Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [444]
While the Protestant preacher John Knox thundered from outside the realm that good Englishmen should overthrow their tyrants, the tyrants in question set about their terrible work.
In 1555, the burnings began.
When news came that two of England’s greatest Protestant bishops, Latimer and Ridley, were publicly burned, Shockley could only shake his head in despair.
“We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England as shall never be put out,” Latimer had cried out. It seemed to Shockley that by killing such men Pole and the queen were offending ordinary Englishmen more deeply than they realised.
“Cardinal Pole’s giving orders to dig up dead heretics too and burn their bodies,” Forest told him one day with grim amusement. “You can’t say the man isn’t thorough.”
But it was in the spring of the following year that another event, much less heroic, stirred the hearts of many Englishmen still more.
For poor Archbishop Cranmer, the author of the English Prayer Book, had honest doubts. Had it been right to deny the Holy Father in Rome and put in his place as head of the Church the terrible figure of Henry VIII? Had it been right to annul the marriage of the blameless Katherine of Spain, whose daughter was now queen? Was it right to deny the doctrine of purgatory, Transubstantiation and the rest, about which there were so many divisions even amongst the reforming parties? Cranmer had held the new English Church together and risen to great heights – but had he, after all, perhaps been wrong?
It was not just his death they wanted. It was a confession. They kept him waiting for a month; they worked upon his doubts; they argued with him, wearied, probed, assaulted his mind. They carefully flayed the raw nerve of his doubting conscience. And they broke him. They broke him twice.
Edward Shockley was standing on Fisherton Bridge, talking to Peter and Abigail Mason when a passer-by gave them the news.
“Cranmer has recanted. Signed the document with his own hand – says he was wrong all along!”
For a second all three looked at each other in amazement. Edward spoke first.
“They’ll burn him now. They’ve got what they wanted.” He felt bitter.
But Abigail, looking at the two men, only said bleakly:
“He had not strength. We’ll not speak of him again.” Then, without a word, she walked away from them and the two men knew that they, too, were included in her quiet contempt.
Almost harder to bear at this time was the attitude of his own wife. For when little Celia heard of the burnings and asked what they were for, it was Katherine who, with her sweet, trusting face, told her: “Your father will explain.”
Then, when he found he could not, she assured the little girl: “It’s to save their souls from worse hellfire, is it not, Edward?” And he was forced to agree. How strange he found it, knowing his wife’s gentle nature, to realise that this was truly what she believed.
In Edward Shockley’s memory, the month of March 1556 was a time of blood.
The first execution was of the irascible Lord Stourton, who had thrown such curses at Pembroke’s gates. For ordering his servants to kill a Wiltshire man named Hartgill, he was hanged with a silken rope in Salisbury market place. The servants were hanged with plain hemp. The crowd found it an amusing affair.
Not so the second execution.
Bishop Capon had been active. Though the persecutions were most active in the Protestant strongholds of London and the eastern counties, the bishop did not intend to allow his own diocese to fail in its duty to the queen. It was not long before he was in luck.
Three obstinate men in the parish of Keevil – a tailor, a freemason and a farmworker – who all knew Tyndale’s English Bible well and could quote parts of it by heart, were foolish enough to tell their priest that purgatory was a sham.
“They called it Pope’s Pinfold,” Peter Mason told Edward excitedly. This was a term implying that purgatory was a source of cash for the Holy Father, since as