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STRICTURES
ON THE
POET LAUREATE'S
BOOK OF THE CHURCH."
STRICTURES
ON THE
((
POET LAUREATE'S
Eoofc of t&e e&tttck"
Omnia transformat scse in miracula rerum.
V1RG. G. IT.
By JOHN MERLIN.
LONDON:
Printed by and for Keating and Brown, 38, Duke Street, Grosvenor
Square, and 9, Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row ; sold also by J. Booker,
A. Cuddon, W. Andrews, and Sherwood and Jones.
And by R. Coyne, 4, Capel Street, DUBLIN.
1824.
LOAN STAOB^
SKsoss
Skiff
STRICTURES
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH/ 3
A degree of enthusiasm is requisite to con-
stitute the character of a Poet ; but no quality
is more at variance with it than religious fana-
ticism. This confuses the imagination, mis-
leads the judgment,, and hardens the heart ; in
so much, that a man of real genius and
talents for the Muses, on falling into this
fanaticism, would be found too dull in his com-
positions to gain for them a patient reading.
Such have been the late aberrations of our Lau-
reat's mind. After writing D'Esperilla's Letters
in commendation of the Catholic Religion, and
Wat Tyler's Drama, to excite popular tumults
against Government, he has latterly celebrated
and recommended the chief and most dangerous
schismatics from the Establishment, the Wes-
leys, Whitfields, and their associates ; and now,
in the frantic style, and with the lying memo-
rials of another such schismatic, John Fox, he
568
* STRICTURES ON
raves, through the history of many centuries, in
abusing and calumniating the common source
of Christianity, in order to court the heads of
the present Establishment, under pretence of
vindicating- it.
Mr. Southey, it has been stated, is a Poet ;
that is, as the original Greek word signifies, a
maker or inventor. Hence we are not to be
surprised if he makes use of his poetical licence
or faculty in writing history, rather than weary
himself in hunting outand bringing forward dusty
records for the many extraordinary things he
describes and tells. It is true, he says, he (C can
<c refer to authorities for them among his col-
" lections/' but that he does not give these,
Ci because the scale of his work is not one which
(t would require or justify a display of re-
{l search." But it may be truly said of the case
in question : De non apparentibus et de non ex-
istentibus eadem est ratio : on the other hand, his
tedious quotations from John Fox, and other
writers of John Fox's standard, prove that he has
not been sparing of ink or paper. While the Poet
confines himself to the mythology of the Britons,
Saxons, and Danes, no one can feel an interest
in investigating his authorities ; but when he
indulges his fancy with the truths of Revelation,
or facts connected with those truths, he ought
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." O
to be dragged down to the solid ground of au-
thentic documents.
Speaking of the first conversion of this Island
to Christianity by the envoys of Pope Eleutheri us,
under the subordinate British King, Lucius, he
says that " it rests on legends of doubtful au-
" thority/' and yet it is recorded by every
writer of character, who treats of the matter,
whether British, Saxon, or Roman, whether
Protestant or Catholic, from Nennius down to
Parker, God win, and Usher; nor can any motive
be assigned for his affected doubts on the sub-
ject, except his unwillingness to ascribe so great
a benefit, as the conversion of the Britons, lo
the See of Rome. The conversion, however,
of our immediate ancestors, the Anglo-Saxons,
together with their civilization and instruction
in literature and the useful arts, by monks sent
from Rome on the part of Pope St. Gregory, is
a fact too notorious to be called in question by
him. But he takes care to suppress two other
facts of the greatest importance in the present
case, though acknowledged by Bale, the Cen-
turiators, and other learned Protestants; name-
ly, that the Apostles of our ancestors, these
envoys from Pope Gregory, brought along
with them from Rome, the same Christianity
which is professed in it at the present day ;
b2
6 STRICTURES ON
namely, the Mass, the Real Presence, the Su-
premacy of the Pope, Prayers to the Saiuts and
for the Dead, Relicks, Crucifixes, and Holy Wa-
ter. The second fact is, that the Roman Mis-
sionaries arriving here, at the end of the sixth
century, found the Britons or Welsh, who had
been converted in the second century, professing
the self-same religion with themselves. For had
it been otherwise, these Roman Missionaries
never would have allowed, much less have
required them, as St. Augustine of Canterbury
did, to join with him and his companions in
converting the remaining Pagan Saxons.
This important fact is further confirmed by the
previous missions of St. Germanus, Lupus, and
Severus, continental Bishops,in communion with,
and deriving their authority from the Pope, who,
nevertheless, when they visited the Christian
Britons above a century before the arrival of
St. Augustine, confined their efforts to the
extirpation of the Pelagian heresy t In vain do
many Protestants harp on the difference that
was found in the British and the Roman com-
putation of Easter Day, since every one sees
that this regarded a mere secondary point of
discipline, not the essential points of Religion.
In vain also do some others alledge that the
Britons would not receive St. Augustine for
-THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH.'* 7
their Archbishop; in tact, he neither claimed to
be such, nor would the maintenance of their
ancient Sees, on the part of the Britons, have
proved in any sort their Religion to have been
different from that of Rome. It is then a mere
fiction of the Poet, that the faith of the Welsh
was if purer than that of the Christian
iC Saxons," as is also the assertion that the
Apostles of the latter " were little scrupulous
ce concerning the measures they employed,
" being persuaded that any measures were
" justifiable, if they conduced to bring about
ct the good end which was their aim,"
It is of little consequence noticing the au-
thor's errors that are not of a practical tendency,
as when he says, " there was but one Pope
" Gregory, besides the one who is deservedly
'1 styled the Great, distinguished by the rank
" of Saint," and when he calls St. Benedict, who
was of a noble family, and had received a learn-
ed education in the schools of Rome, " an Ita-
' lian -peasant ;" but when he commends the
Primate Theodore for having, as he expresses
it, {C prohibited divorce for any other cause
" than the one which is allowed by the Gos-
" pel," p. 81, he falsifies a sy nodical decree, in
order to decide an important controversy be-
tween Catholics and Protestants. It is false,
8 STRICTURES ON
then, that Theodore, or rather the Council of
Herudford, over which he presided, mentioned,
or so much as alluded to the unlawful practice
of divorce. What it decreed is the same that
the Catholic Church has taught in every age and
country ; namely, that " no one is to leave his
(i wife unless as the Gospel teaches, on account
" of fornication. But if any one shall have ex-
" pelled his wife, let him marry no other, but
" remain as he is, or be reconciled to his own
'' wife."*
Mr. Southey, indeed, attributes merit to the
Catholic Clergy for building churches, and
getting them endowed with rates, and glebes,
and tithes ; benefits which descend to his pre-
sent clients, who most assuredly would never
have gained them from the religious feelings of
their contemporary laity ; in other respects he
hardly ever speaks of them, but to charge them
with the grossest ignorance, superstition, and
religious corruptions charges which cost no-
thing to advance. He goes so far as even to
advance that " Christianity, in the days of
* Nullus conjugem propriam, nisi ut Sanctum Evangelium docet
fornicationis causa relinquet. Quod si quisquam propriam ex-
pulerit conjugem nulli alteri copuletur, sed ita permaneat, aut
propria? reconcilietur conjugi. Concil. Herud. A.D. 673. Spelman
Concil. p. 153.
"THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH/' 9
iC Dunstan, was as much a system of priest-
" craft as that which, at the present day, pre-
<c vails in Hindostau and Tibet." It is true
the wide-wasting ravages of the barbarous
Danes were a great obstacle to the progress of
literature, which the clergy, and particularly the
monks, during the middle ages, ever cultivated
and promoted ; but the very names of a Bede,
an Aldhelm, an Alcuin, and an Ingulph, with
those of a hundred other scholars who might be
named, together with the existing decrees of
the councils held in those times, prove that
there was much more learning and cultivated
genius in them than superficial moderns are
willing to allow. As to the charge of supersti-
tion and the corruption of Christianity, it is
what every sect of modern reformers brings
against the others who have not advanced so
far as themselves in the career of irreligion.
The Presbyterians accuse the Church of Eng-
land of numerous superstitions and corruptions.
The Baptists bring the same charge against
the Calvinists for baptizing mere infants,
as the Quakers do against all other denomi-
nations, for baptizing persons at all. So things
must be till the end of time, and Christ must
blasphemously be said not to have provided for
the peace and truth of his Church, unless we
10 STRICTURES ON
admit that he has left a faculty and an authority
in it to pronounce what is, and what is not super
stition and corruption. Appealing then to the
unerring decisions of this living tribunal, we
know and are sure that the Real Presence, for
example, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the
Confession of Sins, and Prayers for the Dead,
and the other doctrines and practices of the
Catholics, which we otherwise prove to have
come down to us from the Apostles, are not
corruptions, but constituent parts of genuine
Christianity.*
I have been speaking of the avowed doctrine
and practices of the Church, which are known by
her Councils and authorized publications, such
as the Pastoral of St. Gregory, the Sum of St.
Thomas, and The Following of Christ, byaKem-
pis, not by the particular factsor opinions of indi-
viduals, much less by the dreams of mere legen-
dary writers, and still less by the bigotted fic-
tions of modern Protestants. Let Mr. Southey
make out his charge from the authorities here
referred to, if he can ; in the mean time I wish
to ask him what he would say or think of the
honesty of a Catholic writer, who, giving an
* See all this proved in Bellarmine's Controversies, in Hawarden's
True Church of Christy in The End of Controversy, and other
works of the same description.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." I I
account of the state of the English Church in
the last century, was to assert, on the authority
of his late Life of Wesley, that its clergy be-
lieved themselves to have power over the ele-
ments, and even the celestial spirits ;* that they
taught their hearers to lay aside prayer and
good works, and to believe themselves tree from
every law human and divine, + and professedly
worked them up to paroxysms of frantic mad-
ness, or utter despair. J
The name of St. Dunstan, to whom the pro-
motion of the superstitions and corruptions in
question is more particularly attributed, has
been disgraced by his biographers in the vision-
ary scenes in which they have involved him.
This has been the fate of other the most illus-
trious characters : Pope Silvester II. and Friar
Bacon, because they so much excelled their
cotemporaries in Chemistry and Mathematics,
and produced such then unknown physical
effects, were reported to deal with the devil. At
* The Rev. G. Whitfield believed that the angel Gabriel attended
on his congregation ; accordingly he pretended to call him back as
he was ascending to heaven, in order to bear a particular message,
thus: Stop, Gabriel/ stop ! Wesley's Life, vol. ii. p. 239.
t See Southey's Account of the Moravians, whose fundamental
fanaticism of instantaneous conversion he himself avows. Vol. i.
p. 159.
% See the account of Messrs. Berridge, Hicks, &c. regular clergy-
men. Vol. ii. c, 24.
C
12 STRICTURES ON
all events, St. Dunstan's unquestionable talents
and actions made him by far the first character
of his age. Besides being an illustrious ascetic,
a restorer of clerical and monastic discipline,
and a model of prelatic virtues, he was a learned
scholar, an exquisite mechanic in the most deli-
cate kinds of works, a complete musician, and,
what was of most consequence to his king and
country, an accomplished Statesman and Prime
Minister. Before and after his time, as is well
known, the kingdom was over-run and laid waste
by the Northern pirates ; whereas, by his wise
measures, and particularly by his keeping a
well-provided fleet on each of our three coasts,
his pupil Edgar kept them in peace and order,
without a battle, during the whole of his reign ;
and in proof of his sovereignty, he obliged eight
of their kings, in quality of his boatmen, to row
him in state down the river Dee. The former qua-
lities, however, among those mentioned above,
were sure to draw down on this illustrious cha-
racter the obloquy and calumnies of modern
infidel and Protestant historians. John Fox,
and Carte and Hume had broached them, but
Mr. Southey has enlarged them and set them off
with his fanciful decorations. I can only here
take notice of the weightier of these charges.
He is accused then of tearing away King Edwy
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 13
from his wife by brutal force, on the day of this
Prince's coronation. The truth is, the woman
was not his wife, but his near relation,* and the
wife of one of his Thanes. The fact of her not
being his wife, but an infamous prostitute, is tes-
tified by all ancient authors: Malmsbury, Hun-
tingdon, Wallingford,Gervase, Brompton, Hid-
den, &c. ;f and the conduct of the royal youth,
not then fourteen years of age, was such as
could not be tolerated by Christians or civi-
lized men in any age or country. Leaving his
Thanes and Bishops who were assembled to
do him honour, he betook himself to the com-
pany of that abandoned woman, and her equally
guilty daughter, and was found by his kins-
man, the Bishop of Litchfield, Kinsey, and his
tutor Dunstan, then Abbot of Glastonbury,
whom the Thanes had deputed to expos-
tulate with him, in a situation that was an
outrage to public morality, as well as to the
kingly dignity. J None but the profligate
* W. Malmsbury. f Brompton.
% " Invenerunt coronam de capite ejus, et ipsum medium inter
duas, matrem Ethelgivam nomine, et filiam, alternatim eas lascive,
Coronam capiti imponentes potius invitum quam voluntarium re-
duxerunt. Chronica Wallingford apud Galo." p. 542. u Ipso die
quo (EdwinusJ in regem sacratus fuerat frequentissimo consessu
procerum, dum de rebus seriis et regno necessariis inter eos
ageretur e medio quasi ludibundus prorupit et in complexum
ganae devolutus, &c." Gul. Malm, de Gest. Reg. 1. ii. c.7.
c2
14 STRICTURES ON
youth's enemies, who sought his ruin, which, in
fact, soon after followed, could connive at such
sceues. That the Primate Odo pronounced
between Edwy and Elgiva, whom he believed
to have been never married together, and that
he caused a sentence of divorce the former
to be dethroned, and the latter to be put to
death, are circumstances utterly destitute of his-
torical authority, and mere fictions of the Poet.
Auother of Mr. Southey's alleged corruptions
of the Church in the time of S. Dunstan, and for
which he brings him in as particularly guilty,
was the enforcing of clerical celibacy. He says
that f? nothing in ecclesiastical history is more
(C certain than that no such obligation was im-
" posed during the three first centuries, and
" that the Scripture affords not the slightest
" pretext for it." Let the great Origen, who
flourished at the end of the second century
and the beginning of the third, speak to these
points. He says : (i It belongs to him alone
" to offer up the never failing sacrifice, who
" has devoted himself to a never failing and
cc perpetual chastity. "* To the saaw) effect
Venerable Bede observes : ff In the old law,
" priests were required to be continent during
" the stated times of their ministry : but now an
* Horn. 23 in Num.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 15
" injunction is laid upon priests to observe
" chastity continually, and ever to abstain from
" the use of marriage, that they may always
< assist at the altar." # St. Jeroin testifies, that in
the three great Patriarchates namely Rome,
Alexandria, and Antioch, no persons were re-
ceived among the clergy but such as were sin-
gle, or who had separated themselves from their
wives.t The tragical event of the assembly at
Caine in Wiltshire, where Beornelm, and his
party, arguing for clerical marriages, the beams
of the room on which they rested gave way, and
they were killed or maimed by the fall ; while
the beam which supported St. Dunstan remain-
ing firm, he escaped unhurt : this is ascribed
by Mr. Southey and modern Protestants to a
malicious contrivance of the Primate, while their
predecessors, John Fox and the Lutheran Cen-
turiators, attributed it to his skill in majric.
Passing on to the Norman period, the Poet
aims many mortal stabs at his mother Church,
through the sides of her sainted Pontiff Gre-
gory VII., and our learned Primate, St. Anselm.
The former he calls " a restless spirit who has
* Expos, c. 1, Luc.
f Advers. Vigilant St. Epiphanius testifies to the same effect.
Hores. 59. See Concil. Eliber. can. 33. 2. Cone. Carthag,
can. 2. Concil. Nicen. can. '3.2. Cone. Arelat. can. 2.
16 STRICTURES ON
"obtained an opprobrious renown in history ;"
while equitable judges, who are possessed of
the genuine spirit of Christianity, pronounce,
that he has acquired glory to himself for time
and eternity, by extirpating that system of
simony and that wide spreading incontinency,
which undermined the sanctity of the Church at
the time in which he lived. The book-maker
admits that it was a right thing to oppose
simony, though practised by Kings and Em-
perors, as it certainly was at that period, to a
scandalous degree ; # but he ridicules the claim
of he Church to be ' f the door of the sheep-
fold," that is, to claim an exclusive power of
granting spiritual investitures, or the divine
jurisdiction necessary for Bishops and Priests to
administer the sacraments and the word of God
to their respective flocks. This arises from the
Poet's ignorance of the matter, and from the
utter want of such jurisdiction, in the Church
to which he professes to belong. The Catholic
Church, however, has at all times, been equally
jealous of her jurisdiction and her doctrine, and
therefore when she found that temporal Princes
fancied, that by conferring the temporalities of a
* " Dei ecclesias expiiavit (Rex) et Episcopatus, Abbatiasque
sive pretio vendidit, sive sua possessione retinuit atque elocavit."
Sax. Chron. A. D. 1100.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 17
Bishopric, for example, they really gave jurisdic-
tion and made the Bishop, and insisted on con-
ferring the same by the ecclesiastical emblems
of jurisdiction and faith, the crosier and the ring,
the Church necessarily condemned the usage.
In this decision the temporal Princes at length
acquiesced, contenting themselves with their
Prelates swearing fealty to them and doing
homage for their temporal possessions. St. An-
selm's cause was precisely the same as the Pope's
in this respect, and is quite distinct from the
latter's claim of pronouncing when Princes, by
their misconduct had forfeited their right to the
obedience of their subjects : a claim which has
at all times and in all countries been denied and
withstood, and this, without the reproof of the
Pontiff himself, by the most orthodox and con-
scientious Catholics.
But it is on the celebrated champion of the
Church, St. Thomas Becket, that the Poet
more copiously discharges his bile. To this
end, contracted as he says his scale is, he
devotes a hundred pages of his first volume.
Nevertheless, by distinguishing the three differ-
ent stages of the Primate's contention with his
King, it is possible to give a succinct yet clear
account of the whole matter. In the first of these
stages then, the question was about the exemption
18 STRICTURES ON
of the clergy from the jurisdiction of civil tribu-
nals. The origin of this was not such as is des-
cribed by Mr.Southey,but arose from the special
grants of Constantine, Valentinian and other
Christian Emperors, who thought itbetter that the
legal offences of clergymen, when they occurred,
should be judged and punished privately by
their Bishops, than that an order of men should
be degraded whose reputation was so essentially
connected with that of morality and Religion.
This part of the public law, with the other
parts of it, and with literature itself, was in-
troduced among our unlettered ancestors, by
their Christian Apostles, and, at the time we
are speaking of, was the undoubted law of the
land. This being so, was it not the Primate's
duty to maintain the exemption rather than sell
it for his own personal advantage, as some of
his cotemporary Prelates did ; especially when
he knew to what lengths of injustice and
cruelty the King's unbounded anger was ca-
pable of driving him ? And shall those moderns
who applaud Primate Langton for asserting
this, among the other privileges of the clergy,
in the first article of Magna Ckarta, sword in
hand, condemn St. Thomas Becket for claim-
ing it in a peaceable and legal manner ? The
second of these stages regarded the Constitu-
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 19
tions of Clarendon which, under the false name
of ancient usages, were recent inventions con-
certed by the flatterers of Henry, not only for the
destruction of those and the other privileges of
the clergy, but also for the subjugation and
oppression of the Catholic Religion itself, then
the sworn Religion of England. In proof of
this, it is sufficient to refer to the seventh of
these new invented articles, which goes to take
the most important department of spiritual
jurisdiction out of the hands of the Bishops,
and to place it in the hands of the King and
his civil ministers.* A Thomas Cranmer, in-
deed, would, in these circumstances, have
surrendered the divine jurisdiction of the
Church, but not a conscientious Catholic
Bishop. The third scene of the contest was one
of a pure, unmixed ecclesiastical nature : two
of the Primates suffragan Bishops, those of
London and Salisbury, had concurred in the
invasion of the rights of his Metropolitical
See by the coronation of the young King, in
his province and in his despight. It was his
unquestionable duty to maintain the rights of
the archbishopric and the discipline of the
* " Nullus qui de Rege tenet in capite, nee aliquis Dominicorum
ministrorum ejus excommunicatur, nee alicujus eorum terras, su 1
interdicto ponnatur nisi prius D. Rex, si in regno fuerit, conveniatur
vel justiciarius ejus, si fuerit extra regnum, &c." Mat. Paris,
A.D. llf> r.
20 STRICTURES ON
English Church : accordingly, he excom-
municated those suffragans, till they should
acknowledge their fault. Instead of their doing
this, four armed ruffians rush forward, and with
uplifted swords, require the Primate, then
officiating in his Cathedral, to absolve the
censured Prelates : he meekly answers, " They
have given no satisfaction. " cc Then you shall
die," they fiercely exclaimed. " / am. ready to
Uie/* is his answer, "in the cause of God and
his Church/' at the same time bowing his head
to their murderous weapons.
What civil judge, that had been assassinated
in his court for refusing to let armed ruffians
take the law into their own hands, would not
have been immortalized by all good men ? By
the same rule the Church is never more clearly
justified in the language of her Liturgy, than
when she prays as follows: < Oh God! for
whose Church the glorious Pontiff] Thomas,
died by the sivords of the impious/* #c.
Preparing now to bring on the stage characters
widely different from those of the Saints and
Martyrs of past ages, the Poet exhibits the
most hideous caricature of the religion of the
latter, that his imagination can frame, under
the title of A View of the Papal System. In
this chapter, and in other parts of his book,
he works up every legendary tale and every
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 21
vulgar superstition into an avowed doctrine or
a practice of the Catholic Church ! and yet he
has before his eyes the canons and decrees of
the numerous Councils that were held in the
ages he refers to, as likewise the voluminous
works of the great St. Bernard, the acknow-
ledged light of his age, the books of the
Master of Sentences, Peter Lombard, which were
commented upon by all the doctors, and the
Summa Theologice of St. Thomas of Aquin,
which was studied by all the divines of his own
and succeeding ages. From these sources, if
he meant to combat the Catholic Religion
honourably and conscientiously, and not from
his own imagination and such collections as he
is afraid to bring forward, he would have
drawn the articles he meant to impugn and
ridicule.* The learned reader will form some
idea of the Poet's collection and of his
learning from his affirming that " the Popes
* In proof that the Catholics had transferred their worship of
Christ to the martyr Becket, he mentions that the offerings at the
altar of the latter in Canterbury Cathedral at a certain time,
were found to be of great value, while nothing at all was given at
Christ's altar. With equal justice might a Catholic argue, that the
Protestants of London prefer poor Byrne to Christ, because
they have lately subscribed a large sum for this victim of the in-
famous Bishop Joscelyn's perjury, and not a shilling to Christ-
Church Hospital in their city.
d2
22 STRICTURES ON
<s long* hesitated to sanction what he calls the
<c corruption of Transubstantiation, and that
" Hildebrand, S. Gregory VII, not only in-
" clined to the opinion of Berenger, by whom
ec it was opposed, but pretended to consult the
Virgin Mary, and then declared that she had
" pronounced against it !" The Poet pretends
to account for the reception of this doctrine,
and that of the sacrifice connected with it, by
the Church of Rome, but he never thinks of
explaining how the several Churches of Greece,
Russia, Armenia and Ethiopia, nor how the
Nestorians and Eutychians, who had been in
open opposition to the Roman Church for so
many centuries before the period in question,
came to adopt the same alleged corruptions.
The same argument holds good with respect to
invoking the prayers of the Saints, venerating
their remains, the confession of sins, praying
for the dead, and the other Catholic tenets and
practices; all which the Poet first misrepresents
and then ridicules.* If his object be to raise a
no-popery persecution, as his hero Wesley did in
1780, he goes the ready way to effect it : but,
if it be to withdraw the members of the Church
of eighteen centuries from her communion,
experience proves that he will utterly fail, as
they are conscious of believing in a Religion
* See a detailed refutation of them in the End of Controversy.
THE BOOK OF TriE CHURCH." 23
the reverse of what he represents it to be. On
the other hand, many upright members of his
own communion, on discovering the utter
falsehood of his charges against her, as so many
others have already done, will not hesitate to
throw themselves into her bosom. Nothing so
easy as to calumniate. Accordingly the Poet,
by a fiction of his own, says, " the corrupt lives
<e of the clergy provoked inquiry into their doc-
e( trine, and caused the first Reformers, meaning
" the Wickliffitesand Hussites, to fraternize with
" the inhabitants of the Alpine and Pyrenean
" countries, who," he says, c: had preserved the
ce truth of better ages," meaning, the obscene
Manicheans, called Albigenses, and the se-
ditious fanatics, the Vaudois. But will even
Mr. Southey venture to compare, in point of
Christian morality and piety, a Peter Bruys with
his great opponent St. Bernard ? a Tanchelin
with St. Norbert ? or a Wickliflfe, with his
enemy William of Wykeham ? Will he com-
pare Thomas Cranmer with Sir Thomas More ?
or Ann Boleyn with Catharine of Arragon ? or
Queen Elizabeth with the Queen of Scots ?
Conscious that no miracles have ever illustrated
any other church than that to which its Divine
founder promised a continuation of them,* the
Poet on every occasion treats these supernatural
* Mark xvi. 17. John xiv. 12.
24 STRICTURES ON
events, however strongly attested, as refuted
impostures. He is particularly indignant at
the stigmata of the devout contemplative St.
Francis, which, though witnessed by numerous
persons of the highest credit, he, on his own
personal credit, pronounces to be " atrocious
" effrontery and blasphemous impiety." Refer-
ring afterwards to a book called, The Confor-
mities of St. Francis with Christ, which he
knows was condemned by the Church, he also
quotes at considerable length, another absurd
legend, The Eternal Gospel, in order to render
the Church odious and ridiculous ; at the same
time that he himself acknowledges it to have
been condemned by her.
The Poet begins his account of the noted
John Wickliffe with saying, ec The Roman
si Church has stigmatized him as a heretic of
e< the first class ; but England and the Pro-
cc testant world, while there is any virtue, while
<c there is any praise, will regard him with
e< veneration and gratitude.'' He ends his
panegyric with pronouncing of him as follows :
et A great and admirable man he was ; his fame,
tc high as it is, is not above his deserts ; and
cc it suffers no abatement upon comparison
cc with the most illustrious of those who have
ei followed in the path which he opened."
In the meantime, though he pursues the history
THE HOOK OF THE CHURCH." 25
of this innovator through a detail of fourteen
pages, he never acquaints his readers with the
particulars of his new doctrines, further than
that he denied Transubstantiation and the
Pope's Supremacy, which other heretics and
scholastics of his description had done some cen-
turies before him. Is it not plain then that the
Poet is ashamed of his hero, and afraid to exhibit
hirn in his natural shape? To say nothing then of
Wickliffe's speculative errors, he was condemn-
ed by a Synod of eight Bishops aud near forty
Doctors, held id London, of holding the fol-
lowing seditious no less than impious doctrines,
that " no Bishop or Priest, being in mortal sin,
" can ordain, consecrate, or baptize; that it is
" contrary to holy scripture for ecclesiastics to
hold temporal property ; that no one is a
ie temporal Lord, or a Bishop, while he is in
" mortal sin ; that temporal Lords can at
" their pleasure take away any temporal pos-
<( sessions from ecclesiastics who are habitual
*' sinners, and that the people can punish, at
** their discretion, their masters who act
(t wrong ; that tythes are mere alms, which
if the parishioners may hold or give to others
" by reason of the sius of their curates."*
It is worth while inquiring whether the dig-
* Sec Labbe's Council, t. ix. p. ii. p. 2058 ; also Walsingham
Historia, edit. Gul Camden, and Harpsfield's His. Wicliffiana.
26 STRICTURES ON
nitaries, whose favour the Poet courts, will
echo back his applause of this forerunner of the
Anabaptists, and Regicides. Regardless, how-
ever, of the consequences that might follow from
this levelling system, and unappalled by those
which did immediately follow it, when a frantic
rebellion, headed by Wat Tyler,* and guided by
the Wickliffite priest, John Ball,f beheaded the
King's Chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury, and
his Treasurer, Robert de Hales, and when even
they raised their swords over his, their Mouarch's
head, our Poet goes on to celebrate as mar-
tyrs all who suffered death in this cause, what-
ever their guilt might otherwise be ; We might
sympathize with him at the execution of the
fanatic Sawtry, who would worship a saint, be-
cause Christ took human flesh, but not an angel.
When, however, he canonizes the daring en-
thusiastic rebel, Sir John Oldcastle, merely
because he impugned some articles of the esta-
blished Religion, he betrays both the Church
* Mr. Southey has celebrated this fatal rebellion, and held it up
to the imitation of the radical levellers, particularly in the speeches
of the Wicklimte priest, John Ball, in his dramatic poem of Wat
Tyler, one of his best publications.
t Knighton expressly states that Ball was a disciple of Wicklifte.
Indeed his sermon on Blackheath proves him to have been one.
Jack Straw, who had murdered the Chancellor, confessed at his
death, that his party had resolved to put all noblemen and gentle-
men to death, and dispossess all clergymen of their property, leav-
ing the begging friars to supply their place. Walsing.
"THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 27
and the Government, which he professes to
support. Sir John was surprized and taken
with a large party of his Lollard adherents, at
the time and place he had, by proclamation,
appointed for the commencement of his rebel-
lion, by our glorious Henry V., and was con-
victed and condemned in open Parliament. He
was afterwards hanged with an iron collar
round his neck, and then burnt, after conjuring
Sir T. Erpingham, there present, to obtain a to-
leration for his sect, in case he should see him
rise to life on the third day after his execu-
tion.* The Poet proceeds with his list
of rebel martyrs, but says nothing of Old-
castle's fellow captain, Sir Roger Acton, who
was with him at the rendezvous in St. Giles's-
fields ; nor of William Murle, the maltman, who
came thither with two horses richly caparisoned
and a pair of gilt spurs, expecting to be knighted
on the field by the new king, Sir John Old-
castle ; nor of William Claydon, the currier,
who, though he was so ignorant as to be unable
to read, undertook to ordain his son a priest,
and to make him say mass, all of whom suf-
fered death on this occasion.
Having finished the first Volume of his Book
of the Church, with the execution of the Fana-
* Walsing.
E
28 STRICTURES ON
tics and Rebels who suffered under the Plan-
tagenets. Mr. Southey, very early in his Second
Volume, resumes his favourite subject, with
an account of persons of the same description
who were put to death under the first Tudors.
It is evident that his motive for often repeating
this subject, and dwelling so much upon it, is
to excite the feelings of the Protestant public
against their Catholic fellow subjects, knowing
well that no other is so directly calculated for
this purpose. Candour, however, should have
led him to observe that the laws, under which the
Protestants suffered, were not made against
them, but against the Albigensian Manichees,
who were monsters of impiety and immorality,
rather than heretics ; that if those horrible laws
were employed against Protestants, it was from
a foresight of the civil commotions and blood-
shed which would arise from any attempts to
change the established religion ; finally, that
the Catholic Religion, so far from requiring
sanguinary punishments, forbids her clergy, at
least, under severe penalties, to take part in
them, on any pretext whatsoever. The Poet's
authority for the whole of his martyrologyisthat
of the lying Puritan John Fox, whom he re-
peatedly calls Good Fox, but whose notorious
falsehoods have been repeatedly exposed, and
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCfl:" 29
sometimes even in Courts of Justice,* and who
himself was the advocate of the most perfidious
murder committed in hatred of the Catholic
Religion, upon record. f
The first of Mr. Southey's martyrs under
Henry VIII. is Thomas Bilney, who, in more
than thirty points out of thirty-four, on which
he was examined, according- to Fox himself, gave
orthodox Catholic answers. Amongst the rest,
he declared that the assertions of Luther were
justly condemned, and that Luther and his ad-
herents were wicked and detestable heretics.
The errors which he actually held, he publicly
recanted ; but relapsing into them, and offering'
again to retract them, as Sir Thomas More
* Collier Ch. Hist ; Wood Athen, Oxon ; Parsons' Three Convers.
Fox relates the execution of some persons who were alive and
well when he wrote. Being detected and exposed respecting one
of these, Marbick, he in a later edition of his book, calls those who
detected him, " carpers, wranglers, exclaimers, depravers, whis-
perers, railers, quarrel-pickers, corner-creepers, fault-finders, spider-
catchers, &c." Among other revolting lies, he tells of the death
of one Grimshaw, by his bowels falling out of his body j which
pretended judgment of God, Grimshaw hearing read out of Fox's
book from the pulpit, he brought an action against the parson.
Wood's Athen.
f Speaking of the horrible murder of Archbishop Beaton, he
writes : " He was slain in his own castle of St. Andrews, by the just
revenge of God's mighty judgment, by the hands of Lech and other
gentlemen, who, by the Lord stirred up, brake in suddenly into his
castle upon him, and in his bed murdered him, crying out : * Alas !
slay me not; 1 am a priest.' " Acts and Monum., p. 1272.
e2
30 STRICTURES ON
testifies, his offer could not be accepted. The
Poet's second martyr, at this period, is James
Bay nam, who, though he professed Catholic
doctrine on the trying question of the Sacra-
ment, declaring that in it there is the very God
and Man in the form of bread, yet being found
heterodox on other points, and teaching, in
particular, the heresy of Sabellius, namely,
that Christ is all the three Divine persons in
one, he was adjudged to the stake. He was
evidently no Protestant martyr, for if Cranmer
had examined him instead of Stokesley, his
sentence would infallibly have been the same
that it was.
Baynam recanted, as the former had done,
but relapsing and being committed to the
flames, a miracle, exceeding that of the three
children in the Babylonian furnace, was wrought
upon him, according to Fox, whom Southey
follows : when his arms and legs were half con-
sumed, they tell us, he cried out from the
midst of the flames : " Ye Papists, see a mi-
" racle : I feel no more pain than if I were in
n a bed of down ! " William Tyndal, who
stands next in the Poet's martyrology, was a
dissolute vagrant Priest, who lived iu the
open violation of his vow of celibacy, as well
as of his other obligations. Undertaking to
translate the Holy Scriptures into English, he
" THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 31
notoriously corrupted them in numberless
passages,, as Sir Thomas More has demon-
strated.* In conclusion, he was apprehended
and executed by the Imperial Government of
the Low Countries, in which Tyndal had fixed
his residence, not for his English translation, nor
for any offence against the English Government,
with which the Emperor was then at variance,
but for offences against his adopted country.
It is matter of surprise that, in the choice
which our Poet makes among Fox's pretended
martyrs, to be celebrated in his book, he should
pitch upon Frith, Lambert, and the woman
Askew ; since it is notorious that his prime
martyr, Cranmer, was principally concerned in
bringing these, among other Protestants, to
the fiery stake. Fox unwillingly admits the
fact where, speaking of this unhappy man's sub-
sequent death by the flames, he says : <e He
" purged away by it his offence in standing
" against Lambert and Allen, or if there were
t( others, with whose burning and blood his
" hands were polluted. "t Mr. Southey's fa-
* See Sir Thomas More's Confutation of Tyndal, or the cita-
tions from it in the Vindication of the End of Controversy, p. 97,
&c. In the statute of the 34th and 35th of Henry VIII., the ver-
sion in question is termed : " The crafty, false, and untrue trans-
lation of the Old and New Testament of Tyndal."
t Fox, Acts and Monum.
32 STRICTURES ON
vourite historian. Fuller, says, still more ex-
pressly : " It cannot be denied that he had a
"hand in the execution of Frith and other
u godly martyrs " adding " I will leave him
" to sink or swim by himself where he is
fi guilty."* With respect to Askew, Cranmer
was publicly reproached with causing her death,
by her companion and friend, Joan Knell,
when, subsequently, he was on the point of
pronouncing the same sentence on the latter
woman. " It is not long ago/' she said, tf since
ce you condemned Ann Askew for a piece of
n bread; and now you are ready to con-
" demn me for a piece of flesh. "f The Poet
devises a lame excuse for Cranmer, by pre-
tending that he had not made up his mind
against the Catholic Doctrine, when he per-
secuted the Protestants to death for opposing
it ; but his author, Fuller, expressly says that
he i{ argued against Lambert, contrary to his
" own private judgment." Indeed it is univer-
sally acknowledged, that he was a thorough-
paced Lutheran, or Zuinglian, when he tra-
velled through Germany, and married Osian-
der's sister for his second wife, in 1529. It
must be admitted, however, that Mr. Southey
has shewn prudence in leaving out of his Mar-
Eccl. Hist. f Dr. Heylin's Hist, of Reform.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." S3
tyrology some of Fox's choice martyrs.
Among these are Robert King, Robert Deb-
nam, and Nicholas Marsh, " hanged," says Fox,
*' for taking down the Rood at Dovercourt
<<r being moved thereto/' he adds, ei by the
' spirit of God.' 3 He accordingly honours them
with a large wood-plate, that represents them
hanging on three gibbets.* The fact is, they
were dissolute fellows, who, with a fourth
associate, robbed a church by night in Kent,
taking from it, as Fox acknowledges, a cru-
cifix, a coat, some shoes, and some wax candles.
Other writers say they stole offerings of great
value. Being detected, they were tried and
executed for felony, and their bodies hung in
chains.
The Poet takes care, however, to relieve his
tragical composition with episodes of a less
melancholy nature. He tells us of a fanatical
nun in Kent, who pretended to foretell King
Henry's death, as likewise that Bishop Fisher
and Sir Thomas More gave credit to the pre-
diction : to which story he is sensible that of
Elizabeth Croft, who uttered protestant pro-
phecies and threats from the interior of a wall
at Aldgate, and the conventicle prayer for
Queen Mary's death,f may be successfully
* Acts and Mon., p. 1081. f Stow's Chron. Dr. Heylin's Hist.
34 STRICTURES ON
opposed. He next declaims against the nur-
series of our literature and morality, the mo-
nasteries, with all the virulence and effrontery
of a field-preacher ; charging their inhabitants
with the corruptions of Manichean errors and
practices, that is, with unnatural crimes. Other
Protestant writers, however, of a different cha-
racter from Fox and Southey, have vindicated
the religious from the villainous calumnies of
their interested enemies,* who made fortunes
for themselves, as well as for their rapacious
master and his courtiers, out of the spoils of the
monasteries. The perfidy, and indeed the per-
jury of one of these inquisitors, Dr. John
London, was so flagrant that it could not be
screened by his employer, the unprincipled
Cromwell. Accordingly he was left to the
course of the law, and confined for life, after a
disgraceful exhibition of his person on a horse
with his face to its tail, and with papers declar-
ing his guilt, tied about his head.
That there were popular superstitions in the
reign of the last Henry, as there are also in the
reign of King George IV. (if any one will take
the pains to collect them from vergers, and
clerks of cathedrals and other churches, and
* Dugdale, Warwickshire, Monasticon. Spelman, Collier,
Heylin, Fuller, &c.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH.' 35
such like ignorant people) may be easily be-
lieved, but that the Prelates of the Church or the
Superiors of our schools of literature, as the Mo-
nasteries then certainly were, propagated them,
is a foul calumuy, unsupported by any plausible
argument. It is a still fouler calumny to
charge them with practising and promoting re-
ligious imposture of any kind ; but, as this ca-
lumny suits Mr. Southey's purpose of inflaming
ignorant readers against the Catholics, he
scruples not to publish it. Having gratified his
prejudices on these subjects, he returns to that
which, on the same account, is his favourite
one, the execution of Protestants : unluckily,
however, for him, the sufferers whom he here
treats of, are those whom his great saint, Cran-
mer, was principally concerned in burning.
The latter's conduct, in these tragical scenes, as
well as in all the rest of his public transactions,
was directed by the will of his unrelenting mas-
ter, Henry V1IL, a tyrant who, as his contem-
poraries used to say of him, " never spared wo-
" man in his lust, nor man in his wrath ; so
" that, if all the patterns of a merciless prince
cc had been lost in the world, they might have
" been found in him alone."* Yet even
* Dr. Heylin, in his History, p. 15, quoting Sir Walter Raleigh.
F
36 STRICTURES ON
Henry VIII. has found an apologist and partially
a panegyrist in our present Poet-Laureatl*
The Poet begins his account of the child
Edward's reign with that of the Reformation,
so called : but both accounts, and especially the
latter, is notoriously defective and false. Injus-
tice tohis readers he should have informed them
that the religious changes in question did not
originate in England, but were imported from
Germany, where a turbulent Friar, by name Lu-
ther, having quarrelled with the Pope on the
subject of Indigencies, studied how he could
most annoy him by contradicting the Catholic
doctrine, in every particular ;f that he professed
to have learnt his first and most important
change from the father oflies,X Satan, and that
his, Luther's followers, in adopting his pretend-
ed Reformation, became, by his own confession,
worse, instead of better Christians ; finally, that
* Vol.ii.p. 104.
\ Writing in defence of the real corporal presence of Christ in
the sacrament, Luther says, that he had taken great pains to ex-
plain away those texts of Scripture which prove this doctrine, be-
cause, he says, " I saw how much I should thereby have incommoded
" Popery ; but," he adds, " there was no way of escaping ; the
" text of the Gospel was too strong against me." Epist. ad Ar-
gentin. Opera Luth. torn. vii. fol. 502.
X " I happened to wake before midnight, when Satan argued
" with me as follows, &c." On Private Mass, vol. vii. fol. 228.
See the substance of the conference in Letters to a Prebendary,
Letter V.
" Men are more revengeful, avaricious, and much worse than
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH/' SI
professing, as the Protestants did, and as they
still do, to be guided by the word of God, con-
tained in the Holy Scriptures, which word they
also maintain to be as clear as it is unerring,
they quickly split intohundreds of different sects,
that condemned and persecuted each other, no
less than the Catholics.* If the real truth is
to be told, the same account of the rise and
progress of Protestancy in this island is to be
given, as of the same events on the continent.
The important change was devised and carried
on by wicked men for the gratification of their
passions, not from any motive of religion or
reference to revealed truths ; but having been
" they were under Popery ." Luth. in Postil. Evang. 1. Advent.
Bucer, Calvin, Erasmus, &c. testify to the same effect.
* See Bossuet's celebrated work on the Variations of the Pro-
testants. Calvin wrote thus to Melancthon, Luther's head disciple :
" It is of the greatest importance that no account of the divisions
" that are amongst us (Protestants) should go down to future ages :
" for it is worse than ridiculous that, after breaking off from all
" the world, we should have agreed so little among ourselves,
" ever since the beginning of the Reformation." Calvin Epist.
Another leading Protestant writes : " Our people are carried away
" by every wind of doctrine. If you know what their belief is to-
" day, you cannot tell what it will be to-morrow. Is there one
" article of religion, in which the churches that are at war with the
" Pope, agree together ? If you run over all the articles, from the
" first to the last, you will not find one which is not held by some
" of them as an article of faith, and rejected by others as an im-
" piety." Dudith inter Epist. Bega.
f2
38 STRICTURES ON
once established, and other persons of better
principles being engaged to support it, they
naturally turned over the inspired pages to
draw from them some plausible arguments in
favour of their respective systems. It may well
be supposed that King Henry's courtiers, who
had participated in all his crimes, were not
more virtuous or religious than he himself was-
This king therefore being dead and his son
and successor being only nine years old, the
chief of the courtiers, being sixteen in number,
and Lords of the Council, assembled to raise
themselves to higher honours than they had
hitherto possessed, and to property adequate
to such new dignities. The first point was
soon settled, each one choosing, for the most
part, such titles and offices as were most grati-
fying to his ambition, and the young King's
uncle, in particular, Sir Edward Seymour, con-
triving to be named Duke of Somerset and
Lord Protector : but as to encreasing the for-
tune of these hungry courtiers, in a degree
equal to their common avarice, there was an
almost insuperable difficulty. In the end, no
resource was found but in the remaining spoils
of the ancient religion, which they accordingly
proceeded to alter, in conformity with this inte-
rested purpose. The monasteries had been
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH.'' 39
universally destroyed and their property swal-
lowed up ; but there remained between two
and three thousand chantries,, in which prayers
were daily offered up for their deceased foun-
ders; the endowments of these, it was plain,
might contribute largely to the above-men-
tioned project ; and though Henry had, by his
last will, founded a chantry for himself at
Windsor, and though Cranmer, with eight
other bishops, had just before performed a
public Mass for the deceased King of Prance,
yet the council resolved and caused the people
to be taught that prayers for the dead are
vain and superstitious. Conformably with this
resolution the chantries, together with the
colleges, to the number of ninety, and a still
greater number of hospitals, were disposed of
for the benefit of Somerset and his rapacious
associates. Not content with the largest share
of this booty, nor with the numerous ecclesias-
tical livings which the Poet himself reproaches
the Protector with having usurped, he fleeced
most of the bishoprics of their best manors, in
doing which he found no prelates more sub-
servient to his sacrileges than Ridley and
Cranmer.* He had suppressed the rich bishopric
* Ridley surrendered four of the best manors of the see of London
in one day; Cranmer parted with more than half of the possessions
of
40 STRICTURES ON
of Durham,, and he would shortly have sup*
pressed the rest of them, in conformity with the
system of his confidential adviser, Calvin, had
not his career, together with his life, been cut
short by his fellow-counsellor, Dudley, Earl of
Warwick. Another resource of these interested
reformers were the shrines, rich with jewels and
the precious metals, of the martyrs and other
saints, together with their images, and the
ordinary one of Christ on the cross, consisting
often of silver or gold, or at least ornamented
with those metals. To furnish a pretext for
seizing and melting them down, the Council
pretended in their proclamations, that every
degree of respect for relics and other memorials
of departed saints, and every prayer invoking
their prayers, is idolatry. In support of this, the
English Bibles were corrupted, by substituting
the word idol for image, wherever it occurs
in the sacred text. We have in Burnet part of
one of the royal infant's scholastic exercises,
addressed to his uncle, Somerset, and prefacing
of that of Canterbury. Collier's Records, 67. Somerset aimed
at getting Lambeth Palace and Westminster Abbey into his pos-
session, and actually set his men to pull down St. Margaret's beau-
tiful church, when they were driven away by the parishioners.
He afterwards demolished several churches and ecclesiastical
buildings in the Strand, to make room and furnish materials for
his palace of Somerset House.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 41
a collection of such corruptions and misappli-
cations of the Old Testament.* A third fund
of spoils were the decorations of altars, and
other furniture of the ancient church service,
consisting of gold and silver chalices, cibo-
riums, altars, tabernacles candlesticks, censors
and other articles, too numerous to be enume-
rated, with which every church and chapel
throughout the kingdom was furnished. The
use and magnificence of these were connected
with the doctrine of the corporal presence of
Christ in the sacrament, and of the sacrifice of
the mass. Somerset therefore, with his fellow-
counsellors, of course, rejected this doctrine,
and sent agents throughout the kingdom to
seize upon all church plate, leaving a single
chalice and a plain wooden table instead of an
altar for each church. Together with the plate
the priestly vestments of gold tissue were
carried off: these were either burnt to extract
the metal, or were seen as domestic furniture
in the houses of the plunderers. In the mean
time, the most efficacious means were taken
for repressing the ancient doctrine respecting
the sacrament, and instilling contrary tenets
into the minds of the people.
Mr. Southey, with other Protestant writers,
* Records, p. ii, n. 2.
42 STRICTURES ON
seems to agree in the justice of the above de-
scription, as far as relates to the ambition,
avarice, and irreligion of Protector Somerset
and the council in general ; but, he speaks in
high terms of the religious views and conduct of
Archbishop Cranmer and his clerical associates.
But, alas ! Cranmer has left upon record his
solemn decision, that bishops are nothing more
than the king's officers for executing his eccle-
siastical business, as magistrates are for execut-
ing his temporal concerns.* Accordingly, he
set an example at the beginning of this in-
fant's reign, of taking out a new episcopal
commission from Edward to govern his diocese,
during his good pleasure, that is to say, during
the good pleasure of Somerset ;f and he issued
his pastoral mandates in the affairs of religion,
not by his own authority, or that of scripture,
but by the resolution of the Lord Protector and
the privy council.'^ That the clergy, from the
* Burn's Rec, b. iii. n. 21. Collier's Rec, n. 49.
f Burn, p. ii. p. 6. Collier.
J " This is to advertise your Lordship, that my Lord Protector,
with advice of other of the king's council, hath fully resolved that
no candles be borne on Candlemas Day, nor ashes or palms used
any longer : wherefore I beseech you to cause admonition thereof
to be given in all parish churches throughout your diocese."
Archbishop Cranmer's Letter to, the Bishop of London. Collier,
p. ii. p. 241.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH.'' 49
highest to the lowest,, had no power or judg-
ment in the religious changes of Edward's
reign, is manifest from the prohibition of preach-
ing, while the royal commissioners, almost all
of them laymen, made their spiritual visitation
for judging of all doctrines and religious
practices throughout the kingdom then issued ;
and from the arbitrary punishment of those
bishops, such as Heath of Worcester, Day of
Chichester, and Gardiner of Winchester, who
ventured to oppose these decisions of the coun-
cil.* Somerset carried this so far as to send his
secretary, Cecil, to the last named Bishop, re-
quiring him to send him the notes of a sermon
which he was to preach at court, for his the
Protector's examination, and sentenced him to
prison for uttering tenets when he preached it,
which he, Somerset, disapproved of.f No doubt
the Duke acted in the name of his royal
nephew ; and accordingly, in the proclamation
respecting certain changes in the liturgy, he
introduced the child, then barely ten years of
age, declaring thus : <c We would not have our
subjects so much mistake our judgment, or so
* The Bishops of Winchester, Worcester, and Chichester were
imprisoned, and the Bishop of Durham turned out of the Council
for objecting to the proposed changes.
i Collier, p. 249, &c. Dodd.
(i
44 STRICTURES ON
much mistrust our zeal, as though we could
not discern what ought to be done. God be
praised, we know what, by his icord, is meet to
be redressed, and have an earnest mind, with
all convenient speed, to set forth the same."*
Such were the causes, and such was the com-
mencement of those changes which took place
about the middle of the sixteenth century, in
the original Christianity of this country! The
effects of them on the morals of the inhabi-
tants soon became manifest. To begin with
the head Reformers, those in the Privy Coun-
cil : their intrigues and contests with each
other are recorded in characters of blood.
The Lord Protector Somerset got his brother.
Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral, con-
demned and beheaded on frivolous charges,
but in reality to gratify his Duchess, who was
jealous of the Queen Dowager, now married to
Lord Thomas. In return, Dudley, Earl of
Warwick, and afterwards Duke of Northum-
berland, uniting most of the other counsellors
against Somerset, caused him to be arraigned
and publicly executed with another of their col-
leagues, Sir Henry Arundel. Proceeding in
his towering ambition, he got the royal lady,
Jane Grey, to marry one of his sons, with a
view to their succeeding to the throne, in place
* Collier, p. 246.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 45
of King Henry's daughters, and then, as was
generally believed, took off young Edward by
poison ; in all these scenes of iniquity and
bloodshed, Archbishop Cranmer, siding as usual
with the stronger party, took his full share of
guilt. With respect to the morals of the people
at large ; the very advocates of Protestantism
draw the most frightful picture of them, when
this began to produce its effect upon them.
Even Burnet says that c< The sins of England
did, at that time, call down from heaven heavy
curses on the land."* The ecclesiastical col*
lector, Strype, speaking of that period, bewails
" The covetousness of the nobility and gentry,
the oppression of the poor, the want of redress
at law, the venality of the judges, the impunity
for murder, increase of adultery and whoredom,
and the depravity of the clergy, from the
bishops down to the curates. "f Camden adds:
" The sacrilegious avarice of the times seized
upon colleges, chantries, and hospitals, under
pretence of superstition : whilst ambition and
jealousy among the great, and insolence and
sedition among the people swelled to such a
pitch that England seemed to be raving mad. "J
The young King Edward being no more, our
, * Hist. Ref., p. ii. p. 226. f Manor. Ecdes., b. ii. c. 23.
X Camden. Appatat. ad Annal. Eliz.
G 2
*fl STRICTURES ON
Poet says nothing of the nine days' wonder, as
it was called, of Lady Jane Grey's reign, except
to extenuate the treason of Cranmer, who was
deeply involved in that usurpation. He alleges
that, " believing, like the late young King, that
cc it was necessary for the preservation of the
(C Protestant faith, he still opposed the measure,
<e but yielded when the dying Edward told him
" he hoped he alone would not stand out and
ce be more repugnant to his will than all the
ce rest of his Council was."* What an excuse is
this alleged request of a child for the treason and
perjury of his aged Guardian and Archbishop !
Was the latter ignorant of the rightful order of
succession ? Was he forgetful of his obliga-
tions to Henry and to the mother of Elizabeth ?
Or was he indifferent to the sacred duty of the
Oath which he had taken as executor of Henry's
will, to observe the injunctions of it? The fact,
however, is, that every other Protestant of dis-
tinction, no less than Cranmer, and the Pre-
lates Ridley, Latimer, Jewel, Sandys, Poynet,
Goodrich, Coverdale, &c. took partf with
* Vol.ii. p. 141.
\ Stow says, " Ridley vehemently persuaded the people in the
title of the Lady Jane, and inveighed earnestly against the title of
the Lady Mary. Poynet, Bishop of Winchester, appeared in arms
against the latter. Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, Sandys, Archbishop
of York, &c, were deeply embarked in the same cause."
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH. ' 47
Jane against Mary and Elizabeth, at the
critical moment in question, because Jane was
an avowed Protestant. Hence, if Elizabeth had
succeeded to the crown in the first instance, in-
stead of Mary, Cranmer would, in all proba-
bility, have suffered death, even more speedily
than he actually did, from the former's resent-
ment. The difference would have been that he
would have suffered the penalties of high-trea-
son instead of petty treason. Mary is, however,
at length, seated on her rightful throne ; and now
our Poet has another opportunity of indulging
his taste and exercising his fancy in describing
the sufferings of Fox's martyrs. But, though
he is diffusive and eloquent on this melancholy
subject, he overlooks the important observation
which Catholic writers have suggested to him ;
namely, that, notwithstanding the sufferers were
persecuted for their Religion, it was not pre-
cisely on this account, but from a persuasion,
whether well or ill founded, of the Queen's
Council, that the peace of the country never
could be restored, while the then still encreasing
sects of Protestants had a holding in it. In proof
of this, it has been observed, that no Protestants
were molested during almost the two first
years of Mary's reign, nor till the second Pro-
48 STRICTURES ON
testant rebellion, that of Sir Thomas Wyat/
broke out, which latter threatened her life, and
nearly overturned her Government; that neither
the Pope, in his instructions to the Queen, nor
his Legate, Cardinal Pole, in the Episcopal
Synod which he held, inculcated a word in
favour of persecution ;f and that in the Royal
Council, in which this measure was unhappily
resolved upon, the arguments of its chief advo-
cate, Gardiner, were of a political, not a reli-
gious cast. I
The Poet's selections from the ponderous
volumes of the lying" Fox, are, of course, those
* The pretext for this rebellion was the match with Philip ; but
Dr. Heylin owns, that the restoration of Protestancy was the prin-
cipal matter aimed at. Fox owns that Wyat's party ' conspired
for religion."
t See the Pope's Instructions in Dodd's Church History, vol. i.
and an account of Cardinal Pope's Synod in Burnet's History.
J Burnet, p. xi. p. 299.
The following specimen of Fox's falsehood is exhibited by the
Church Historian, Collier. Fox relates that the old Duke oi'
Norfolk being to dine with the Chancellor, Gardiner, on the day
of Latimer and Ridley's execution, he would not sit down to
table till he learnt by express that the tragedy had been per-
formed ; that, being struck with a mortal disease of a suppression
of urine, he was carried to bed, and died within a fortnight. To
refute this fabrication, Collier, who was a high-church Protestant,
shews, that the Chancellor took his seat in the House of Lords
twice after this pretended mortal disease, and died at last, not of that
disease,
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 49
which, with the help of his own embellishments,
are the best calculated to inflame the public
mind against his Catholic countrymen. It may
well be supposed that he says nothing of many
of Pox's favourite martyrs, such as William
Flower, who stabbed a priest at the altar of
St. Margaret's Church, William Gardiner, who
attacked Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal, as
he was saying Mass in the Cathedral of Lisbon,
and seized upon the host and the chalice;
George Eccles, alias Trudge-over- the- world,
and the other Preacher, Rose, who publicly
prayed for the Queen's death; the three Guern-
sey women, who are proved to have been
thieves, and many others who were amenable to
the laws for their actions and doctrines, inde-
pendently of those connected with the new
religion. Neither does the writer set forth the
divisions in point of doctrine which existed
among the sufferers, and which were carried to
such a length, that one of his favourite martyrs,
Philpot, spit in the face of another associate,
calling him and those of his opinion, " flaming
" fyerbronnes of Hell, membres of the Divell,
disease, but of the gout. Finally, that the Duke of Norfolk had
been dead above ayear before this dinner-party could have taken place.
Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, folio, vol. ii. p. 386. Not-
withstanding the disproof of this falsehood, Mr. Southey relates it
in detail, set off with his own poetical inventions, vol. ii. p. 209.
50 STRICTURES ON
" &c."* Those unfortunate men, whom lie
picks out of the Protestant martyrology for the
imitation of other Christians, Rogers, Saunders,
Taylor, &c., were apostate Catholic Priests,
who, wanting grace and self-denial to keep
their vows of continence, exchanged their own
Religion for another, which allowed them to
take wives, and which gave them Church-liv-
ings into the bargain. The Poet has displayed
their attachment to the married state, and the
advantage, according to his notion, of mis-
sionary clergymen, in particular, having wives
to accompany them ; f but he has not attempted
to disprove the obligation Christians are under
of keeping their voluntary vows; nor has he
ventured to explain away the emphatical decla-
ration of the Apostle, which purports, that they
who violate this obligation, render themselves
liable to eternal reprobation J.
* Strype's Mem. Eccl. vol. ii. rec. 48.
f " In our days, when Protestant Missions have been under-
" taken upon a great scale, it has been found that the wives of the
** Missionaries have contributed their full share to the success
" which has been obtained " Vol. ii. p. 214. On the other hand,
it appears that the Preachers who went out in the ship Duff, to
the South Sea Islands, found themselves obliged to take muskets
on shore with them, to protect their wives from the brutality of the
savages.
X The younger widows refuse ; for when they have begun to wax
wanton against Christ, they will marry ; having damnation, because
then they have cast off' their first faith. Tim. v. 11 1.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." M
It may be worth while here to exhibit the
real portraits of John Pox's head-martyrs,
meaning those of the Prelatic order, which,
though less pleasing than his pictures of them,
especially after they have been retouched and
varnished by the Laureate's pencil, are far
nlore like the sketches which have been left us
by the ancient masters. To begin, then, with
John Hooper : he was an apostate Cistercian
Monk, who, having married a Dutch woman,
lived in the open breach of his other religious
vows, no less than that of chastity. He appears
to have been first a Lutheran ; but, flying abroad,
to escape the persecution of Henry's Six Articles,
he became intimate with Bullinger, the head
disciple of Zuinglius, whose Ultra- Calvinism
he brought with him into this country and esta-
blished here,* for its confusion and misery,
during the two ensuing centuries. Being a
vehement advocate for that sacrilege and rapine
in which the late King's Council, as has been
described, was so deeply involved, he became a
prime favourite, first, with the sacrilegious So-
* " A controversy, unhappily, moved by Bishop Hooper, was
" presently propagated among the rest of the clergy, touching caps
" and surplices." Dr. Ileylin, Hist. p. 92. The latter was the chap-
lain and biographer of Archbishop Laud. Cranmer maligned him for
worse than " Calvinistical principles." Wood's Athen. Oxon.
52 STRICTURES ON
merset, and then with his successor and destroy-
er, Northumberland. The latter promoted him
first to the See of Gloucester, and next to that
of Worcester; and, though he filled all England
with his invectives against the alleged Popery
and anti-christianism of surplices and square
college-caps,* yet, when he found that he could
not get ordained without wearing them, he dis-
pensed with himself, on the occasion, yet, with-
out abandoning his system concerning them. In
like manner, though he had been a violent de-
claimer against clerical pluralities, he could re-
concile it to his conscience, for the sake of his
family, to hold at the same time, both the above-
mentioned Bishoprics. Among his Puritan dis-
ciples were several of Fox's martyrs, who himself
was a Puritan, and never would subscribe the
Articles. Mr. Southey's " protomartyr," Rogers,
and his "leader of noble martyrs/' Philpot, were
among these. Fox relates, that the former of
these, when in prison, foretold to the printer of
his Acts and Monuments, that he would live to
see the Gospel restored, at which time he was
directed to enjoin the ministers to observe a
certain Puritanical form of Church-government,
which, he said, had been concerted between
* Heylln, &c.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 58
him and Master Hooper: adding, that " if they
iC will not do so, their end will be worse than
" ours." He proceeds to the dispute about
Priests' caps and other attire, adding, that he,
Rogers, wore a round cap, " and never would
and never did wear the (square) cap." *
Hooper was charged, not only with heresy, but
also with encouraging those who prayed for the
Queen's death. t Latimer was named to the
Bishopric of Worcester by Henry VIII. ; but,
being a Lutheran in principle, he was four dif-
ferent times summoned to give an account of
his faith, by Wolsey, Wareham, or the King
himself, on all which occasions he dissembled
and <c subscribed such articles as they pro-
<e pounded to him." This is said by Pox, who
also publishes extracts from his sermons at Cam-
bridge and at Court, fitter for the mouth of a
buffoon than a Bishop. He chimed in, in all the
changes of Edward's reign; and, as he had
acted a part in the tragedy of Lambert's
burning, J for holding the self-same doctrine,
concerning the Sacrament, which he himself
held, so he now joined with Cranmer and
Ridley in signing the condemnation of Joan
Butcher, who was burnt for maintaining the
singular opinion of Valentinian concerning the
* Act. and Mon. p. 1492. f Dodd's Ch. Hist. vol. i. p. 377.
X Collier, Fox, &c. Burnet's Records.
H2
|ft STRICTURES ON
formation of Christ's body. He had before all
this prostituted his preaching in seconding the
Protector's unnatural and groundless jealousy
of his brother, the Lord Admiral,* whom he
brought to the block, without allowing him to
make his defence.
As if conscious that he had concealed the
defects and crimes of his other pseudo-martyrs,
while he paints in glowing colours their suf-
ferings, in order to engage the feelings of his
readers, our Poet, when he comes to exhibit
the portrait of the first Protestant Bishop of
London, says of him : fl the excellent Prelate,
<c Nicholas Ridley's memory is without spot or
ce stain ;*' and yet, in the very next paragraph
to that in which he asserts this, he says: c< Rid-
" ley might have been proceeded against for
fC treason; for he had, by order of the Council,
<c preached in favour of the Lady Jane." The
fact is, he had exerted himself in the most vio-
lent manner, to get the usurper, Dudley's step-
daughter, placed on the throne, f because she
was a Protestant, as appears by the arguments
* Heylin and Stow, A. D. 1553, speak of Latimer's invective
against the sufferer a few days after his execution ; but Saunders,
who was present on the occasion, says that he paved the way for it
by a previous sermon, charging the Admiral with treason.
f Stow writes : " Dr. Ridley vehemently persuaded the people
in the title of the Lady Jane, and inveighed earnestly against the
title of the Lady Mary."
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 55
he made use of on the occasion.* Hence we are
left to conclude, that treason itself, according
to Mr. Sou they 's creed, is no spot or stain in
the character of a Protestant martyr, provided
it be committed against a Catholic Sovereign !
We know, with equal certainty, that, within
nine days after his promotion to the See of
London, he alienated four of its best manors to
the King, and among others, Stepney and
Hackney, " in order to gratify some of the
courtiers. " f Was this flagrant simony in
selling the best property of his Bishoprick,
for the gratification of avaricious courtiers,
however, it was sanctioned by the practice of
the other Protestant Bishops, at the beginning
of the Reformation, so called, no spot or stain
on the memory of a Protestant martyr? J Fi-
nally, is there no guilt or disgrace in one Pro-
testant martyr taking part in burning at the
stake other Protestant martyrs, as Bishop Rid-
ley, no less than his brethren, Cranmer, Latimer,
and Coverdale did, in the cases of the over-
righteous Van Parre and the ready-spoken Mrs.
Botcher ? What brilliant and moving stories of
this man and this woman's barbarous martyr-
* See these arguments in Collier's Eccl. Hist. vol. ii. p. 343.
t Strype's Mem. Eccl. vol. iii. p. 234.
X Burnet's Ref. part ii. rec. 35, &c.
56 STRICTURES ON
doms would not Mr. Southey have worked up,
had it suited his purpose, to display the perse-
cutions exercised by the Church of England !
But Fox's and the Poet's martyr by excel-
lence, is the celebrated Cranmer ; accordingly,
they bestow much more pains in setting off his
character, as a model of Christian virtue, than
upon any others whom they mention. Let a few
undenied, well-known, and incontrovertible
facts, speak to the merits of this boasted saint
and martyr. He became first known by being
expelled from his fellowship at Jesus College,
Cambridge, for marrying, contrary to the college
statutes and his own oath, though he concealed
his wife as long as he could at an obscure inn.
He became better known by suggesting the ex-
pedient which King Henry afterwards followed
for getting rid of his lawful wife, and marrying
her maid, Anne Boleyn. He, therefore, was em-
ployed to put it in execution, by procuring the
judgments of foreign divines, as to the natural
unlawfulness of marrying a brother's widow in
any case whatever; and he was rewarded for his
pains with the See of Canterbury. In Germany,
he became a confirmed Lutheran, * whatever
his religion was before ; as also a bigamist, by
marrying Osiander's sister. Thus, again, he
* Fox.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 57
violated the Church-law and that of the coun-
try. So strict was the latter, under the jealous
lecher, Henry, that Cranmer was reduced to
smuggle his German wife on shore in a chest.*
To obtain consecration, together with the pri-
vileges of his Metropolitical See, as Legate and
Penitentiary of the Pope, it was necessary he
should take an oath of fealty and obedience to
him : he, accordingly, took the oath publicly,
but, retiring apart, made a private protestation
against it, thus recording his prevarication and
perjury. Being seated in his chair of Primacy, he
steadily went through all the scandalous work
which his master's lawless passions imposed
upon him. He began with an hypocritical and
collusive letter to the King, dated March II,
1533, representing to him the scandal taken at
the undecided state of the divorce, and de-
manding of him, as Supreme Head of the Church,
the necessary power to pronounce upon it.
Accordingly, on the 20th of the following May,
he decided that Henry's marriage with Queen
Catharine was invalid, and that therefore he
was free to marry another woman ; in the mean-
* For the truth of this story, Parsons appealed to Cran-
mer's daughter-in-law, then living; and it is rendered probable by
Henry's interrogating the Archbishop, whether his chamber would
stand the test of the six articles ? and by his answer, that he had sent
back his wife to her friends in Germany, Collier, vol. ii. p. 200.
58 STRICTURES ON
time he himself had stood witness to the mo-
narch's nuptials with Ann Boleyn six months
previously, namely, on Nov. 14, J 532.* In
less than three years afterwards, the King be-
coming tired or jealous of Ann Boleyn, and
enamoured of Lady Jane Seymour, Cranmer
first gave sentence of invalidity against her
marriage with Henry, on account of an alleged
precontract with a different person, and then
divorced her from him, on the charge of adul-
tery! f Ann of Cleves was Henry's fourth wife,
who, being reported to have been under a
previous contract to the Duke of Lorrain's son,
Cranmer took official cognizance of the case,
and pronounced that no such contract existed.
But the Kin* becoming within a few months dis-
gusted with his German bride, the ever-accom-
modating Primate took it upon his conscience
to set his master once more at liberty from his
nuptial bonds, by pronouncing that the above-
mentioned pre-contract of his wife was in actual
existence! Henry being dead, Cranmer proved
just as obsequious to the Duke of Somerset as
he had been to the former. He took out a fresh
commission for holding his See during the good
* HeyhVs Hist.
f Burnet says, " The two sentences, one for adultery, the other
" of divorce, for a pre-contract, did so contradict one another, that
" one, if not both, must be false."
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 59
pleasure of the child, Edward, that is, of Somer-
set himself, and he surrendered to his use, or
rather, to that of Somerset, the better half of
the possessions of his See. * He even gratified
the Protector with signing the warrant for the
execution of his brother, the Admiral, though
the Prelate's character would have excused
him from the deed of blood, had he been
desirous of it.
When the Protector was supplanted by
Dudley, he readily transferred his homage to
the latter ; and, forgetful of his duty as executor
of Henry's will, and of his personal obligations
to him and to Ann Boleyn, he concurred in
violating his trust and in altering the legal order
of succession to the crown, by transferring the
right of the Princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, to
Dudley's step-daughter, Jane Grey ; for which
act of high treason he was arraigned, and justly
sentenced to death.
Mr. Southey admits that Cranmer condemned
the heretical woman, Jane Bocher, and prevailed
on the young King, then only fourteen years
old, and who shed a ilood of tears on the
occasion, to sign the warrant for burning her ;
adding, " this is the only passage in Cranmer's
" life, for which no palliation can be offered ;"f
* Henry Wharton apud Collier. f Vol. ii p. 137.
60 STRICTURES ON
but was he not equally active in bringing the
poor Dutch hiereftlCi Van Parr, to the stake?*
Did not he take part in burning John Lambert,
Ann Askew, William Allen, John Frith,Tyndal's
assistant in translating the Bible, and other
Protestants, during Henry's reign, for denying
the corporal presence of Christ in the sacrament,
to say nothing of a whole crowd of Anabap-
tists, condemned by him, in that and in
Edward's reign ? The Poet excuses Cranmer
for the former executions, by asserting, but
without the least authority, that this Reformer
then believed in the corporal presence ; f
but his favourite author, Fuller, charges him,
Cranmer, with arguing against Lambert, at his
trial, " contrary to his own private judgment;"
and adds, that, as Lambert was burnt for deny-
" ing the corporal presence, so Cranmer himself
" was afterwards condemned and died at Oxford
" for maintaining the same opinion." When it
came to his own turn to suffer that cruel death, to
which he had condemned so many others, and se-
veral of them on the same charge, he was very far
from imitating their constancy. In a word, he
signed six different retractations of Protestantism,
* Burnet's Records, p. ii. n. 35.
t P. 80. Fox says he became a Protestant in 1529, before his.
promotion.
% Book v. sect. 6.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 61
each one more express than that which preceded
it, within the same number of weeks, and thus
continued, till the very hour of his execution,
either a sincere Catholic or an unprincipled
hypocrite.* Finding*, however, that, in spite of
these he must suffer, he in a fit of desperate fury
retracted them all, and threatened that his
hand, which had signed them, should be burnt
before the rest of his body, which deed of des-
peration, in the spirit of Judas Iscariot, he is
said to have effected ! Is there in ecclesiastical
history so unprincipled a Prelate as this boasted
Apostle and Martyr of John Fox and Mr.
Southey ? After all, it is a circumstance to be
for ever lamented, that Gardiner's opinion in
the Queen's Council, as to the efficacy of perse-
cution in producing uniformity of Religion,
prevailed ; and there is reason to believe,
that those numerous bands (though far less
numerous than Southey and Fox pretend) of
tailors, weavers, labourers, and spinsters, who
offered themselves to execution for their diver-
sified opinions, would, for the most part, have
acquiesced in the national faith, had they not
been provoked to deny it by the flames that
were lighted up for its preservation.
* See Strype's Mem. Eccl. vol. iii. p. 234, from the Lambeth
Records.
i 9
62 STRICTURES ON
The four years of Mary's persecution of Pro-
testants were succeeded by above two centuries
of a Protestant persecution of Catholics, more
than half of which is recorded in characters of
blood; but this it suits Mr, Southey's purpose
to suppress for the most part ; and, when he does
mention it, to misrepresent it in the grossest
manner. Entering on his story of Elizabeth,
he describes the Catholic Bishops as having
been " gaping to see the day when they might
<s wash their white rochets in her innocent
" blood ;" and, yet, when the day did arrive, in
which they might, at least, have hindered her
from reigning, the people being Catholic, and
every place in Church and State being filled with
Catholics, not a finger, nor a tongue, nor a pen,
did they move to exclude her from her inheri-
tance. It had not been so, as has been said, at
the accession of her Catholic sister; for then, not
only Cranmer and Ridley, and Latimer, but
all other Protestant clergymen and laymen of
note broke into open rebellion against their
Sovereign, merely because she was a Catholic*
The writer extols the new Queen for her mild-
ness and toleration towards the Catholics ; and
yet he confesses that she deprived all the
Catholic Bishops of their Sees, except the des-
picable conformist, Kitchen of LandafF; but
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 63
lie should have added, that she equally dispos-
sessed the greater part of the other Church dig-
nitaries, Heads of Colleges, and other respectable
clergy, because they would not acknowledge,
upon oath, her pretended spiritual supremacy.
This sacrilegious claim, which could be sup-
ported on no principle but such as would have
made Tiberius and Nero Heads of the Christian
Church, in their respective reigns, equally
scandalized thinking Protestants and sincere
Catholics. * Nor was it a mere title that
Elizabeth affected ; on the contrary, she as-
serted, both in her speeches from the throne |
* The learned Protestant, Centuriator, Chemnitius, accused
Elizabeth, as follows: " Fcemineo fastu, Papissam et Caput
Ecclesiae se fecit."
f The following is an extract from the Queen's speech in
Parliament, March 29, 1586 : One matter toucheth me so near,
" as I may not overskip. The Church, whose overlooker God hath
" made me, whose negligence cannot be excused if any schisms or
" errors heretical were suffered. Some faults and negligences may
" grow and be, all which, if you, my Lords of the Clergy, do not
" amend, I mind to depose you. I am supposed to have many
" studies, but most philosophical ; I must yield this to be true,
" that I suppose few that be not professors have read more; yet,
" among my many volumes, I hope God's book hath not been my
" seldomest lectures. I see many over bold with God Almighty,
" making too many subtile scannings of his blessed will. The
" presumption is so great, as I may not suffer it, yet mind I not
" to animate Romanists nor tolerate newfangledness, and I mean to
" guide them both by God's true rule, &c." Stow's Annals.
0*4 STRICTURES ON
and in her public acts, an unlimited right to
pronounce in doctrinal matters, and to dictate
in those of discipline, not only without the
Bishops, but also in direct opposition to them.
The reader may, indeed, smile at this vain
female's claim to infallibility and unbounded
spiritual power, if he be a Christian ; but he
must blush and feel indignant at the grovelling
submission to it which those Prelates whom
Mr. Southey so highly commends paid on every
occasion.*
In order to justify the bloody persecution
which the remorseless Elizabeth and her un-
principled ministry commenced on the unoffend-
ing Catholics, our Poet descants on the perse-
cutions, real or pretended, of different Catholic
Princes abroad, and on the alledged plots of
English Catholics at home. On both these
subjects I wish the reader to consult the unan-
swerable LETTERS TO A PREBENDARY,
and THE END OP RELIGIOUS CON-
TROVERSY, by Dr. Milner. This author
proves, in his detailed account of different
* See the style of Archbishop Parker's homage to Elizabeth,
Collier's Rec.21, and the submission of his successor, Grindal, with
his brethren, to her, in the controversy concerning the exercise of
prophecying, as it was called, which he and they had pronounced to
be " set down in the Holy Scriptures," but which she condemned
" as leading to schism."- Collier, p. ii. p. 596.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 65
Kingdoms and States from Prance and Geneva
to Scotland and Holland,* that the professors of
the ancient faith never practised such prompt
and severe cruelty to preserve it,f as the new
* Bayle and Rousseau, who were brought up Protestants, ac-
knowledge that Protestancy was intolerant from its birth. Ber-
gier defies its professors to name a province or town in which they
did not exercise persecution during the sixteenth century, when
they had the power to do so. De Hoof reproaches his country-
men thus : " Crudelitatis odio in crudelitatem ruitis et antequam
" liberi estis dominari vultis." Ger. de Brandt. Dr. Robertson ex-
presses his abhorrence of the declaration of the Presbyterian Clergy
to King James, namely, that it would be sinful in him to spare the
lives of the Catholic Earls of Huntly, Errol, &c. Mr. Southey
speaks with horror of the numerous executions of rebels by the
Duke of Alva in the Low Countries, but the learned Feller maintains
that the Prince of Orange's Lieutenant Vandermerck killed more
unoffending Catholics in those provinces during the year 1572 than
Alva caused to be executed during the whole period of his govern-
ment. This writer refers to judicial documents, still extant, shew-
ing that the Protestants in North Holland exercised such horrible
and refined cruelty on the Catholics in their power, as were never
heard of before. They destroyed them by preventing them, with
tortures, from ever sleeping ; they fed them with salt herrings
without allowing them a drop of water, till they died of thirst; they
scorched them to death with the flames of spirituous liquors, in
which their clothes had been steeped ; they buried them alive in
chests filled with rats. Let. to Preb., chap. Persecution.
f In disproof of Mr. Southey's pretensions to mildness and tole-
ration, in favour of Elizabeth and her government, it is sufficient to
refer to their persecution of different Protestants for not agreeing
with them in faith. In 1575 twenty-seven heretics were at one
time, eleven at a second time, and five at a third, condemned for
their errors by Sandys, then Bishop of London. Of these twenty
66 STRICTURES ON
religionists did to eradicate it., and to force their
own opinions on the Christian world. In
attempting this, as he shews, they filled every
individual Kingdom, State, and City, in which
they gained a footing, with tumults, rebellion,
and bloody persecution. He also proves, that
the several plots charged upon the English
Catholics were either fabrications of their
enemies, or conspiracies of those enemies
against the Catholics, with the exception of
Babington's attempt to free Mary of Scotland
from her unjust confinement; an attempt, under
all its circumstances, that was severely cen-
sured by the Catholics, and especially by their
clergy both at home and in their seminaries
abroad.* The Poet descants repeatedly on
the Bull of Excommunication published by
the Pope, but never once notified to, much less
were whipped, others bore their faggots, and two, Peterson and
Turwort, were burnt in Smithfield. In 1583 John Lewes, " for
denying the Godhead of Christ," says Stow, was burnt at Norwich,
where Francis Kett, M.A., suffered death for the same error six
years later. In 1591 Hacket was hanged for heresy in Cheapside.
The following Brownists or Independents suffered death in the
same reign for their opinions, Thacker, Copping, Greenwood, Bar-
row, and Perry. See Stow, Brant, Limborch, Neal, &c.
* The seminary of Douay published a Letter to the Catholics of
England on the occasion, strongly recommending to them submis-
sion and fidelity to Government. The same is the whole tenor of
Cardinal Allen's answer to Cecil's Execution of English Justice.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 67
accepted of by the English Catholics. It was
worded in the usual style, to satisfy the Princes
and States of Christendom; who were scan-
dalized and alarmed at the conspiracies and
rebellions which Elizabeth was continually
exciting in their dominions, at the piracies
she publicly exercised, and particularly at the
Regicide she had, with equal perfidy and cruelty,
committed on the Queen of Scots, Still they
are pure calumnies of the Poet that the Catholic
Martyrs who were slaughtered in Elizabeth's
reign, were Bull Papists, as he terms them, and
that they were so much as charged with having
abetted the Bull. On the contrary, they con-
tinned to profess their fidelity to the Queen, at
their death and under the gallows,* as well as
on their missions, and in their seminaries, and
to perform every duty of allegiance to her, as
was particularly and heroically demonstrated,
when the Spanish Armada appeared off the
coast.
But, though the Poet takes so much pains
to vindicate this Protestant persecution, he
never gives any information as to its nature or
the number or quality of those who suffered in
* The learned and pious F. Campion gave a signal proof of this
in his dialogue with Lord C. Howard under the gallows. See Mem.
of Miss. Priests, vol. i. p. 55.
K
81 STRICTURES ON
it. It is Sufficient, however, to open the Statute
Book, in order to learn that the very first Act
of Elizabeth's reign, (confirmed in c. 1. of her
5th,) the most severe punishment the law is
acquainted with, that of hanging, cutting up
and bowelling alive, was enacted against all
those who should maintain the spiritual Supre-
macy of the Pope, or deny that of the Queen,
which horrible sentence was indicted on fifteen
Catholics, on that sole charge, during the hitter's
reign. Indeed, all those Catholics who then
suffered in consequence of the other persecut-
ing statutes, might have redeemed their lives
by taking the oath of Supremacy. To be brief :
besides the above-mentioned sufferers, 126
Priests, several of whom had been graduates
of Oxford, underwent the horrible butchery,
merely for being Priests and exercising their
spiritual functions,* and about sixty other
Catholics for being reconciled to the Catholic
Among these sufferers only eleven were so much as accused of
any treason, and the falsehood of their pretended plot, that "of
Rheims, was so glaring that even Camden, one of Elizabeth's offi-
cial writers, acknowledges them to have been political victims,
sacrificed to appease the popular fury excited by the proposal of
the Queen's marriage with the Duke of Anjou. He adds of the
Queen : " Plerosque et his misellis sacerdotibus exitii in patriam
" conflandi conscios fuisse non crcdidit."> Annales Eliz. A. D.
1582.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 69
Religion, hearing Mass, or harbouring or aid-
ing, &c. some or other of their clergymen.
The names of several of the sufferers, together
with their respective indictments, may be found
in Stow's Annals, Wood's Atheuae, and other
Protestant Works, no less than in Dodd's
Church History and Dr. Challoner's accurate
and edifying History of Missionary Priests.
Besides these victims of public execution, all
of whom acknowledged the Queen's temporal
authority, we have the names of one hundred
and five other priests, who were exiled from their
homes and country, merely for being Priests,
and of ninety other Catholic Priests or laymen,
who perished in prison, during this persecut-
ing reign. In the meantime the most horrible
tortures were exercised on the Catholic prisoners,
at the pleasure of Sir Owen Hop ton. Lieutenant
of the Tower, and other jailors,* and the fine
* Among these torments are reckoned by Rishton and Saunders,
the Dungeon, resembling the prophet Jeremy's pit ; the hole called
Little Ease, so contrived that the prisoner could neither stand nor
lie down in it ; the Scavenger's Daughter , being an iron hoop, in
which the prisoner's head and feet were made to meet the iron
manacles, by which the prisoner was hung up in the air, for four,
six, or eight hours at a time ; the common Stretching Rack, by
means of which the body was drawn out to the length of two feet
beyond its natural size. To these must be added the torture of
the needles, thrust under the finger nails, which several of them
endured.
K 2
70 STRICTURES ON
of twenty pounds each month for not attending
the Protestant service, was rigorously exacted
from those Catholics who were able to pay it.
With what a collection of fiction and falsehood
has not the Poet veiled the second, no less thati
the first formation of his Church!
Among those who were put to death at
different times for aiding- Priests, were three
ladies, Margaret Middleton, by marriage Cli-
thero, Ann Line, and Margaret Ward. The
first mentioned of these was of an honourable
family in Yorkshire, where her house was the
general resort of the Priests in her neighbour-
hood. Being arraigned for this hospitality, and
knowing that she could not answer the questions
that would be put to her on her trial, without
exposing the lives of those faithful Ministers*
she persisted in standing dumb at the bar, iu
consequence of which she was condemned to
be pressed to death. This sentence was carried
into execution on York bridge, her hands and
feet being fastened to four stakes, and a large
board, loaded with heavy weights, being placed
on her body, and left there till she expired.
But neither the length of; her torments nor the
tears of her friends, husband and children could
shake her resolution. What she said at the time
was, " It is as well to go to Heaven this way
"THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 71
as any other." The most illustrious,, however,
of the female Catholic victims, undoubtedly,
was the Queen of Scots. After being treacher-
ously invited by Elizabeth into England, and
perfidiously confined there during eighteen
years, she was in a mock trial condemned, and
then beheaded, for pretended crimes against
Elizabeth, which were as much out of her power
as they were remote from her disposition to
commit. But the commissioners who super-
intended the bloody work, more than once,
betrayed the real motive of it. ef Your life/'
said the Earl of Kent to her, " would be death
" to our religion, and your death will be life
" to it !" * Her earnest request to be allowed
the consolations of her religion, was denied her
at her death,f as these ever had been during her
long imprisonment : so false are the assertions
of the Poet concerning Elizabeth's toleration
and regard for conscience! Speaking elsewhere
of the rival Queens, he says of them : (C They
" were both women of saintly piety!" That
such is the character of Mary, but that the
reverse is that of Elizabeth, the world is now
satisfied, since Goodall, Stuart, and Whi taker,
have exposed the forgeries of the Apostate
Friar, Buchanan. The contrast between the
* Camden Annal. f Ibid,
72 STRICTURES ON
rivals was particularly striking at their respec-
tive deaths. That of the former was truly
worthy of a martyr that of the latter charac-
teristic of a reprobate.*
No sooner had the church of England received
a being' from young Edward's uncle, the Pro-
tector Somerset, than she was found pregnant
with an Esau and a Jacob, two hostile people
who struggled together even in the womb.
The one was bent on destroying every vestige
of the ancient religion the other aimed at
retaining as much of this as suited its ideas
and purposes. To the former belonged Rogers,
Hooper, Coverdale, Knox, with all the Scotch
Reformers, and Somerset himself. These were
afterwards joined by Leicester, Cecil, Walsing-
ham, John Fox, Cartwright, &c. The latter
consisted of Cranmer, Ridley, with most of the
Clergy, and Elizabeth herself. These were
certainly more rational and moral the others
more ardent and consistent with their prin-
ciples ; for, whereas, both parties professed to
be guided by Scripture alone, when the more
moderate Protestants were called upon by their
adversaries to produce chapter and verse for the
use of surplices, tippets, square caps, Deans
and Chapters, the sign of the cross in baptism,
* See the narrations of Collier, Camden, Whitaker, and Parsons,
cited in Letters to a Prebendary, p. 246, sixth edition.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 13
festival days, and a hundred other observances;*
they were unable to do so, and, therefore, were
stigmatized as Papists by their adversaries ; and
separate conventicles were, of course, set up
against them. The pretenders to Pure Re-
ligion were, indeed, kept down by the strong
hand of Elizabeth ; but, when James, who had
been educated by their Scotch brethren, as-
cended the throne, they loudly called for the
redress of the alledged superstitions and idolatry,
in an address to him, signed by almost a thou-
sand officiating Ministers of the establishment.
Accordingly, he appointed a conference to be
held between the parties at Lambeth, in which
he put forth his newly acquired spiritual supre-
macy, in a much higher tone than it had ever
been claimed by Innocent III. or any other
Pope in or out of a Synod. He decided every
point in debate, whether for or against the
Puritans, by his own authority, threatening
to " hurry out of the land*' those who opposed
it, f all which acts of unbounded Supremacy
were lauded by the Bishops there present, who
* The Presbyterian Admonition to Parliament declares that " The
" kingdom of Archbishops, Bishops, &c. cannot stand with Christ's
" kingdom ; and that the offices of Bishops, Deans, &c. are forbidden
" by the word of God." <Madox. Examin. of Neale's Hist, of
Puritans, vol. i. p. 111.
+ See Collier's and Fuller's relation of the Conference.
7| STRICTURES ON
never delivered their opinions but upon their
knees; while their Primate himself, Whit gift,
pronounced that the King spoke by the special
inspiration of God's spirit !
The contending parties were agreed upon the
speculative points of Predestination and Repro-
bation,, * though the Poet insinuates the con-
trary ; but, upon the abovementioned practical
points of discipline they became more hostile to
each other than ever; and it was easy to foresee
that the party which maintained the funda-
mental principle of the Reformation, to what-
ever lengths and subdivisions these might con-
duct,, would prevail. Accordingly, the Church
of England, from the period in question,, became
formally divided into the Church, henceforward
so called, and the Puritans, as they were deno-
minated. It suits Mr. Southey's views to take
part with the former; hence the remaining part
of his book is more taken up with opposing the
* That the Archbishop and Bishops were rigid Calvinists, there
is infallible evidence, says Fuller, in the Lambeth Articles approved
of by them. Barret, fellow of a college in Cambridge, having in a
Sermon censured Calvin and his doctrine, was constrained to retract
what he had advanced in the most explicit terms. See Fuller's
Hist, of Univ. of Camb. p. 150. See also the proposal of the Prelates
to imprison for life, in solitary confinement, " all incorrigible
FREE-WILL men." Strype Annal of Ref. vol. i. p. 214. These
Free-will men, Mr. Southey calls Pelagians, and thereby intimates
that he himself does not admit of Free-will.
"THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 75
Puritans than calumniating the Catholics, which
will shorten the task of the present writer. The
Poet says little of the Powder-plot, conscious that
it was a bungling imitation of the Protestant-plot,
by which James's father, King Henry Darnley,
a Catholic, with his family, had been blown up
and killed at Kirk-a-field by the Protestants. He
also knew, that all the measures of the few des-
perate wretches concerned in it, were, in fact,
under the direction of Cecil, Lord Salisbury, a
man practised in the invention of plots, and in
drawing those, whom he wished to destroy, into
them.* The little he does say on this subject,
contains, however, two revolting falsehoods,
namely, that the ec scruples of the conspirators
" were quieted by their confessor;'' whereas, it
has been proved, that directly the contrary was
the case, and that " Garnet received the honour
cc of beatification from the Pope." To dis-
prove this egregious falsehood, it is sufficient
to inspect the catalogue of the deceased Ca-
tholics who have been so honoured. Jn like
manner, all is false that the Poet writes con-
cerning the moderation of James and his Church,
and of his aversion to " making martyrs."
So far from this being true, he is proved to
have sacrificed a hecatomb of poor old women,
* See this proved in Letters to a Prebendary, Letter VII. '
L
76 STRICTURES ON
under pretence of their being witches. In like
manner, he sent his Bishops and Divines to the
Calvinistic Synod of Dort, (saying it was his
duty, as Defender of the Faith, to drive the
Arminian doctrine to hell), where they concurred
with the other Calvinist deputies in deciding that
the grace of God in the Predestinate is not lost
by the greatest crimes that man is capable of
perpetrating. Again, hecommitted to the flames,
not only Whitman and Legat, Protestant Arians,
but he also sent to the butchery eighteen Catho-
lic Priests and seven laymen* merely on account
of their religion. In several of these executions,
the Bishops, particularly King, of London, and
Neale, of Litchfield, were chiefly conspicuous.
In the mean time the Primate, Abbott, wrote to
James against tolerating what he called " the
tc damnable heretical doctrine of the whore of
u Babylon, as hateful to God," f &c. ; while
Archbishop Usher, with twelve other Irish
Bishops, protested, from the Pulpit, against
tolerating Catholics, J and both Houses of Par-
liament addressed the King to execute the laws
with increased severity against them, which work
they added te would greatly advance the glory of
" Almighty God and your Majesty's honour."
* See their names and history. Mem. Miss. Pr. and in Dodd.
f Rushworth'sCollect. vol. i. p. 4.
% Currie's Hist. Review, vol. . . 109. Rushworth, vol i.
"THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 77
The schism which had divided the Church of
England during the reign of James into two
hostile parties, the Episcopalians and the Puri-
tans,, growing wider and wider, produced, under
his son, Charles, its natural effect in a bloody
and destructive civil war. The Poet of course
sides with the party which, though vanquished
at first, in the end proved victorious: and as
the pretext for beginning it was the same which
had produced insurrection and rebellion in
every Christian country into which Protestancy
had gained an entry, the alleged dread of un-
scripturaland superstitious Popery, it is natural
for Catholics to take the same side, and to
join with him in reprobating the folly, hypo-
crisy and multifarious wickedness of the Pres-
byterians, Independents, Erastians and other
sectaries, comprehended under the general
name of Puritans. Still it must be confessed,
that they barely acted up to the grand prin-
ciple of the Reformation ; that is to say, as
they could not find out in their Bible, surplices,
tippets, square caps, deans, chapters, chancels,
bowing to the sacred name, and to the commu-
nion table, with a thousand other practices and
things which they objected to, they felt war-
ranted in condemning them as unscriptural
superstitions, and as sinful. On the other hand,
l2
78 STRICTURES 0N T
as they understood themselves to be called
upon in the inspired text, to bind their kings in
chains, and their nobles in iron links * so, upon
the same principle, they conceived it to be
their duty to lay hands upon Laud, and Straf-
ford, and upon the King himself, for not a crime
was then committed, as Clarendon remarks,
without ; scripture, as explained by individuals,
to justify it. With respect to the first of the
above-mentioned victims, the Primate Laud,
whose praises the Poet sings through the greater
part of a hundred pages of his book, it is unde-
niable that he introduced many novelties into
the establishment, which had till then passed
for superstitions, such as auricular confession,
assuming the title of His Holiness, and some
that were considered as idolatrous, such as
bowing to the communion table, surmounting
it with a crucifix, &c. On the other hand, the
Poet himself confesses that Laud maintained
such slavish principles, respecting the despotic
power of the Sovereign, that, if his enemies,
Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell, had been suf-
fered to transport themselves, as they wished
to do, civil liberty would have been annihilated.
The other tc most illustrious martyr of the
'\ Church of England," as Mr. Southey calls
* Psalm cxlix.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 79
him, King* Charles I.", was far from being so
firm in its support as this title would imply.
He certainly passed an Act to deprive the
Bishops of their chief ornament and protection,
their votes in Parliament ; and he offered,, in
the Treaty of the Isle of Wight, to pass another
for substituting Presbyterianism to Episcopacy,
during the ensuing three years. Nor is this
surprising, when we find the most learned and
able of his Bishops assuring him that Presbyters
can, not only ordain Priests, but also consecrate
Bishops.* In fact, we know that Luther pre-
tended to make Amsdorf Bishop of Naumburg,
as the Poet's hero, John Wesley, did Dr. Coke,
Bishop of North America. As to his loyal
Catholics, who had exhausted their fortunes,
and spilt their blood in his defence,t he con-
sented, by the terms of that treaty, to give
them up to the bigotry of his and their unre-
lenting enemies. The Poet says, " that Charles
* Usher. See Neal's History.
f When the war broke out, the Catholic Nobility and Gentry
flew to arms universally, in defence of their Sovereign. Lord
Castlemain has collected the names of two Noblemen, twelve
Knights, fifteen Colonels, and one hundred and fifty-nine other
Catholic Officers and Gentlemen, who lost their lives in the cause
of loyalty. The same author gives an account of property seques-
trated by the rebels ; by which it apj>ears that more than half of it
belonged to Catholics. See Cath. Apology, &c.
80 STRICTURES ON
" made known his resolution, that no Catholic;
" under his reign, should suffer death ou the
iS score of religion ;" and yet eleven Priests
were hanged and bowelled* in his reign, before
his power was taken from him, as thirteen
others were during the usurpation. f He asserts
that " the sanguinary laws had never been
if executed except in cases of treasonable prac-
" tices ;" and yet it appears, that above two
hundred Catholics had been put to death under
Elizabeth and James I., unaccused of treason or
any other offence, except the practice of their
religion. He gives it as a proof of the intole-
rance of the Parliament, that " the Catholics
" were, during its reign, compelled to perform
" their service at midnight, in fear and danger ;"
whereas it is notorious that such had been their
condition, in this respect, for near a century
before, that is ever since the beginning of
Elizabeth's reign.
The greater part of the Poet's book is made
up of those fanciful and inconsistent theories
* One of these, Lady Arundel's chaplain, Hugh Green, con-
demned, barely for being a priest, was a full half hour under the
executioner's hands, who was raking in his bowels all the time to
find his heart, while he himself was devoutly calling on Jesus.
See Miss. Pr., vol. ii. p. 215.
f See their names and history in Dodd, Miss. Pr., &c.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 81
which characterize the Quarterly Review, and
which therefore are undeserving of notice. What
he says positively of the Catholics of this period,
is, that, after the regicide, " they evi need a willing-
(( ness to commence another such persecution
" (as that under Queen Mary ) , that they slighted
(t the King in his exile, and treated with Crom-
ce well for taking an oath of submission to his
u government, as the price of that indulgence,
" which he in his true spirit of toleration was
(< willing to have granted." The facts are, that
the Catholics, broken and diminished as they
were in number and in fortune by the former
war, adhered to the son with the same disin-
terested loyalty as they had to the royal father;
they fought for him while he had a regiment
in his service, and they guarded him after his
defeat at Worcester, with a fidelity not to be
moved by the bribes or the threats held out by
the enemy. The names of fifty-two Catholics,
three of them priests, are upon record, who
were acquainted with the important secret of
Charles's quality, while he was wandering about
Boscobel, Moseley, and White Ladies ; and the
priest's hiding holes are still shewn at the two
first named places, where he was concealed,
when he ventured down from the Royal Oak.
As to " the true spirit of toleration " which
2 STRICTURES ON
this Poet attributes to the Usurper, his con*
tinued robbery of the Catholic laity,, and his
butchery of the priests prove what this was in
England, whilst the war of extermination,
which he proclaimed and carried on in Ireland,
still more forcibly demonstrates what it was
there.*
At the beginning of the second Charles's
reign, the Puritans acquired the less offensive
denomination of Non- conformists, and various
plans were devised to re- unite them to the
Established Church. These, however, were
quashed by the Act of Uniformity, tc some
" clauses of which/' Mr. Southey writes, ec the
" wisest statesmen and truest friends of the Church
" disapproved. One oftheseexcluded all persons
" from the ministry, who had not received epis-
" copal ordination. All, therefore, who had re-
(C ceived Presbyterian orders, were to quit their
<f benefices, or submit to be re-ordained/'
Thus it is seen that this champion of theChurch
is a Presbyterian or Methodist at heart ; or, at
* He led his fanatic soldiers to believe that God required of
them to extirpate the Irish population, in the same manner as the
Israelites heretofore destroyed the tribes of Canaan. Accordingly,
they murdered infants as well as men (sometimes even before they
were born) exclaiming at the same time, "Nits will be lice."
General Coots' cry of battle was, " Jesus, and no merry." See
Dr. Curry's Civil Wars of Ireland:
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 83
least, that he makes Episcopacy, with its
various ordinations and consecrations, conse-
quent on priestly orders, a matter of indif-
ference, contrary to the decision of the Bishops
at the aforesaid period, and on a later occa-
sion,* and to the Church rubricks and uniform
discipline. The writer, it seems, scouts the
revolting calumny, that the Catholics burnt
down London. What then must he think of
the Protestants, who twice over recorded this
infamous lie on their city monument, and who
leave it standing there at the present day ? In
like manner he acquits them of the plot to
murder the King, whose life they had saved in
their priest's hiding holes, at the imminent
danger of their own ! How dreadful then must
have been Protestant bigotry at that period,
which could, twice over, elicit resolutions in
Parliament as to the reality of this trumped-
up plot ! This, we know sent eighteen Catho-
lics, one of them a peer, to the butchery,
under pretence of its reality ! This excluded,
and does still exclude all Catholic peers from
* In 1662, the King having nominated four Presbyterian Minis-
ters to Bishoprics in Scotland, the consecrating Prelates in England
obliged them to renounce their former pretended orders, and to be
ordained Deacons and Priests. Collier, vol. ii. p. 887. Conform*
able to this was the doctrine even of Tillotson, Burnet, &c, on
a later occasion See Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 41, &c.
M
84 STRICTURES ON
their hereditary seats in Parliament, on the
same refuted and abandoned calumny 1
The unbounded bigotry, which had brought
the Royal Father to the block, drove his
second son from the throne ; the determining
causes of which catastrophe were the tolera-
tion of the King, and the intolerance of his
Bishops. They had sworn to his spiritual, as
well as his temporal supremacy ; they had
recently abjured the position, that it is lawful
to resist the King on any pretext whatever ;
but when he barely called upon them to join
him in a general disavowal of all religious
persecution whatsoever, whether of Dissenters,
or of Quakers, or of Catholics, they called in
the Prince of Orange to dethrone him, under
a pretence, which first and last he solemnly
disavowed, that he was bent on subverting
the Protestant religion.* How widely dif-
ferent was the conduct of the Catholic Bishops
at Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne !
Here the Poet drops his quill, and shuts up
his phantasmagoria of a Church establishment,
* The sincerity of James's Declaration for universal toleration
is proved by the pains he took, in his brother's reign, to get the
Act De Hceretico Comburendo repealed, and to protect and support
the French Huguenots, driven from their own country by the repeal
of the Edict of Nantz.
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH.'' 85
conducted, through the savage Britons, the
barbarous Saxons, the Pope's Catholic mission-
aries, and the apostate monks and priests of
Edward's and Elizabeth's reigns. He should
have continued his narrative till the alteration
of the established faith, in the important article
of non-resistance, was practically denied by
its former advocate, the Arian Primate, Tillot-
son ; till " the damnable heresy of Socinianism,"
as this Church had defined it,* was publicly
preached up by the famous Bishop Hoadley,
and effectually protected by Government ;f
till the same doctrine was taught in the Divinity
lectures of the University ;J and till a learned
Bishop and Professor had proclaimed, without
contradiction, that the Protestant Religion
consists in cc speaking what you think, and
thinking what you please." If the writer
might advise the Poetical Historian, for the
purpose of effectually vindicating and securing
the Church he courts, it would be in these or
in similar words : In vain, Mr. Southey, do
* In the canons of the Synod of 1 640.
t The Convocation having threatened to censure Hoadley, it
was dissolved by Government, in virtue of the Supremacy, and
has never been allowed to assemble since.
X See the Divinity Lectures of Professor Hey, delivered at
Cambridge.
Bishop Watson in his Apology, p. 3.
m a
86 STRICTURES ON
you rake together every kind of calumny and
misrepresentation for aspersing the One Holy
Catholic Church, which you profess to believe
in when you repeat the creed. The charges
confute themselves ! and, when exposed, fail
not to draw over converts of the best descrip-
tion to her communion. It is equally vain
in you to join with Primate Sancroft in dis-
suading dying Protestants from reconciling
themselves to the Catholic Church, as Charlesll,
and innumerable other Protestants have done,
in that trying situation : while not an instance
can be produced of any Catholic who ever wished
to die in any other communion than his own.
The fact is, if a Christian has any conscience,
it will speak out at that last extremity. Instead
then, of such vain attempts, exert your best
means to induce the majority of your Clergy to
believe in, and openly to profess their own
articles, and especially the great fundamental
articles of the Unity and Trinity of the God-
bead, and the Incarnation and Death of the
Second Person of it. Without this, they
are not Christians, and would have been burnt
at the stake by Cranmer and Ridley, had
they lived in their days. In the next place,
Sir, I must observe to you, that it ill becomes
a professing- champion of the Established
THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 8?
Church to celebrate and extol sectaries and
schismatics, who have broken off from her com-
munion ; who maintain doctrines and usages
at variance with hers, and who ordain (without
an atom of authority of any kind) Priests and
Bishops to perpetuate their schism. Now this
you are conscious of having recently done in
your two volumes of The Life of John Wesley,
in which also, you afford too strong proofs of
your chiming with that fanatic on his funda-
mental principle of justification. You have
constant evidence before your eyes of the con-
quests which the Methodists, who are the Puri-
tans of the present times, are making of your
people by thousands and myriads in every part
of the British dominions, to the evident danger
of leaving your Cathedrals and Parish Churches
empty: yet you aid them in their attempt, as
far as lies in your power, Lastly, I hesitate
not to warn you, Sir, of what your most clear-
sighted politicians and divines are now fully
sensible, namely, of the fatal consequences to
be expected, both to Religion and the State,,
from forcing the Sacred Writings into the
hands of the young and the ignorant, without
qomment or oral instruction. For is there a
man so blindly bigotted as to believe that
88 STRICTURES ON
any such person will collect tlie Thirty -nine
Articles, or any other system of Religion what-
ever, from the mere perusal of the Bible? or
that he will learn a sacred regard for truth
from the mere scriptural account of Abraham
and Jacob, or of mercy from the wars of
Joshua, or of chastity from the history of
David and Solomon ? I mean without a com-
ment, or an interpreter. Is there not danger
that he may draw from this unaided lecture, as
so many others have done, an approval of the
opposite vices, and particularly those of pre-
sumption, impiety, lust, rebellion, and regicide?
In fact, Lord Clarendon, Maddox and other
writers, as I have mentioned, observe to us,
that there was not a folly or a crime, which
took place during the Grand Rebellion, which
the perpetrators of it did not pretend to justify
by texts of Scripture; nor do the advocates
of religious instruction by the mere Bible, take
up so absurd a system, at the present day, but
from opposition to the Catholic Church, which
always has taught, and always must teach, that
there is a twofold revelation of God's word,
one written, the other unwritten; in other
words, Scripture and Tradition. From this
twofold Revelation, the Pastors of the Church
" THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH." 89
fail not to select and deliver to the body of the
faithful such portions of God's word as are
necessary for their belief and practice, broken,
and prepared for their digestions, in her cate-
chisms and oral instructions. The word of
God, thus distributed to Catholics, is found to
be one and the same in different ages and coun-
tries ; whereas Protestants, while they read,
most inconsistently, the written without paying
attention to the unwritten word of God, or to
the authority of the Church in the interpreta-
tion of either, are found to be at endless
variance one with another, and to be tossed to
and fro, and carried about xoith every wind of
doctrine. Ephes. iv. 14.
NOTES,
NOTE S.
It may seem not only strange, but also treacherous, in a
professed defender of the Established. Episcopal Church, to find
fault with the laws which require her Clergy to subscribe to her
Articles of Faith, and to receive their Orders from her; to the
exclusion of the Conventicle and self-appointed Preachers of the
Commonwealth and of Cromwell's reign, as Mr. Southey does in
Vol. ii. p. 481 of his Book of the Church. This latitudinarian doc-
trine, however, accords with what he had before taught in his
Life of Wesley, Vol. ii. p. 2, where he writes : " Wesley displayed
" his consummate prudence in not requiring any confession of
" faith from any person, who desired to become a member of his
" Religion. Hence the door was left open to the orthodox of all
" descriptions, Churchmen, Dissenters, Baptists, Paedobaptists,
" Presbyterians, Independents, Calvinists, or Arminians No pro-
" fession, no sacrifice of any kind was exacted." Hence it is
evident that, according to Mr. Southey's theology, all the above-
mentioned heterogeneous and contradictory sects may not only
be of one Religion, but also be all of the true Religion, that is, may
be all orthodox ! This inconsistency, however, is not much greater
than in Mr. Southey's pronouncing the panegyric of John Wick-
liffe, and singing the praises of Wat. Tyler.
NOTES. 91
Note to Vol. ii. p. 151, of " The Book of the Church."
Mr. Southey must greatly have changed his opinion concerning
the marriage of the clergy, in case he has any settled opinion of the
matter, since he published what follows. " London is never with-
" out a certain number of popular preachers. I am not now speak-
" ing of those who are popular among the Sectarians, or because
" they introduce sectarian doctrines into the Church; but of that
" specific character among the regular English clergy, which is
" here denominated a popular preacher The popular preacher
" of London curls his forelock, studies gestures at his looking-
" glass, takes lessons in his chamber from some stage-player, and
" displays his white hand and white handkerchief in the pulpit.
" The discourse is in character with the orator : nothing to rouse
" a slumbering conscience ; nothing to alarm the soul to a sense
" of its danger ; no difficulties expounded to confirm the
" wavering ; no mighty truths enforced, to rejoice the faithful :
" to look for theology here would be seeking pears from the elm :
" only a little smooth morality, such as Turk, Jew, or Infidel,
" may listen to without offence, sparkling with metaphors and
" similes, and rounded off with a text of scripture, a scrap of
" poetry, or, better than either, a quotation from Ossian.
" These gentlemen have two ends in view : the main one is to
" make a fortune by marriage, one of the evils this of a married
" clergy. It was formerly a doubt whether the red coat or the
" black one had the best chance with the ladies ; but, since
" volunteering has made scarlet so common, black carries the
" day. The customs of England do not exclude the clergyman
" from any species of amusement ; the popular preacher is to be
" seen at the theatre, and at the horse race, bearing his part at
" the concert and the ball, making his court to the old ladies at
" the card-table, and to the young at the harpsichord : and, in
" this way, if he does but steer clear of any flagitious crime or
" irregularity he generally succeeds in finding some widow, or
" waning spinster, with weightier charms than youth and beauty."
Southei/s Espriella's Letters, Vol. i. p.- 210.
N
92 NOTES.
Final Note.
The spirit and tendency of the Poet Laureate's Dramatic Poem
of Wat Tyler may be judged of by the following extracts
from it.
SCENE. Blackheath.
Tyler, Hob, &c.
Song.
When Adam delv'd, and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman ?
Wretched is the infant's lot,
Born within the straw-roof'd cot 1
Be he gen'rous, wise, and brave,
He must only be a slave.
Drain'd by taxes of his store,
Punish'd next for being poor.
While the peasant works, to sleep ;
What the peasant sows, to reap ;
Be he villain, be he fool,
Still to hold despotic rule;
Trampling on his slaves with scorn:
This is to be nobly born !
When Adam delv'd, and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?
Hob.
Curse on these taxes, one succeeds another ;
Our ministers, panders of a king's will,
Drain all our wealth away, waste it in revels.
Jack Straw.
I only wonder we lay quiet so long.
We had always the same strength, and we deserved
The ills, we met with, for not using it.
NOTES. 93
Hob.
Why do we fear those animals call'd Lords ?
Is not my arm as mighty as a Baron's ?
John Ball, the Wickliffite Priest.
Ye all are equal, Nature made you so ;
Equality is your birth-right. When I gaze
On the proud palace, and behold one man
In the blood-purpled robes of royalty,
Feasting at ease, and lording over millions :
Then turn me to the hut of poverty,
And see the wretched labourer, worn with toil,
Divide his scanty morsel with his infants ;
I sicken, and, indignant at the sight,
Blush for the patience of humanity !
Wat Tyler. King of England!
Petitioning for pity is most weak,
The Sovereign People ought to demand justice.
John Ball-
Tell me, Sir Judge,
What does the Government avail the Peasant ?
Would not he plough his field and sow the corn,
Aye, and in peace, enjoy the harvest too ;
Would not the sunshine and the dews descend,
Though neither King nor Parliament existed ?
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