Germany, and so early as 1535 had sent over to the Protestant princes at Smalcald, the Bishop of Hereford, Archdeacon Heath, and Dr. Barnes, to negotiate a league; but the princes called upon him to subscribe their confession of faith, and to lend them 200,000 crowns. Gardiner, who was at heart as complete a Romanist as any in Spain or Italy, very soon prevented any such union, though Henry was to be proclaimed its head. This might please his vanity, but Gardiner knew how to tickle that still more. "Why," he asked, "was Henry to subscribe to their confession of faith? Was he not head of his own Church; authorised to make what alterations he pleased; and, having emancipated himself from the thraldom of the Pope, was he to put his neck under the yoke of the German divines? At all events, even before he thought of such a thing, he should insist that they should first sanction his divorce and the doctrine of his supremacy." This was enough: Henry dismissed all idea of the German Confederation.
The Lower House of Convocation, as if to deter Henry still farther from any schemes of German union of faith, drew up a list of fifty-nine propositions, which it denounced as heresies, extracted from the publications of different Reformers, and presented it to the Upper House. On this, Henry, who believed himself a greater theologian than any in either house of Convocation, drew up, with the aid of some of the prelate, a book of "Articles," which was presented by Cromwell to the Convocation, and there subscribed. This was then passed through Parliament, and became termed too justly the "Bloody Statute," for a more terrible engine of persecution never existed. To expound this still further, by his order, Convocation issued a little book called "The Godly and Pious Institution of a Christian Man." This was subscribed by the archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, and certain doctors of the canon and civil law, and pronounced by them "in all things the very true meaning of Scripture." This was the standard of Henry's orthodoxy, and any one daring to differ from this was to perish by fire or gallows. The Six Articles asserted the real presence in the eucharist, the communion in one kind, the perpetual obligation of vows of chastity, the utility of private masses, celibacy, and the necessity of auricular confession. The "Institution of the Christian Man" sternly refuses salvation to every one beyond the pale of the "Catholic Church," yet denies the supremacy of the pontiff, and inculcates passive obedience to the king. It declares that no cause whatever can authorise a subject to take up arms against the sovereign; that kings are only accountable to God; and that the only remedy against regal oppression is prayer to God to change the heart of a despot, and lead him to use justly his power. Such were the doctrines, religious and political, which this great Church Reformer now established; yet, at the same time, he inconsistently permitted Bibles to be chained in churches, and soon after to be used in private houses—a measure which was certain to generate opponents to his favourite creed. Accordingly, betwixt the king's permission to read the Bible, and thus to learn the truth, and his decree that they should only believe what he pleased to allow them, the fires of Smithfield were soon ablaze, and the most terrible scenes enacted.
No sooner had the statute of the Six Articles passed, than Latimer and Shaxton, the Bishops of Worcester and Salisbury, resigned their sees; and Cranmer, who had been living openly with his wife and children, seeing the king's determination to enforce the celibacy of the clergy, sent off his family to Germany, and made himself outwardly conformable to the law.
At the end of the year 1539, the king put to death, in Smithfield, three victims of his religious intolerance. The two first were a man and a woman who were Anabaptists. The third was John Lambert, formerly a priest, who had become a schoolmaster in London. He was a Reformer, and denied the doctrine which Henry was now enforcing under the penalty of death, that the real presence existed in the bread and wine. An information was laid against him to Cranmer, who summoned the offender to appear before him in his archiopiscopal court. What a pitiable idea does it give us of the cowardice and duplicity of Cranmer, knowing, as we do, that he hold this very opinion himself; and yet, rather than bring himself into danger, he compelled this far more honest man to stand upon his trial for it, at the certain risk of his life! Henry, however, who never let an opportunity of displaying his theology, determined to preside at the trial himself. Sampson, the Bishop of Chichester, opened the trial with a speech, in which he said that the king had cast off the yoke of the Pope, had sent away those drones, the monks, and permitted the reading of the Bible, but he was determined that no other change should take place in religion in his reign. Then the king, who was now grown not only corpulent, but much diseased in body, and as coarse in his speech as he was violent in his temper, started up and cried, "Ho, good fellow! what is thy name?" On being told that it was Nicholson, though he was commonly called Lambert, Henry exclaimed that ho would not believe a man with two names though he were his own brother; and continued, "Fellow! what sayest thou concerning the sacrament? Wilt thou deny that the eucharist is the real body of Christ?"
The prisoner stood firm to his denial, and when he had been severely questioned by Cranmer and eight other bishops for five hours, he was condemned to the flames. Not only did Cranmer concur in the sentence, but Cromwell, who professed so much zeal for the Reformation, did the same, and with a vile adulation, writing to Wyatt, praised the king for "the benign grace, excellent gravity and inestimable majesty" with which he endeavoured to convert the unhappy man! It is impossible to read of this degraded tyrant, and of the base slaves by whom he was surrounded, and believe that these things took place in England. Poor England! it was now reduced to the condition to which this Cromwell had vowed that he would bring it. "The Lord Cromwell," says Gardiner, in his letters, "had once put it in the king's head to take upon him to have his will and pleasure regarded for law; and therefore I was called for at Hampton Court. And, as he was very stout, 'Come in my Lord of Winchester,' quoth he, 'answer the king here, but speak plainly and directly, and shrink not, man. Is not that,' quoth he, 'that pleaseth the king a law? Have you not that in the civil laws, quod principi placuit, &c.?'" Gardiner was confounded; but after a while said, "that for the king to make the law his will, was more sure and quiet," on which the king turned his back and left the matter. But in the
