John Tulloch · 19 of 27

III. Latimer. · Part 2

From 1514 Latimer betook himself to the study of divinity—“of such school divinity as the ignorance of that age did suffer”—and became exceedingly zealous in support of the established doctrines and services. As Luther said of himself that he was a “most insane Papist,” so he says, “I was as obstinate a Papist as any in England.” He was haunted with scrupulous and tormenting fears as to whether he had sufficiently mingled water with the wine in performing mass, as the missal directs; and on the occasion of his taking his degree of Bachelor in Divinity, the date of which is not preserved, he directed his “whole oration” against Melanchthon and his opinions. He appears about the same time to have distinguished himself by his hostility to Master George Stafford, “reader of the divinity lectures at Cambridge,” who had become imbued with the “new learning,” and succeeded in turning many of the youth who attended him to the study of the Holy Scriptures, from those “tedious authors,” as Foxe calls them, in which Latimer still found his delight. He is represented as entering Stafford’s lecture-room, and “most spitefully railing against him,” while he eloquently sought to persuade the youth against his teaching.

Here, therefore, we have the old picture of youthful sacerdotal zeal. It is the very highest qualities of the ancient system that the new spirit seizes upon and consecrates to its service. Young Latimer, hailed by the clergy as a rising champion of the papal cause, and for his talents and the excelling sanctimony of his life, preferred to be the keeper of the university cross, is destined to become the sharp reprover of the clergy, and the great agent in carrying out the religious changes then threatening them.

Bilney, we have already remarked, was one of the most active in the new movement. He had watched with interest the progress of Latimer. He appreciated his high qualities, and saw how much could be made of his zeal, if only it could be turned in the right direction. He had been one of his auditors when, as Bachelor of Divinity, he lectured against Melanchthon, and the thought was forced upon him of trying what he could do to convert the youthful enthusiast. His device was a strange one, and will be best narrated, with the results that followed, in Latimer’s own brief words. “Bilney heard me at that time, and perceived that I was zealous without knowledge; and he came to me afterwards in my study, and desired me, for God’s sake, to hear his confession. I did so; and, to say the truth, by his confession I learned more than I did before in many years. So from that time forward I began to smell the Word of God, and forsook the school doctors and such fooleries.”

Such was the turning-point in Latimer’s spiritual history. We do not impart more meaning to his. simple statement by dwelling upon it, and trying tc point out more particularly the influences whirl moved him. One earnest heart in communion with another regarding their deepest secrets before God, is all that we are permitted to see. The effect produced on Latimer was decided. “Whereas before he was an enemy, and almost a persecutor of Christ, he was now a zealous seeker after Him.” He was frequently in conference with Bilney; and he sought out Stafford to beg his forgiveness for his former rudeness to him. His change of religious feeling immediately began to assume a practical form. He accompanied Bilney in visiting the sick and the prisoners in the tower of Cambridge; and by-and-by he felt that he was called even to a nobler work than his friend. His energy and enthusiasm began to find their natural outlet in the pulpit. Recognising this as above all his vocation, “he preached mightily in the university day by day, both in English and ad clerum, to the great admiration of all men who aforetime had known him of a contrary severe opinion.’’

Cambridge was greatly excited by Latimer’s discourses. The spirit which had been working secretly in it for some time now became manifest. The fruit of Bilney’s prayers and of Stafford’s divinity lectures showed itself in the enthusiasm which welcomed the earnest preacher, and the eagerness especially with which the students gathered round him and drank in his clear and powerful words. To one of these students, Thomas Becon, who afterwards became chaplain to Cranmer, we are indebted for some brief hints of the character and effect of these early sermons of Latimer. “I was present,” Becon says, “when, with manifest authorities of God’s Word, and arguments invincible, besides the allegations of doctors, he proved in his sermons that the Holy Scriptures ought to be read in the English tongue of all Christian people, whether they were priests or laymen, as they be called. . . . Neither was I absent when he inveighed against temple-works, good intents, blind zeal, superstitious devotion, as the painting of tabernacles, gilding of images, setting up of candles, running on pilgrimage, and such other idle inventions of men, whereby the glory of God was obscured, and the works of mercy the less regarded. I remember also how he was wont to rebuke the beneficed men, with the authority of God’s Word, for neglecting and not teaching their flock, and for being absent from their cures,—they themselves being idle, and masting themselves like hogs of Epicurus’s flock, taking no thought though their poor parishioners miserably pine away, starve, perish, and die for hunger. Neither have I forgotten how at that time he condemned foolish, ungodly, and impossible vows to be fulfilled, as the vow of chastity, &c. O how vehement was he in rebuking all sins, and how sweet and pleasant were his words in exhorting unto virtue!”

The practical, earnest, undoctrinal character of Latimer’s earlier as of his later preaching is clearly shown in this description. He aimed, in the same spirit as Tyndale, to bring the minds of men in contact with the living truth of Scripture—to divert them from all mere pretences of religion, the mockery and uselessness of which he had himself been brought to feel, to the real interests and duties of the Christian life. He spoke from the heart of his own fresh experience, swayed by an enthusiasm not wild or stormy, but direct, vehement, and caustic; and the effect was irresistible on all who heard him. “He spake nothing,” continues Becon, “but it left, as it were, certain pricks or stings in the hearts of the hearers, which moved them to consent to his doctrine. None but the stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart went away from his sermons without being affected with high detestation of sin, and moved to all godliness and virtue. I did know certain men which, through the persuasion of their friends, went unto his sermons swelling blown full, and puffed up, like unto Esop’s frog, with envy and malice towards him; but when they returned, the sermon being done, and demanded how they liked him and his doctrine, they answered, with the bishops’ and Pharisees’ servants, ‘There was never man that spake like unto this man!’” According to another testimony, the practical results of these sermons were equally decided. “Numbers were brought from their will-works, as pilgrimage and setting up of candles, unto the work that God commanded expressly in His Holy Scripture, and to the reading and study of God’s Word.” To his preaching Latimer added works of charity and piety, not less impressive in their influence. “He watered,” continues the admiring Becon, “with good deeds whatsoever he had before planted with godly words.”

A time not merely of excitement but of blessing had come to Cambridge; a new life was spreading in the university and the city; hearts were awakened and disciples multiplying, and the memory of this happy period of evangelical revival was long preserved in the popular doggerel—“When Master Stafford read, and Master Latimer preached, then was Cambridge blessed.”

Such a state of things could not last long without opposition. It was not to be supposed that the clergy could quietly contemplate the daring operations of their former champions, now turned against them. It was not in human nature, and certainly not in clerical nature, to do this. A feeling of amazement and humiliation may at first have kept them silent; but soon they began to realise the peril of their position and the necessity of action; or, to use the words of old Foxe, “Belike Satan began to feel himself and his kingdom to be touched too near, and thereforethought it time to look about him, and to make out his men of arms.” The devil’s men of arms accordingly appear in “whole swarms of friars and doctors, who flocked against Mr Latimer on every side.”

It is not easy to trace the chronological succession of the difficulties and controversies into which Latimer was now plunged. Already to some extent the guidance of dates has forsaken us. Our last date was 1514, when he had taken his Master’s degree, and between this and 1529, or during a period of fifteen years, we have no very distinct thread of chronological arrangement. A general statement of his own, that he “walked in darkness and the shadow of death” until he was thirty years of age, enables us to fix his entrance upon his new career about 1521. The subsequent eight years, representing his first activity as a preacher, and now described as so memorable in their results, remain in great confusion. According to Foxe, the famous sermons “on the Card” would seem to have been among the first causes of excitement and disturbance against him. But we learn from Foxe’s own statement that these sermons were not preached till about Christmas 1529, and there is every reason to conclude, therefore, that the interference of the Bishop of Ely, and the reformer’s citation before Wolsey at the instance of “divers Papists in the university,” who made a “grievous complaint” against him, occurred in the interval between 1521 and this later period.

The story of his encounter with Bishop West is very characteristic. He was preaching one day ad clerum in the university, when the bishop, attended by a troop of priests, entered the church. Latimer paused until they had taken their seats, and then remarking that a new audience demanded a new theme, said that he would alter his intended topic of discourse, and preach from Heb. ix. 11, “Christus existens Pontifex futurorum bonorum,”—“Christ a high priest of good things to come.” From this text he took occasion to represent Christ as “the true and perfect pattern unto all other priests;” and in his usual pithy manner drew out the contrasts between this pattern and the English prelates of the day. It may be imagined that the bishop was not particularly pleased. He sent for Latimer and held some parley with him, commending his talents, and urging him to display them in a sermon against Luther from the same pulpit. Latimer, however, was not to be ensnared, and boldly replied, “If Luther preaches the Word of God, he needs no confutation; but if he teaches the contrary, I will be ready with all my heart to confound his doctrine as much as lies in me.” The bishop cautioned him that “he smelled somewhat of the pan,” and that he would one day or another repent his conduct. He forthwith issued an edict forbidding him to preach any more within the churches of the university; but Latimer found refuge in the church of the Augustine Friars, which was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, and there continued his stirring sermons. The bishop, along with others, complained to Wolsey, who sent for the bold preacher, and held an interview with him which has been preserved in detail in Strype’s ‘Memorials.’ It presents a very good picture of the courtly, magnificent cardinal, and the plain-spoken and ready preacher.

The scene was “York Place”; “there, attending upon the cardinal’s pleasure, the reformer was called before him into his inner chamber by the sound of a little bell which the cardinal used to ring when any person should come or approach unto him. When Mr Latimer was before him he well-advised him, and said, ‘Is your name Latimer?’ ‘Yea, forsooth,’ quoth Latimer. ‘You seem,’ quoth the cardinal, ‘that you are of good years, nor no babe, but one that should wisely and soberly use yourself in all your doings; and yet it is reported to me of you that you are much infected with this new fantastical doctrine of Luther, and suchlike heretics; that you do very much harm among the youth and other light heads with your doctrine.’ ‘Your grace is misinformed,’ Latimer replied; ‘for I ought to have some more knowledge than to be so simply reported of, by reason that I have studied in my time both of the ancient doctors of the Church and also of the school-doctors.’ ‘Marry, that is well said,’ quoth the cardinal; Mr Doctor Capon, and you, Mr Doctor Marshall’ (both being then present), ‘say you somewhat to Mr Latimer touching some question in Dunce.’ Whereupon Dr Capon propounded a question to Mr Latimer. Mr Latimer being fresh then of memory, and not discontinued from study as those two doctors had been, answered very roundly; somewhat helping them to cite their own allegations rightly, where they had not truly nor perfectly alleged them. The cardinal, perceiving the ripe and ready answering of Latimer, said, ‘What mean you, my masters, to bring such a man before me into accusation? I had thought that he had been some lightheaded fellow that never studied such kind of doctrine as the school-doctors are. I pray thee, Latimer, tell me the cause why the Bishop of Ely and others doth mislike thy preaching: tell me the truth, and I will bear with thee upon amendment.’ Quoth Latimer, ‘Your grace must understand that the Bishop of Ely cannot favour me, for that not long ago I preached before him in Cambridge a sermon of this text—"Christus existens Pontifex,” &c., wherein I described the office of a bishop so uprightly as I might, according to the text, that never after he could abide me; but hath not only forbidden me to preach in his diocese, but also found the means to inhibit me from preaching in the university.’ ‘I pray you tell me,’ quoth the cardinal, ‘what thou didst preach before him upon that text.’ Mr Latimer plainly and simply (committing his cause unto Almighty God, who is director of princes’ hearts) declared unto the cardinal the whole effect of his sermon preached before the Bishop of Ely. The cardinal, nothing at all misliking the doctrine of the Word of God that Latimer had preached, said unto him, ‘Did you not preach any other doctrine than you have rehearsed?’ ‘No, surely,’ said Latimer. And examining thoroughly with the doctors what else. could be objected against him, the cardinal said unto Mr Latimer, ‘If the Bishop of Ely cannot abide such doctrine, you shall have my licence, and preach it unto his beard, let him say what he will!’ And thereupon, after a gentle monition, the cardinal discharged him with his licence home to preach throughout England.”

His two sermons “on the Card” are the earliest of his printed sermons that we possess. These discourses, so remarkable in their quaintness, and the keen and plain tone of their practical exhortation, renewed the monkish commotion against him in the university. The prior of the Black Friars, one Buckenham, tried to rival him as a preacher, and to outdo him even in his peculiar line of homely popular allusion. “About the same time of Christmas,” Foxe says, “When Mr Latimer brought forth his cards (to deface belike the doings of the other), the prior brought out his Christmas dice, casting them to his audience cinque and quator;” and in some unintelligible manner aiming, through this poor counter-device to Latimer’s symbolic cards, to prove the inexpediency of entrusting the Scriptures in English to the vulgar. The prior’s sense and eloquence seem alike to have been at fault. He brought forward the most miserable arguments against the use of the Scriptures; as, for example, that the ploughmen, when hearing that “no man that layeth his hand to the plough, and looketh back, is worthy of the kingdom of God,” might peradventure cease from his plough; and that the baker, in a similar manner, might be induced to leave his bread unleavened on hearing that “a little leaven corrupteth a whole lump.” It was a dangerous line of argument to enter upon with an opponent like Latimer, who had so keen an eye for the comic aspects of stupidity. He had been an auditor of the friar’s, and taken note of such points for future use. Soon after he is the preacher, and the friar a listener among “a great multitude, as well of the university as of the town, met with great expectation to hear what he would say.” The arguments of the friar were dallied with in a manner that must have touched the quick even beneath his thick conceit. Such figures of speech, the preacher said, were no worse to be understood than the most common representation of painters, such as they paint on walls and on houses. “As, for example,” he continued, casting a meaning glance at the friar, who sat opposite him, “when they paint a fox preaching out of a friar’s cowl, none is so mad to take this to be a fox that preacheth, but know well enough the meaning of the matter, which is to point out unto us what hypocrisy, craft, and subtle dissimulation lieth hid many times in these friars’ cowls, willing us thereby to beware of them.” “Friar Buckenham,” the chronicler adds, was so “dashed with this sermon, that he never after durst peep out of the pulpit against Master Latimer.”

This year of 1529, which presents to us Latimer in hot conflict with his popish adversaries in the university of Cambridge, was a memorable one in English history. Wolsey had fallen in the beginning of the year; Sir Thomas More had been installed as his successor. The country was strongly excited on the subject of the negotiations with Rome as to the King’s divorce, which had been procrastinated from time to time under the most wearying pretences. The extortions of the clergy in the consistory courts, and the manifold abuses long complained of, but still maintained by them, and now grown to an intolerable height, had produced a widespread feeling of indignation, which only waited for a fitting opportunity to burst forth. Writs were issued for a new parliament in the September of this year, and no sooner had it met in November, than the feelings of the country found voice in the famous petition against the bishops and clergy. The main abuses detailed in the petition were afterwards the subject of special legislation; and the bench of bishops beheld with amazement bill after bill pass the Commons, “all to the destruction of the Church,” as Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, said. There was no help for it, however; and the “Probate and Mortuary Act,” the “Clergy Discipline Act,” and the “Residence and Pluralities Act,” rapidly carried through both Houses in defiance of episcopal apposition, sufficiently showed the temper of the times, and signalised the legislative activity of a brief session of six weeks.

It deserves to be noticed that, with all this opposition to the clergy, the. Parliament of 1529 was so far from having any sympathy with the awakened spiritual life represented by such men as Tyndale and Latimer, and out of which Protestantism was growing, that it was especially anxious to clear itself from all suspicion of countenancing heresy, and in fact encouraged the more active prosecution of heretics which was about this time commenced.

In the course of the following year, the differences between Latimer and his accusers were the subject of official investigation before the Vice-Chancellor. The latter seems to have shrunk from the challenge to lay a regular charge against the reformer; and the affair terminated in both parties being bound to keep the peace, and to abstain from using offensive expressions against each other in the pulpit, on pain of excommunication. The virulence of his enemies, rather than the imprudent speech of the daring preacher, seems to have called forth this judgment.

Latimer was one of the divines appointed by the university of Cambridge to examine into the lawfulness of the King’s marriage with Catherine. He declared on the side of the King, and the decision of the university in favour of the divorce was given on the 9th of March 1530. On, the following Sunday he preached before the King, who “greatly praised his sermon.” Henry, who, whatever may have been his faults, had certainly a rare appreciation of character, and a genuine respect for a true and able man when he came in his way and was likely to be useful to him, appears to have been strongly taken with the honest and unsparing preacher. He appointed him one of his chaplains the same year. And although he did not take his advice any more now than afterwards, unless when it suited him, he extended his friendship to the man who had the courage to counsel him in words dictated by no courtly interest, but by a manly and unshaken conviction of their truth. Henry had, with the sanction of a convention of learned men, issued an inhibition against Tyndale’s Bible as well as all English books either containing or tending to any matters of Scripture. Latimer was one of this convention on the part of the university of Cambridge, and one of an excepting minority to the advice tendered to Henry, and upon which he acted. Unsuccessful in his previous resistance to the course of persecution, he addressed an energetic letter to the King on his own behalf. It is printed at length by Foxe, and in its spirit, power, and eloquence, heroic yet modest, courageous yet respectful, is one of the most remarkable of his writings. The King did not yield to the remonstrance. “It did not prevail, through the iniquity of the time,” says Foxe in his usual way; but so far from displeasing Henry, it seems only to have excited in him a more cordial goodwill towards the reformer.

In 1531, Latimer received from the King, at the instance of Cromwell, and Dr Butts, the King’s physician, the living of West Kington in Wiltshire, and, weary of court, he gladly retired to the more congenial and earnest labours of his parish. He was not destined, however, to enjoy quiet. His unresting spirit would not suffer him to confine his preaching to a single congregation; and being one of the twelve preachers yearly licensed by the university to preach, with the express sanction of the sovereign, throughout the realm, he extended his diligence to all the country about. He travelled to Bristol, to London, to Kent, everywhere preaching the truth—opportune, importune, tempestive, to use the language ironically applied by him to the Bishop of London,—and this, too, with his health greatly weakened and impaired. His zeal and activity could not long pass without notice. Complaints were made against him by the country priests; the bishops were on the watch to entrap him; there was no safety for them, and no peace, they felt, so long as he was at large, moving the country by his marvellous eloquence. They were triumphantly busy just then, besides, in the destruction of heretics. Poor Bilney, having wiped out the disgrace of his fall in a few months of faithful preaching and self-denial, expiated at the stake, in August this year, his Christian heroism, not the less grand, certainly, that it was the heroism of a trembling and sensitive nature. Bayfield and Tewkesbury followed before the expiry of the year; and Bainham, whose affecting interview with Latimer is preserved in Strype’s ‘Memorials,’ crowned the list on the 5th of May 1532. These were the closing months of the chancellorship of Sir Thomas More, around whose memory still lingers the dark stain of these dreadful tragedies. But the appetite of the bishops was still unsatisfied,—they hungered for more victims; and Latimer became the special object of their vengeance. Fortunately they were destined to be disappointed.

The zealous preacher was summoned to appear before Stokesley, the Bishop of London, on the ground of his having preached in St Abb’s Church in the City without the bishop’s permission, and, moreover, for his alleged defence of Bilney and his cause. His friends expressed anxiety for him, and he himself was not without concern, as he knew very well that the real aim of the bishop was to get him into the hands of the Convocation, and to deal with him summarily for his free speech as to the corruptions of the clergy. He pleaded in excuse the length of the journey, the deep winter, and the miserable condition of his health.He appealed at the same time to his own ordinary, Sir Ed. Baynton, the chancellor of the diocese of Sarum, and it is from his long and interesting letter on the subject of his appeal that we gather these facts, and the state of his feelings at this time. After some delay, the citation was formally issued, and Latimer “was had up to London, where he was greatly molested, and detained a long time from his cure at home.”

The circumstances of his present persecution, and especially the extent to which he yielded after being repeatedly examined and remanded, and even excommunicated and imprisoned, are involved in some obscurity. His trial lasted on through January, February, March, and April, and was prosecuted not only before the Bishop of London and the Archbishop (Warham) and bishops collectively, but also before the Convocation. The bishops devised a series of articles which he was called upon to subscribe, and which he at first refused to do, especially objecting to two of them, one of which concerned the power of the Pope. For this refusal he was pronounced contumacious, excommunicated, and delivered up to the custody of Warham. This appears to have occurred in Convocation on the 11th of March. On the 21st it was resolved, after a long debate, “to absolve him from the sentence of excommunication if he should subscribe the two articles in question,” and he is represented on the same authority as making his appearance at the next sitting, and kneeling down and humbly craving forgiveness, confessing that he “misordered himself very far, in that he had so presumptuously and boldly preached, reproving certain things by which the people that were infirm hath taken occasion of ill.” It was not till a subsequent day, however—the 10th of April—that he is stated to have subscribed the eleventh and fourteenth articles, to which he had taken exception; and even then he appears to have been in difficulty, owing to some further matter having been presented against him, arising out of a letter he had written to a graduate at Cambridge. It was then that he appealed to the King; and the Convocation was given to understand, by a message conveyed through Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, that it was not desirable to proceed to further extremities, although the disposal of the case was still left in their hands. The end of the affair was that, after a further and more special submission, he was relieved of all penalties, and “taken into favour again at the special request of the King,” although with grudging and protest on the part of certain of the bishops, who did not think that his submission implied any “renunciation of his errors,” as was usual in such cases.

Latimer returned to his parish, but still not to rest. Enemies rose up on all sides against him, as he tells us in a letter to his friend Morice; for it is to this period that the letter seems to refer. Certain priests, who at first had desired and welcomed him, now actively sought to stay his preaching because he was not in possession of the bishop’s licence. They procured certain preachers “to blatter against him,” and especially one Hubberdin, who distinguished himself by his empty violence and ridiculous zeal against the reformer. Foxe has given so comical an account of this man and his preaching, that we cannot refrain from quoting it: it may serve to give a glimpse of the ludicrous features that mingled themselves with the tragical shadows of the great struggle that was now proceeding in England. Every cause, for the most part, has its buffoon—a man of “no great learning, nor yet of stable wit” (as Latimer characterised Hubberdin)—but who makes up for better qualities by uproarious zeal, and stands forward in virtue of his simple absurdity and grotesque officiousness. In neither Germany nor England does Popery seem at this crisis to have lacked such supporters.

“Forasmuch as mention has been made,” says Foxe, “of Hubberdin, an old divine of Oxford, a right painted Pharisee, and a great strayer abroad in all quarters of the realm, to deface and impeach the springing of God’s holy Gospel, something should be added more touching that man, whose doings and pageants, if they might be described at large, it were as good as any interlude for the reader to behold. . . . But because the man is now gone, to spare therefore the dead, this shall be enough for example’s sake for all Christian men necessarily to observe—how the said Hubberdin, after his long railing in all places against Luther, Melanchthon, Zwinglius, John Frith, Tyndale, Latimer, and other like professors,—riding in his long gown down to the horses’ heels, like a Pharisee, or rather like a sloven, dirted up to the horse’s belly—after his forged tales and fables, dialogues, dreams, dancings, hoppings and leapings, with other like histrionical toys and gestures used in the pulpit, at last riding by a church side where the youth of the parish were dancing in the churchyard, suddenly lighting from his horse, he came into the church, and there causing the bell to toll in the people, thought, instead of a fit of mirth, to give them a sermon of dancing: in the which sermon, after he had patched up certain common texts out of the Scripture, and then coming to the doctors, first to Augustine, then to Ambrose, so to Jerome, and Gregory, Chrysostome, and other doctors, had made every one of them (after his dialogue manner) by name to answer to his call, and to sing after his tune against Luther, Tyndale, Latimer, and other heretics, as he called them,—at last, to show a perfect harmony of all these doctors together, as he made them before to sing after his tune, so now to make them dance after his pipe, first he called out Christ and His apostles, then the doctors and seniors of the Church, as in a round ring, all to dance together, with pipe of Hubberdin. Now dance Peter, Paul; now dance Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome: and then old Hubberdin, as he was dancing with his doctors lustily in the pulpit, how he stampt and took on I cannot tell, but crash quoth the pulpit, down cometh the dancer, and there lay Hubberdin, not dancing, but sprawling in the midst of his audience, where altogether he brake not his neck, yet he so brake his leg and bruised his old bones that he never came in pulpit more.”