CH. 3. gathering. A.D. 1529. of the ap tory courts. Priests were hooted, or 'knocked down into the kennel,'* as they walked along the streets-women refused to receive the holy bread from hands which they thought polluted,† and the appearance of an apparitor of the courts to serve a process or a citation in a private house Reception was a signal for instant explosion. Violent words paritors of were the least which these officials had to fear, the Consis- and they were fortunate if they escaped so lightly. A stranger had died in a house in St. Dunstan's belonging to a certain John Fleming, and an apparitor had been sent to seal his chamber and his goods' that the church might not lose her dues. John Fleming drove him out, saying loudly unto him, "Thou shalt seale no door here; go thy way, thou stynkyng knave, ye are but knaves and brybours everych one of you.' Thomas Banister, of St. Mary Wolechurch, when a process was served upon him, 'did threaten to slay the apparitor.' 'Thou horson knave,' he said to him, 'without thou tell me who set thee awork to summon me to the court, by Goddis woundes, and by this gold, I shall brake thy head.'§ A 'waiter, at the sign of the Cock,' fell in trouble for saying that the sight of a priest did make him sick,' also, that he would go sixty miles to indict a priest,' saying also in the presence of many-horsyn priests, they shall be indicted เ Answer of the Bishops to the Commons' Petition: Rolls House MS. Joanna Leman notatur officio quod non venit ad ecclesiam parochialem; et dicit se nolle ac cipere panem benedictum a mani- * Often СH. 3. as many as come to my handling.' เ A.D. 1529. streets. that do I,' answered the apparitor, if thou wilt anything with it;' whereupon, as the apparitor deposeth, the said Henry Clitheroe did hurl at him from off his finger that instrument of his art called the thymmelle,' and he, the apparitor, drawing his sword, 'the said Henry did snatch up his virga, Anglice, his yard, and did pursue the apparitor into the public streets, and after multi- Fight in the plying of many blows did break the head of the said apparitor.' These are light matters, but they were straws upon the stream; and such a scene as this which follows reveals the principles on which the courts awarded their judgment. One Richard ProceedHunt was summoned for certain articles implying contempt, and for vilipending his lordship's against jurisdiction. Being examined, he confessed to themselves. the words following: That all false matters were bolstered and clokyd in this court of Paul's Cheyne; moreover he called the apparitor, William Middleton, false knave in the full court, and his father's dettes, said he, by means of his mother-in-law and master commissary, were not payd; and this he would abide by, that he had now in this place said no more but truth.' Being called on to answer further, he ings of the courts on complaints Сн. A.D. 1529. CH. 3. said he would not, and his lordship did therefore excommunicate him.* From so brief an entry we cannot tell on which side the justice lay; but at least we can measure the equity of a tribunal which punished complaints against itself with excommunication, and dismissed the confessed incest of a priest with a fine of a few shillings. pressure of the system. Such then were the English consistory courts. I have selected but a few instances from the proExtent and ceedings of a single one of them. If we are to understand the weight with which the system pressed upon the people, we must multiply the proceedings at St. Paul's by the number of the English dioceses; the number of dioceses by the number of archdeaconries; we must remember that in proportion to the distance from London the abuse must have increased indefinitely from the absence of even partial surveillance; we must remember that appeals were permitted only from one ecclesiastical court to another; from the archdeacon's court to that of the bishop of the diocese, from that of the bishop to the Court of Arches; that any language of impatience or resistance furnished suspicion of heresy, and that the only security therefore was submission. We can then imagine what England must have been with an archdeacon's commissary sitting constantly in every town; exercising an undefined jurisdiction over general morality; and every court swarming with petty lawyers who lived upon the fees which they could extract. Such a *HALE, p. 100. system for the administration of justice was per- CH. 3. haps never tolerated before in any country. A.D. 1529. was Retribution lingers, but the not for ever. delaying But the time of reckoning at length arrived; slowly the hand had crawled along dial plate; slowly as if the event would never come: and wrong was heaped on wrong; and oppression cried, and it seemed as if no ear had heard its voice; till the measure of the circle was at length fulfilled, the finger touched the hour, and as the strokes of the great hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant the mighty fabric of iniquity was shivered into ruins. Wolsey had dreamed that it might still stand, Wolsey, by self-reformed as he hoped to see it; but in his the Refor dread lest any hands but those of friends should mation, touch the work, he had 'prolonged its sickly days,' waiting for the convenient season which abuses to was not to be; he had put off the meeting of formed. parliament, knowing that if parliament were once assembled, he would be unable to resist the pressure which would be brought to bear upon him; and in the impatient minds of the people he had identified himself with the evils which he alone for the few last years had hindered from falling. At length he had fallen himself, and his disgrace was celebrated in London with enthusiastic rejoicing as the inauguration of the new era. identifies with the be re On the eighteenth of October, 1529, Wolsey October 18. delivered up the seals. He was ordered to retire to Esher; and, at the taking of his barge,' Cavendish saw no less than a thousand boats full Exultation of men and women of the city of London, 'waf- in London feting up and down in Thames,' to see him sent, on Wolsey's fall. CH. 3. as they expected, to the Tower.* A.D. 1529. Nov. 3. Meeting of Parliament. A fortnight later the same crowd was perhaps again assembled on a wiser occasion, and with truer reason for exultation, to see the king coming up in his barge from Greenwich to open parliament. 'According to the summons,' says Hall, 'the King of England began his high court of parliament the third day of November, on which day he came by water to his palace of Bridewell, and there he and his nobles put on their robes of Parliament, and so came to the Black Friars Church, where a mass of the Holy Ghost was solemnly sung by the king's chaplain; and after the mass, the king, with all his Lords and Commons which were summoned to appear on that Opening day, came into the Parliament. The king sate speech of Sir Tho mas More. on his throne or seat royal, and Sir Thomas More, his chancellor, standing on the right hand of the king, made an eloquent oration, setting forth the causes why at that time the king so had summoned them.'t 'Like as a good shepherd,' More said, 'which not only keepeth and attendeth well his sheep, but also foreseeth and provideth for all things which either may be hurtful or noysome to his flock; so the king, which is the shepherd, ruler, and governor of his realm, vigilantly foreseeing things to come, considers how that divers laws, before this time made, are now, by long continuance of time and mutation of things, become very insufficient *CAVENDISH, Life of Wolsey, p. 251. |