people which resorted to the said bishop's place, C. 4. and were there charitably fed with the remains of A.D. 1530-I the said porridge and other victuals, were in like Feb. 18. wise infected; and one poor woman of them, that is to say, Alice Tryppitt, widow, is also thereof now deceased: Our said sovereign lord the king, of his blessed disposition inwardly abhorring all such abominable offences, because that in manner no person can live in surety out of danger of death by that means, if practices thereof should not be eschewed, hath ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament, that the said poisoning be adjudged and deemed as high treason; And desir and that the said Richard, for the said murder an awful and poisoning of the said two persons, shall stand example, and be attainted of high treason. ing to make 'And because that detestable offence, now newly practised and committed, requireth condign punishment for the same, it is ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament that the said Richard Rouse shall be therefore boiled to death, without having any advantage of his clergy; and that from henceforth every wilful murder of any person or persons hereafter to be committed or done by means or way of poisoning, Condemns shall be reputed, deemed, and judged in the law derer to be to be high treason; and that all and every person death. or persons which shall hereafter be indicted and condemned by order of the law of such treason, shall not be admitted to the benefit of his or their clergy, but shall be immediately after such attainder or condemnation, committed to execution of death by boiling for the same.' the mur boiled to Сн. 4. A.D. 1530-1 The sentence was carried into effect* in Smithfield, on the tenebra Wednesday following, to the terrible example of all others.' The spectacle of a living human being boiled to death, was really witnessed three hundred years ago by the London citizens, within the walls of that old cattle-market; an example terrible indeed, the significance of which is not easily to be exhausted. For the poisoners of the soul there was the stake,t for the poisoners of the body, the boiling cauldron, the two most fearful punishments for the most fearful of crimes. The stake at which the heretic suffered was an inherited institution descending through the usage of centuries; the poisoner's cauldron was the fresh expression of the judgment of the English nation on a novel enor mity; and I have called attention to it because March. the temper which this act exhibits is the key to Temper of this parlia- all which has seemed most dark and cruel in the ment. rough years which followed; a temper which would keep no terms with evil, or with anything which, rightly or wrongly, was believed to be evil, but dreadfully and inexorably hurried out the penalties of it. Following the statute against poisoning, there stands an act for the banishment out of the the gipsies country of divers outlandish and vagabond people Acts against and against beggars and vagabonds. * HALL, p. 781. + Most shocking when the wrong persons were made the victims; and because clerical officials were altogether incapable of detecting the right persons, the memory of the practice has become abhorrent to all just men. I suppose, however, that, if the right persons could have been detected, even the stake itself would not have been too tremendous a penalty for the destroying of human souls. March. called Egyptians;'* and attached to it another of CH. 4. analogous import, 'for the repression of beggars and vagabonds,' the number of whom, it was alleged, was increasing greatly throughout the country, and much crime and other inconveniences were said to have been occasioned by them. We may regard these two measures, if we please, as a result of the energetic and reforming spirit in the parliament, which was dragging into prominence all forms of existing disorders, and devising remedies for those disorders. But they indicate something more than this: they point to the growth of a disturbed and restless disposition, the interruption of industry, and other symptoms of approaching social confusion; and at the same time they show us the government conscious of the momentous nature of the struggle into which it was launched; and with timely energy bracing up the sinews of the nation for its approaching trial. The act against the gipsies especially, Why enactillustrates one of the most remarkable features of ed at this the times. The air was impregnated with superstition; in a half consciousness of the impending changes, all men were listening with wide ears to rumours and prophecies and fantastic fore- General exshadowings of the future; and fanaticism, half deceiving and half itself deceived, was grasping in the the lever of the popular excitement to work out The power which had ruled its own ends. time. citement country. # 22 Hen. VIII. cap. Jo. See a very curious pamphlet on this subject, by SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE. It is called The Confessions of Richard Bishop, March. CH. 4. the hearts of mankind for ten centuries was A.D. 1531. shaking suddenly to its foundation. The Infallible guidance of the Church was failing; its light gone out, or pronounced to be but a mere deceitful ignis fatuus; and men found themselves wandering in darkness, unknowing where to turn or what to think or believe. It was easy to clamour against the spiritual courts. From men smarting under the barefaced oppression of that iniquitous jurisdiction, the immediate outcry rose without ulterior thought; but unexpectedly the frail edifice of the church itself threatened under the attack to crumble into ruins; and many gentle hearts began to tremble and recoil when they saw what was likely to follow on their light beginnings. It was true that the measures as yet taken by the parliament and the crown professed to be directed, not to the overthrow of the church, but to the re-establishment of its strength. But the exulting triumph of the Protestants, the promotion of Latimer to a royal chaplaincy, the quarrel with the papacy, and a dim but sure perception of the direction in which the stream was flowing, foretold to earnest Catholics a widely different issue; and the simplest of them knew better than the court knew, that they were drifting from the sure moorings of the faith into the broad ocean of unProphetic certainty. There seems, indeed, to be in religious tion of the men, whatever be their creed, and however limited anticipa revolution. Robert Seymour, and Sir Edward Neville, before the Privy their intellectual power, a prophetic faculty of in- CH. 4. sight into the true bearings of outward things,— A.D. 1531. of faith. an insight which puts to shame the sagacity of March. statesmen, and claims for the sons of God, and only for them, the wisdom even of the world. The insight Those only read the world's future truly who have faith in principle, as opposed to faith in human dexterity; who feel that in human things there lies really and truly a spiritual nature, a spiritual connexion, a spiritual tendency, which the wisdom of the serpent cannot alter, and scarcely can affect. Excitement, nevertheless, is no guarantee for the understanding; and these instincts, powerful as they are, may be found often in minds wild and chaotic, which, although they vaguely foresee the future, yet have no power of sound judgment, and know not what they foresee, or how wisely to estimate it. Their wisdom, if we may so use the word, combines crudely with any form of superstition or fanaticism. Thus in England," at the time of which we are speaking, Catholics and Protestants had alike their horoscope of the impending changes, each nearer to the truth than the methodical calculations of the statesmen; yet their foresight did not affect their convictions, or alter the temper of their hearts. They foresaw the same catastrophe, yet their faith still coloured the character of it. To the one it was the advent of Antichrist, to the other the inauguration of the millennium. The The earnest looking truest hearted men on all sides were deserted by after judg ment. |