ii. 177).

In January 1532 he was sent to Rome by Henry VIII to protest against the king’s being cited thither by the pope in the question of his divorce from Catherine of Arragon, and he remained at the papal court the whole of that year. The imperial ambassador, Chapuys, says in one of his despatches from London that he had been previously one of Queen Catherine’s counsel (Calendar of Henry VIII, v. No, 762). It is somewhat strange that we have no other evidence of this, but Chapuys is not likely to have been misinformed. At the close of the year Bonner's zeal in the king's service was rewarded with the benefice of Cherry Burton near Beverley (ib. No. 1658). He is also stated to have received, but at what precise date does not appear, the rectories of Ripple in Worcestershire, and Bledon, which is probably Blaydon, in Durham. For a brief period in the beginning of 1533 he was in Enghand, having been sent home by the other English agents at Bologna, where Clement VII then was, who had gone thither to meet the emperor; but he was instructed to return in February, and was at Bologna again by 6 March. Just at that moment a faint hope was entertained of some kind of arrangement between Henry and the pope to avert a breach with Rome, but it was soon found impracticable. Henry VIII, who had already secretly married Anne Boleyn, announced her publicly at Easter as his queen, and crowned her at Whitsuntide. For this he naturally incurred excommunicntion by the pope, who pronounced sentence accordingly on 11 July. Against this sentence Henry determined to appeal to a general council, and Bonner, who followed the pope towards the close of the year into France to his meeting with Francis I at Marseilles, intimated the appeal to Clement in person, The despatch in which he reported to the king how he had done so is printed in Burnet, and gives a very vivid account of the scene, for Bonner was a sharp observer of things. The proceeding was in every way vexatious and irregular, for Henry had no real desire for a council,which, indeed, he all along tried to avert ; and the pope showed his internal irritation by folding and unfolding his pocket-handkerchief-‘which,’ wrote Bonner, ‘he never doth hut when he is tickled to the very heart with great choler' -while the datary was reading the appeal.

A very preposterous statement is made by Burnet, on no apparent authority whatever, that the pope was so enraged at Bonner's intimation of the appeal, that he talked of throwing him into a cauldron of melted lead, or burning him alive. One might just as easily imagine an English prime minister threatening to hang a foreign ambassador after a disagreeable interview. Bonner quietly discharged his commission and returned to England, where, in the spring of 1534, he was rewarded first with the living of East Derehan in Norfolk (Calender, vii. No, 545). In 1535 he was made archdeacon of Leicester, and was installed on 17 Oct. At this time all the dignitaries of the church were required by sermons and writings to enforce the doctrine of the royal supremacy, and Bonner wrote a preface to a second edition, published in 1536, of Gardineids treatise ‘De verâ Obedientiâ.' About the same time he was sent to Hamburg to cultivate a good understanding between the king and the protestants of Denmark and northern Germany. In the spring of 1538 he was sent, along with Dr. Haynes, to the emperor to dissuade him from attending the enemy council summoned by the pope at Vicenza; but they were not admitted to his presence. Later in the year he was sent to supersede Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, as ambassador at the French court, who was not overwell pleased with his treatment or with the manners of his successor; for Bonner certainly was not the man to make a disagreeable message more palatable to a rival of even to a superior. His language even to Francis I, on this embassy, was on one occasion singularly overbearing, and provoked that most courteous of kings to tell him in reply that, if it were not for the love of his