A HISTORY OF LONDON
inward man,' and early in 1538 was living, an old man of nearly seventy, at the Grey Friars in London. He had urged men who came to confess to him to remain steadfast in the ancient faith, and when brought before Cranmer confessed to certain 'articles of heresy' which he was ordered to abjure at Paul's Cross, When the appointed day came he stood 'stiff and proud in his malicious mind' and would not read his abjuration, and on 22 May 'he was hanged in chains by the middle and armholes all quick' over a fire and burnt to death. It is to be feared that the opinion of some Londoners was expressed in the doggerel set up over the gallows:—
Forest the friar
That obstinate liar
That wilfully shall be dead,
In his contumacy
The Gospel doth deny
The King to be supreme head.[1]
On the other side the most prominent heretic of this period[2] was John Nicholson alias Lambert, a London schoolmaster.[3] The king argued the question of transubstantiation with him in the presence of a great assemblage, including several bishops and the lord mayor and aldermen, but he refused to recant and was burnt in Smithfield on 22 November.[4] It would appear from Wriothesley's account that Lambert held other opinions akin to those of the Anabaptists, more of whom had come in from abroad since 1535. On I October the king appointed a commission including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, Dr. Crome, and Dr. Barnes,[5] to proceed against them; three were condemned to death, one of them a woman, and on 29 November two were burnt in Smithfield and one at Colchester. On 24 November Bishop Hilsey showed at Paul's Cross the famous relic known as the Blood of Hailes, declaring that it had been proved not to be blood at all. At the same time four Anabaptists, three men and a woman, 'all Dutchmen born,' bore faggots as heretics, the others being ordered to 'avoid the realm.'[6] In December a Whitechapel bricklayer named John Harrydaunce, who had been preaching to large audiences from a tub in his garden, bore a faggot at Paul's Cross with two other persons, one a priest, and two men are said to have been burnt at Smithfield.[7]
- ↑ L. and P. Hen. VIII, v, 1525; vii, 1607; xiii (1), 1043; ibid. Introd. p. xvi et seq.; Hall, Chron. 30 Hen. VIII; Wriothesley, Chron. (Camd. Soc), i, 78–80; Lond. Chron. 12 in Camd. Misc. iv; Monum. Franc. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 201.
- ↑ The only other cases between 1536 and 1538 appear to be those of a priest who did penance in Nov. 1536 for celebrating at his mass with ale (Wriothesley, op. cit. i, 58), a man sent to the bishop by the Court of Aldermen with a copy of his indictment for heresy in June 1537, and a stationer accused in August 1538 of saying the mass was idolatry; Rec. Corp. Repert. ix, fol. 253, Letter Bk. P, fol. 153; see Sharpe, Lond, and the Kingdom, i, 422.
- ↑ He had been connected at Cambridge with Bylney and Arthur, had afterwards been chaplain to the English merchants at Antwerp, and had twice before been in danger for his opinions.
- ↑ L. and P. Hen. VIII, x, 462 ; xiii (2), 834, 849, 851, 852, 899, 924; Hall, Chron. 30 Hen. VIII; Wriothesley, Chron. (Camd. Soc), i, 88; Monum. Franc. (Rolls Sen), ii, 202; Foxe, op. cit. v, 181 et seq (But cf. Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation, i, 342.) One result of his trial may have been the proclamation made that month that no one, on pain of death, was to reason of the mystery of the Sacrament of the Altar except those learned in divinity in the universities; L. and P. Hen. VIII, xiii (2), 848; Wriothesley, op. cit i, 89.
- ↑ Wilkins, Conc., iii, 836.
- ↑ L. and P. Hen. VIII, xiii (2), 899; Wriothesley, Chron. (Camd. Soc), i, 89, 90; Monum. Franc. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 202. A proclamation of Feb. 1539 pardoned those led astray by them; Wilkins, Conc., iii, 842.
- ↑ Wriothesley, op. cit. i, 82-3, 93; Monum. Franc. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 202. For Harrydaunce, who had begun his preaching in 1537 and resumed it in 1539, see L. and P. Hen. VIII, xii (2), 594, 624 ; xiv (2), 42; Rec. Corp. Repert. ix, fol. 261b.
