The Reign of Henry the Eighth | Page 3

whom
neither king, noble, nor priest could force again to submit to tyranny."
Yet even here, Froude could not refrain from quoting the sardonic
comment of the English ambassador at Edinburgh: Knox behaved, said
Randolph, "as though he were of God's privy council."
It is certain, at least, that other reformers, who were not greatly inferior
to Knox in capacity, and not at all in piety and honesty, have not met
the same generous treatment at his hands. He sneers at Hooper because
he had scruples about wearing episcopal robes at his consecration as
Bishop of Worcester, though he himself in a famous passage asserts the
anomalous position of bishops in the Church of England. Hooper, as a
Calvinist, was in the right in objecting, and though the point upon
which he took his stand was nominally one of form, there lay behind it
a protest against the Anglican conception of a bishop. He speaks
slightingly of Ridley and Ferrars, though he makes ample amends to
them and to Hooper, when he comes to describe the manner of their
death. To the reformers who fled from the Marian persecution,
including men like Jewel and Grindal, he refers with scornful contempt,
though he has no word of criticism to apply to Knox for retiring to

England and to the continent when the flame of persecution was
certainly not more fierce. Latimer is one of his favourites,--a plain,
practical man, not given to abstract speculation or theological subtleties,
but one who was content to do his duty day by day without the fear of
man before his eyes. Latimer, though he was looked upon as a
Protestant in the earliest years of the English Reformation, believed in
the Real Presence up to a short time before his death. But of all English
ecclesiastics Thomas Cranmer was perhaps most to Froude's liking.
Cranmer was, like Froude himself, an artist in words. The English
liturgy owes its charm and beauty to his sense of style, his grace of
expression, and his cultured piety. That he was a great man few will be
found in these days to maintain; fewer still will believe that he deserved
the scathing invective of Macaulay. But no one can read the account
given by Froude of his last years without feeling that the first Protestant
Archbishop of Canterbury was neither saint nor martyr. If ever there
was one, he was a timeserver. He pronounced the divorce of Catherine
of Arragon, though he had sworn fealty to the Pope. He never raised a
protest against any of the political murders of Henry VIII.--with the
notable exception of his courageous attempt to save his friend, Thomas
Cromwell. Even in that case, however, he lies under the suspicion of
having interfered through fear that his own fate was involved in that of
the malleus monachorum. In the days of Edward VI. he aimed at the
liberty, if not at the life, of Bonner and Gardiner, without semblance of
legal right: He recanted in the reign of Mary when he thought he could
purchase his miserable life. It was only when all hope of pardon was
past that he re-affirmed his belief in the reformed faith. Indeed, he
waited until the day of his execution before withdrawing his recantation,
and confounded his enemies on the way to the stake. To a master of
dramatic narrative the last scene of Cranmer's life came as a relief and
an inspiration. "So perished Cranmer," wrote Froude, in a memorable
passage: "he was brought out, with the eyes of his soul blinded, to
make sport for his enemies, and in his death he brought upon them a
wider destruction than he had effected by his teaching while alive. Pole
was appointed the next day to the See of Canterbury; but in other
respects the court had over-reached themselves by their cruelty. Had
they been contented to accept the recantation, they would have left the
archbishop to die broken-hearted, pointed at by the finger of pitying

scorn; and the Reformation would have been disgraced in its champion.
They were tempted, by an evil spirit of revenge, into an act
unsanctioned even by their own bloody laws; and they gave him an
opportunity of writing his name in the roll of martyrs. The worth of a
man must be measured by his life, not by his failure under a single and
peculiar peril. The Apostle, though forewarned, denied his Master on
the first alarm of danger; yet that Master, who knew his nature in its
strength and its infirmity, chose him for the rock on which he would
build his Church."
With this conscious and avowed bias in favour of undogmatic
Christianity, Froude came to write the story of the transition of England
from a Catholic to a Protestant country. He