Search York
Yüklə 12,09 Mb.
|
|
Fox advised But the matter looked with such an ill aspect upon reli- of his book gi° n 5 that one Prat, a learned and pious preacher, and ac- this contro- q ua intance of Mr. Fox, did earnestly dissuade him from
Fox to that . . , - , r , l T • • -i intent. bishop or York: who, 1 promise you, in my judgment, is
UNDER QUEEN MARY I. 431 " renew not that malice that is once remitted. Constantine is CHAP. " named in the Latin history, for the which I am very sorry. xxxin - " I pray you let it be mended in the next, and pass it over Anno 1555. " with silence; either else write it in such sort as no man be " defamed, whereby religion may sustain no hurt, otherwise " the Papists may have a just occasion to triumph.'"
too late, or Fox thought convenient to follow his own judg- ment rather than that of his friend ; chiefly, I suppose, for the vindication of the memory of this pious martyr, and to clear him from those aspersions that otherwise might have been believed concerning him, let the living clear themselves as they could : and therein shewing himself an impartial historian. Two months after Bishop Ferrar was burnt, viz. May 30, Cardmaker was John Taylor, alias Cardmaker, so served, canon resi- dentiary of Wells, and a learned man ; once an Observant friar, afterwards reader of divinity in St. Paul's, and vicar of St. Bridget's in Fleet-street : who was taken into custody with Barlow, bishop of that see, upon Queen Mary's coming to the crown. What promise of compliance he had made to Gardiner, lord chancellor, at first, I cannot tell, but he was almost sure of him : insomuch as he would speak concerning him to others, that he was convented before him for reli- gion ; and would bring forth the names of him and Bishop Barlow, who was prison-fellow with him, and had gone too far ; praising them for men of great gravity, wisdom, and learning. But Cardmaker was afterwards separated from Barlow into another prison : Barlow indeed, by some sub- mission, got free, and fled into Germany. And soon after, Laurence Saunders was committed to the same prison with Cardmaker, and by his company, Cardmaker, it was thought, was mightily confirmed, and gathered great courage to de- fend the truth. The Bishop of London also thought him- self sure of Cardmaker, and openly talked, that he should soon be discharged out of prison, when he had subscribed to transubstantiation and some other articles. Cardmaker
432 MEMORIALS ECCLESIASTICAL CHAP, soon lost his dear companion Saunders, who was carried '_ forth and burnt, and he left alone. Anno 1555. What submission this good man made, we may be in- ofhis sub- f° rme d by the judiciary acts of his process : which was thus,
Fox's MSS. . ' Hoper and Rogers appeared before the bishops and others, commissioners ; Cardmaker was the third that made his ap- pearance that day. " To him then did the Bishop of Win- " ton repeat the counsel he lately gave him in the presence " of some of the Privy Council, for the reduction of him to " the unity of the Catholic Church, which Cardmaker then " refused to do. Now the Bishop again asked him, whether " he would from his heart, and from an humble spirit, sub- " mit himself, and arise from his former spot of heresy ; " signifying to him, that if he would, he should be freely " received. In consequence whereunto, the said John Card- " maker humbly submitted himself, as it appeared, pro- " mising willingly to yield to such things which should be " appointed him by my Lord on this behalf. Then my " Lord admitted kindly his submission, together with the " congratulation of all that were present ; and it was en- " tered into the acts of the day. 1,1 But that this worthy man meant not a plenary submission unto their wills, may appear by a letter that he privately wrote to a friend upon this occasion, fearing Mr. Cardmaker's revolt from religion. The letter is recorded in Fox, which being short, I will transcribe, shewing the spirit and Christian resolution of this man. 260 " The peace of God be with you. His letter, " You shall right well perceive, that I am not gone back, what it was. " as some men do report me, but as ready to give my life " as any of my brethren that are gone before me, although " by a policy I have a little prolonged it, and that for the " best, as already it appeareth unto me, and shall shortly " appear unto all. That day that I recant any point of " doctrine, I shall suffer twenty kinds of death, the Lord
UNDER QUEEN MARY I. 433 " being mine assistance, as I doubt not but he will. Com- CHAP. " mend me to my friend, and tell him no less. This the Lord strengthen you, me, and all his elect. My riches Anno l555, " and poverty is as it was wont to be : and I have learned " to rejoice in poverty as well as riches ; for that I count " now to be very riches. Thus fare ye well in Christ : sa- *' lute all my brethren in my name. I have conferred with " some of my adversaries, learned men, and I find that they " be but sophists and shadows." But when he would not so easily be brought to subscribe His learn- as they expected, he continued a great while after a pri- stfadfast- soner, and endured many and grievous conflicts with the "ess- Papists, the rather because they conceived good hopes they should have drawn him to their side at last. Great pains was taken about him : earnest was their desire to gain so learned a man, and often their sittings ; resorting daily to him, no labour omitted : whatsoever diligence in this mat- ter might prevail ; contention, threatening, fear, entreaty, flattery, profit, nothing was left unattempted. He being therefore baited so many ways, when he could not otherwise escape out of their snares, desired them to put all their rea- sons in writing, promising them that he likewise would an- swer them in writing. To be short, one of the doctors took upon him this office, called Martyn, a civil lawyer of Win-Dr.Martyn. Chester's retinue, and well traded in his master's school of errors and deceits ; otherwise a man not the slowest witted among the Papists, if he had used the gifts of nature to the maintaining of truth and right, rather than to the flattering of a few men. This was that Martyn that set forth the book against priests' 1 marriages, in the year 1554. This man would needs encounter Cardmaker, in maintaining tran- substantiation and other articles: but Cardmaker, though lower in degree, yet better in force of arguments, answered him again by writing ; and did well and plentifully beat down his youthful boldness, and taught him to keep himself within his bounds of the law, if he were wise. And thus this godly man, being much and a long time tossed on every VOL. III. f f 434 MEMORIALS ECCLESIASTICAL CHAP, side, continued in steadfast constancy even to the day of his XXXIIL death, which he suffered at Smithfield. It is a great pity Anno 1555. that none of his disputations, nor these answers to Marty n, nor any letters of his are extant, being as learned a man as any that suffered in those evil days, and as much means used by the Popish party to bring him over. And yet very little is recorded of him in Fox or elsewhere. Ca ^ d ", He shewed his learning and parts, methinks, in those few maker s . words to words that passed between him and Beard, by occupation a moter° tailor, by office a promoter ; who, two or three days before Cardmaker's death, came unto him from the Council, as he 26l pretended, to know if he would recant. Whereupon he told Beard, that he had been a tailor by his trade, and had en- deavoured to be a skilful workman, and thereby to get his living. And so had he been a preacher for twenty years, and ever since, that God, by his great mercy, had opened his eyes to see his eternal truth, he had endeavoured to call upon him to give him the true understanding of his holy word ; and he thanked God for that great mercy, hoping that he had discharged his conscience in the setting forth of the same, according to the talent he had received. And when Beard asked him what he thought of the blessed sa- crament of the altar, he, among other things, asked him again, " whether the sacrament he spoke of had a beginning " or no P 11 Whereunto Beard replying, granted it had, and an end too. Then said Cardmaker, " If the sacrament had " a beginning, as he confessed, and an ending too, then it " could not be God, for God had no beginning nor ending. 11 And so willed him to note the same. Phiipot John Philpot, archdeacon of Winchester, was burnt at Smithfield in the month of December; another learned man, as appears by those many examinations that were taken of him, which are preserved in Fox's book. He once, in his zeal for the honour of Christ his master, did spit at an Arian : for which he wrote a discourse, entitled, An Apo- logy, and an Invective against the Avians ; with an admo- nition to beware of them, and of other late sprung heresies : which he wrote by way of letter to the godly brethren and UNDER QUEEN MARY I. 435 sisters: which being not printed in Fox, nor in the Martyrs' CHAP. Letters, I have placed, and I think very deservedly, in the ' Catalogue; for I think it pity, that any scraps of these An 'i° 1555. great men should be lost. He was present when a certain vlviii Arian, being minded to pervert some to his own heresy, said words to this effect, that " God was no otherwise in His reasons " Christ, than God was in him ; 11 making Christ but a crea- onan Arian. ture as he himself was : and that "he might be without sin " as well as Christ." Philpot could not bear these blas- phemous words, and in indignation spit upon him : " which, " he said, he did for this end, to signify thereby, that he " was a person not fit to be accompanied withal for his hor- " rid blasphemy, and to relieve that sorrow which he con- " ceived for that blasphemy that was spoke against our " Saviour/" 1 These reasons he gave to defend himself in this seemingly rude behaviour, which had given offence to some.
denied the godhead of the Holy Ghost. They objected tne Arians. against some passages of our Liturgy ; as against the suf- frage, Lord have mercy upon us, miserable sinners ; for they said they were not miserable, nor would be accounted so. They were against using the Lord's Prayer ; for it was needless, they said, to pray, Thy Kingdom come, when God's kingdom was already come upon them ; and that men needed not to pray for that which they had already. And also that petition, Forgive us our trespasses ; for they held they had no sin. They denied also the Old Testament to be of any authority ; and that David's psalms were not to be used as prayers and praises unto God ; and they denied the benefit of repentance to any that sinned after baptism. These er- rors and heresies, and the like, Philpot, in the aforesaid let- ter, discovered and confuted. There is a book of his against 262 the Arians, mentioned in his eleventh examination to be published ; but whether it were this letter, or something else, I cannot tell. To this I have added another of his letters hitherto un- Phiipot's printed, writ to a certain pious lady, nameless; I suppose^?' f f 2 CHAP
XXXIII 436 MEMORIALS ECCLESIASTICAL . the good Lady Vane, to whom he wrote many : and I verily ' believe this to be his own hand. It was writ a month and Anno 1555. f our or fi Ve days before his death. Herein he mentioned an N°. XLIX. examination he underwent before a great many Lords of the Council ; before whom, he said, he did more frankly deliver his mind than he had done at any time before ; and that the matter laid against him was his disputation in the convoca- tion two years before, concerning their idol the mass ; which they urged him to recant. And then he answered them, that if the clergy could prove their sacrament of the altar to be a sacrament, or themselves to be of the true church of Christ, he promised he would be conformable to all their doings.
Some fur- This Philpot was of a knightly family, and had ingenuom count of education in Wickham\s school by Winchester. He was a Philpot. traveller, and had been at Rome ; where he was acquainted with Christopherson, in this Queen's reign bishop of Chi- chester, well seen in Greek learning. In King Edward's days he entered the lists against the Arians, who began to shew their faces then, and he wrote against them. He was a man of strong affections ; and when he saw, at Queen Mary's first convocation, (whereof he was a member,) what a sort of men were gathered together, and how bent to set up idolatry in this land, where it had been with so much care and pains thrown out, and the godly reformation like to be overthrown, he wept before them all, casting himself down upon his knees; whereat some there did but make sport. In that convocation he spake very boldly ; insomuch that Weston, the prolocutor, told him he was mad, and that he should go to Bethlem, and bade him hold his peace, and to have him to prison, and to put him out of the house. He wrote a report of this convocation, which fell into Bishop Bonner's hands, among other of Philpot's books that that Bishop had seized : and this report he maintained before the said Bonner, and the Bishops of Durham, Chichester, and Bath, and divers other doctors, to be true. The Bishop of London taunted at him for some sentences that he read in some of Philpot's books; as this sentence in his Bible,
UNDER QUEEN MARY I. 437 Spiritus est vicarius Christi in terris. And in another CHAP. • xvxni book, In me Johanne Philpotto, ubi abundavit peccatum, superabundavit et gratia. Both which Bonner would have Anno 1555 « made matter of charge against him, though the former sen- tence was St. Bernard's, and the latter St. Paul's, which Bonner, it seems, knew not. When Christopherson, bishop of Chichester, had reproached him with ignorance in the doctors, Philpot told that Bishop, " that it was a shame for " them to wrest and wreath the doctors as they did, to " maintain a false religion : and that the doctors were alto- " gether against them, if they took them aright : and that " it was indeed their false packing of doctors together had " given him and others occasion to look upon them : where- " by we find you," said he, " shameful liars, and misrepre- " senters of the ancient doctors. 11 And when Dr. Mor- gan of Oxford told him, " all the doctors were on their 263 " side, and against Philpot and his party altogether; 11 he replied, " that so indeed they said, when they were in their " pulpits alone, and none to answer them ; but if they would " come to cast accounts with him thereof, he would venture " with them a recantation, that he, as little sight as he had " in the doctors, would bring more authorities of ancient " doctors on his side, than they should be able for theirs. " Nay, he that can bring most to him, 11 said he to him, " let " the other side yield. 11 He writ some treatises and very many letters in prison, Phiipot's specially while he remained in the King's Bench in an easier p r " S( JJJ gs m confinement, before he was by Bishop Bonner cast into his " Coal-house, a dark and ugly prison as any was about Lon- " don, 11 as himself described it. Most of his letters were to the Lady Vane, a most excellent pious woman, whom he styled Lady Vane. the elect lady, and sometimes his mother, and sometimes his sister. She sent him large portions of money to supply his necessities, and of the rest of the prisoners of Christ ; making him her almoner. One parcel of which money, by her order, was conveyed by him to Oxford, in the month of October, to the three fathers, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, in cap- tivity there. He also penned his examinations, thirteen in
438 MEMORIALS ECCLESIASTICAL CHAP, number: which yet were not all he underwent. These XXXIII. . being conveyed beyond sea, were by Fox put into Latin, Anno 1555. an d printed His justice. To a ]} tn e rest I shall add one piece of his justice, and his adversaries 1 injustice. Though all the time of his impri- sonment he received no benefit from his archdeaconry, which his enemies had stopped payment of, yet his sureties for the first-fruits were compelled to pay the same. This occa- sioned him, in a letter to a brother, and another to a sister of his, to entreat them to take all care that the sureties might be satisfied out of his own estate, to the contentation of his mind, which could not be quiet till they were discharged. One Fokes, a lawyer, sent him a book of law to instruct him in some law case, probably concerning this business. But Philpot reckoned law would little avail him now ; and, in a letter, bade Careless commend him to Mr. Fokes, and thank him for the law book ; " but neither law, 11 said he, " nor equity will take any place among these blood- " thirsty. 11 His parts He was the son of Sir Peter Philpot, knight, nigh Win- young, ton ; and was in his youth put to Wickham college : where Foxn MSS. he profited in learning so well, that he laid a wager of twenty pence with John Harpsfield, that he would make two hundred verses in one night, and not make above three faults in them. Mr. Thomas Tuchyner, schoolmaster, next before Mr. White, was judge, and adjudged the twenty pence to Mr. Philpot. a passage Stephen, bishop of Winton, ever bare ill-will against this
nra - King Henry's reign. But he could not, in his conscience, hide his talent under this Prince, and in so popish a dio- cese. At last the Bishop sent for certain justices, who came to his house, named Wolsey ; and there, calling Mr. Philpot rogue, " My Lord, 11 said he, " do you keep a privy " sessions in your own house for me, and call me rogue, " whose father is a knight, and may dispend a thousand 264 " pounds within one mile of your nose ? And he that can " dispend ten pounds by the year, as I can, I thank God, is UNDER QUEEN MARY I. 439
"pounds by the year? 11 Philpot. "Ask Henry Francis, your sister's son. 11 Henry Francis kneeling down, said, Anc0 ,555 - " I pray you, my Lord, be a good lord unto Mr. Philpot, " for he is to me a good landlord. 11 Winch. " What rent " dost thou pay him P 11 Francis. " I pay him ten pounds " by year. 11 At this word the Bishop was afraid, and ashamed for making so loud a lie upon a gentleman, and a learned gentleman. This passage Mr. Sternhold, one of King Edward's privy chamber, told afterwards to that King for entertainment sake. This Henry Francis, the Bishop's nephew, the Bishop took care of from his youth ; but he wanted, as it seems, a sober education, for he proved a cutter and a ruffian : and, as though he intended to further him in vice, he preferred him to the bailiffwick of the Clink, that is, he made him captain of the stews, and all the whores thereunto belong- ing.
end of King Edward, an unhappy difference started between f )im and Poynet, the learned bishop of Winton, and him ; fomented Bishop and devised by Cook, the register, a man that hated pure gather. religion. He informed the said Bishop, whether true or FoxiiMSS - false I know not, that there was a yearly pension due to him from the Archdeacon. This causing contention between them, hence intolerable troubles arose, and slanders in that diocese to them both : while so good a Bishop, at the setting on of so rank a knave, could find in his heart to vex his brother, so conspicuous both for learning and life. Another instance of Cook's malice towards the Archdeacon was this : Cook having married a lady, rode with more men than the ¦ Archdeacon himself; and taking this opportunity of num- Yüklə 12,09 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|