Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/366

 master, he would have had a hundred strokes of a halberd.

At the beginning of this embassy he was appointed bishop of Hereford. He seems to have had a rornise of the hishopric before he went out, but his election took place on 27 Nov. 1538, while he was in France. He could not, however, return to be consecrated, and next year, without having obtained possession of his see, he was translated to London. Meanwhile he showed himself very zealous in promoting the printing of the great English Bible for the king at Paris, He was still in France when, on 20 Oct. 1539, he was elected bishop of London. He was confirmed on ll Nov., and took out a commission from the king for the exercise of his episcopal functions on the l2th. On 4 April 1510 he was consecrated at St. Paul’s, and on the 16th of the same month he was enthroned.

His name was naturally placed on the commission to treat of doctrine in 1540 after those of the two archbishops. Next year, under a commission to try heretics, he opened a session at the Guildhall. The cruel act of the Six Articles was to he put in force, and the prisons of London could not contain all the accused, so that in the end, apparently of sheer necessity, they were discharged. But one Richard Mekins, a poor lad of fifteen, who had spoken against the sacrament, and expressed his opinion that Dr. Barnes had died holy, was condemned to death and burned in Smithfield. His fate excited naturally much compassion, and hard things were spoken of the bishop in consequence; but it 'may be doubted, notwithstanding' Foxe’s coloured narrative, whether Bonner’s action in the matter was more than official. The unhappy boy died repenting his heresies, and expressed at the stake—or, according to the puritan version, ‘was taught to speak-much good of the bishop of London, and of the great charity that he showed him’ ( Chronicle, 841). As the poor lad gained nothing by the declaration, it is not clear how he could have been ‘taught ’ to say anything but the truth.

So with other persecutions of which Bonner is accrued, of which two occurred during the reign of Henry VIII. John Porter was committed to prison by him for reading aloud from one of the six bibles that Bonner had caused to be put up in St. Paul‘s Cathedral, and making comments of his own in direct violation of the episcopal injunctions. Foxe tells us that he was laced in irons and fastened with a collar of iron to the wall of his dungeon, of which cruel treatment he died within six or eight days. But it is clear that Bonner was only answerable for the sentence, not for the severity with which it was carried out. And ns to the more memorable case of Anne Askew [q. v.], it is still more apparent that Bonner, so far from being cruelly inclined towards her, really tried his best to save her.

During the years 1542 and 15-13, Bonner was ambassador to the emperor, whom he followed in the latter year from Spain into Germany. He returned from this embassy, and was in England during the last three years of Henry’s reign, and it was during this period that Anne Askew was brought before him. The theory of his conduct first put forward by Foxe, and accepted with very little uestion even to this day, is that he was all along at heart what Foxe called an enemy of the Gospel-that is to say, of the Reformation-though he had favoured it in the first instance from motives of self-interest, and that immediately after the death of Henry VIII he showed himself in his true colours. It is not explained on this theory why a man whose principles were so very plastic under Henry became so very resolute under Edward, and sufered deprivation and imprisonment rather than submit to the new state of things. A more critical examination of the principles at issue in the different stages of the Reformation would make Bonncr's conduct suiliciently intelligible. The main point established in the reign of Henry VIII was simply the principle of royal supremacy-that the church of England, like the state, was under the constitutional government of the king. To this principle minds like those of Bonner and Gardiner saw -at the time, at least-no reasonable objection. But the point which Somerset and others sought to establish under Edward VI was that church and state alike were under the uncontrolled authority of the privy council during a minority, and that it was in vain to plead constitutional principles against the pleasure of the ruling powers.

To this neither Bonner nor Gardiner could submit without protest, One of the first things instituted in the new reign was a general visitation, by which the power of the bishops was superseded for the time. The king’s injunctions and the Book of Homilies were everywhere imposed. Bonner desired to see the commission of the visitors, which they declined to show, and accepted the injunctions and homilies with the qualification ‘if they be not contrary to God’s law and the statutes and ordinances of the church.' Unfortunately he repented his rashness, applied to the king for pardon, and renounced his protestntion. Yet, in spite of this submission, he was sent to the Fleet, where he 