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Bocher
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Bocking

the archbishop in St. Mary's chapel of St. Paul's Cathedral on 12 April 1549. On 30 April Cranmer sent a detailed account of Joan's heresy and of his proceedings against her to the king, Edward VI, and at the same time handed her over to the privy council for punishment. She was kept in prison for a year, and was there visited by Roger Hutchinson, Lever, Whitehead, Latimer, and other protestant clergymen, but they failed to induce her to change her opinions. For a time she was detained by Lord-chancellor Rich in his own residence, York House, 'where my lord of Canterbury and Bishop Ridley resorted almost daily to her. But she was so high in spirit that they could do nothing' Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 1847, vii. 631). On 27 April 1550 Lord-chancellor Rich, in accordance with an order of the council, issued a writ to the sheriff of London to burn her. On 2 May following Joan was burned at Smithfield. Dr. Scory, afterwards bishop of Rochester, 'preached at her death,' and was reviled by Joan as a lying rogue.

Foxe in his 'Acts and Monuments' (ed. Townsend, 1847, v. 699), following Sir John Hayward's 'Life of Edward VI,' asserts that Cranmer was solely responsible for Joan's death, and that he obtained the king's signature to the order for her execution by something like coercion. It has been pointed out, however, that in Edward VI's private diary, printed from the 'Cottonian MS.' Nero C. x) in Burnet's 'Reformation' (ed. Pocock, vol. ii.), the king notes the fact of Joan's execution without comment: that Joan was burned under a writ issued by the lord chancellor to the sheriff of London, in accordance with a resolution drawn up by those members of the council who were present at the meeting of 27 April 1550; and that neither the king nor the archbishop attended that meeting. Burnet (Reformation, ed. Pocock, ii. 202) rightly condemns the policy that led the protestant reformers to burn Joan, a supporter of their own party, and adds: 'The woman's carriage made her be looked on as a frantic person fitter for Bedlam than a stake.' Edmund Becke [q. v.] took at the time another view, and published immediately after Joan's death 'A brefe Confutacioun of this Anabaptisticall Opinion … For the maintenaunce wherof Jhone Boucher … most obstinately suffered,' mdl. (reprinted in J. P. Collier's 'Illustrations of Early English Literature,' 1864, vol. ii.)

[Cranmer's report of the heresy and excommunication of Joan made to the privy council (30 April 1549) is printed from his register in Strype's Memorials of Cranmer, 1848, ii. 488–92, in Wilkins's Concilia, iv. 43, and in Burnet's Reformation, ed. Pocock, v. 246–9. See also Strype's Memorials, ii. i. 335 et seq.; Roger Hutchinson's Works (Parker Society), 145–7; Fabyan's Chronicle, 1559, fol. 555; Stow's Chronicle, 1615, p. 604; Froude's History, iv. 407, 526; Lingard's History, v. 159; and especially the notes on Strype's Cranmer (1848), ii. 97–100. Other authorities are mentioned in the text.]

S. L. L.


BOCK, EBERHARDT OTTO GEORGE von (d. 1814), baron, a major-general in the British army, was descended from an old military family, and entered the Hanoverian cavalry about the year 1781. His name appears as a premier-lieutenant in the 6th Hanoverian dragoons in 1789, and as rittmeister (captain) in 1800. On the dissolution of the Hanoverian army after the convention of Lauenburg, Bock was one of the officers who came to England, where he raised four troops of heavy cavalry, which became the 1st dragoons, King's German legion, of which he was gazetted colonel 21 April 1804. The regiment was formed at Weymouth, and was a particular favourite of George III. Bock served at its head in the expedition to Hanover in 1805; also in Ireland, whither it was sent after its return home. From Ireland Bock, who had attained the rank of major-general in 1810, proceeded to the Peninsula in 1811 in command of a brigade composed of the two heavy cavalry regiments of the legion, with which he made the subsequent campaigns in Spain and the south of France in 1812-13. The steadiness and gallantry of Bock's heavy Germans often won approval, particularly on 23 July 1812, the day after the victory at Salamanca, when in a charge, which by the enemy's own admission was the most brilliant cavalry affair that occurred during the whole war, they attacked, broke, and made prisoners three entire battalions of French infantry. With one of his sons, Captain L. von Bock, and some other officers. Bock was lost in the Bellona transport, on the Tulbest rocks, on 21 Jan. 1814, on a voyage from Passages to England. His body was washed on shore at the little Breton village of Pleubian (arrondissement of Paimpol), where it was recognised and interred.

[Gross-Britt. u. Braunschw.-Lunenburg Staats-Kalendar. 1780-1803; Beamish's Hist. German Legion (1832-7); Foy's Histoire de la Guerre de la Péninsule, i. 290; Alison's Hist. of Europe, x. 367-8].

H. M. C.


BOCKING, EDWARD (d. 1534), Benedictine, was the leading supporter of Elizabeth Barton, the nun of Kent [q. v.] He probably belonged to the family of Bocking