1

remember the parson of Honey Lane for my sake shortly." This was Thomas Garret or Gerard, curate of All Hallows, in Honey Lane, London, who, as early as 1526, being then curate of All Hallows, was charged with having in his custody, and with distributing the writings of Luther and of other heretics, and who though, from the dread of being burned, he abjured at the close of that year, was never truly gained over by the Romanists. He at last suffered at the stake with great constancy, for denying the real presence, on the 30th of June, 1540.

3

Among other excellent men in whose advancement she interested herself was Dr. Crome, incumbent of St. Anthony's, a man of acknowledged learning and piety, and a preacher of the true gospel; though, being deficient in intrepid resolution, the dread of the stake, of which he was in danger at different times, extorted from him concessions condemned by his better judgment. By her influence he was promoted to the rectorship of St. Mary's, Aldermary. But having for some time, from causes not explained, resisted, or caused the delay of his formal and legal admission into that benefice, the queen sent him a letter, expressing it as her pleasure that he should no longer throw obstacles in the way of his speedy instalment.*

Anne had read with entire approbation the powerful arguments in defence of the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue, contained in Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man; and acting upon these enlightened views, she threw her broad shield over the disseminators of the sacred volume. An interesting instance of this we find in the protection she extended to a man who was among

1 Strype's Annals of the Reformation under Elizabeth, vol. i., part ii., pp. 266, 578. 2 Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., pp. 92, 93.-Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. iii., part ii., p. 259; and his Cranmer, pp. 116, 246, 664.

* James Bainham, who was committed to the flames for heresy in 1532, declared on his examination that "he knew no man to have preached the word of God, sincerely and purely, and after the vein of Scripture, except Master Crome and Master Latimer." -Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., p. 332. For various notices of Crome, see Index to Strype's Works.

* See this letter in Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. ii., p. 189.

the first to engage in importing Tyndale's English version of the New Testament into England, namely, Richard Harman, a citizen of Antwerp, and merchant in the English house of that city. Harman's a had involved him in persecution, and even endangered his life. Is roused the fury of Cardinal Wolsey; and, in 1528, the cardinal, by means of the English ambassador Hackett, resident in the Netherads, requested Princess Margaret,' then regent of that country, to seize Harman, with the view of his being immediately sent into England. Margaret and her council agreed to apprehend him, and

calition of his being found guilty, either to send him into Engaud or to punish him according to his deserts. In July that year be and his wife, who was not less obnoxious for heresy than himself, were taken prisoners at Antwerp, and an inventory was made of all their goods for behoof of the emperor. This, however, did not satisfy the intolerant Hackett, who, afraid that Harman might be permitted by the Netherlands government to escape with impunity, urged Wey with great earnestness to call upon that government to dever him up as guilty not only of heresy but of treason. "In this manner," says he, "we may have two strings to our bow: for I doubt greatly, after the statutes of these countries, that, revoking his heresies, for the first time he will escape with a slender punishment; bat fur treason to the king, they cannot pardon him in these parts, after the statutes of our intercourse, dated the year 1505."2 Acting pon this suggestion, Wolsey transmitted to Hackett royal letters, varasting him to seize Harman as a traitor. But Margaret terposed her veto, wishing, before delivering up Harman, to be

Margaret, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, and aunt of Charles V. She died Deber, 1530, having governed the Netherlands eighteen years. Brandt's History of the Reformation in the Low Countries, vol. i., p. 59.

1

The ausion here is to the treaty in the reign of Henry VII., 1505, in which there was an express article against the reception of the rebels of either prince by the other, purporting, that if any such rebel should be required by the prince, whose he was, of the prince confederate, that forthwith the prince confederate should by canon command him to avoid the country: which, if he did not, within fifteen the rebel was to stand proscribed, and be put out of protection."-Bacon's Henry VII

informed of what particular acts of treason he had committed. Harman and his wife, after lying in prison upwards of seven months, were set at liberty; and such was the altered state of matters in England only a few years subsequent, that we find him in London in 1534, seeking redress for the injury and losses he had sustained by his imprisonment, and by his excision from the privileges connected with the English house at Antwerp, through the persecuting fury of Hackett and Wolsey. And "every one acquainted with the history of the Hanse towns knows how much had been involved in the for

feiture of his privileges as a merchant adventurer. The 'English house,' like all these towns, exercised a judicial superintendence over its members, and punished them by a species of commercial excommunication. Mr. Harman had evidently been suffering under this for years." Audley was now Lord Chancellor; Cromwell chief Secretary of State; and Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury; all favourable to the Reformation; but Harman applied to the queen, not to any of them. His application was successful. Sympathizing

with a man who had imported the Sacred Volume, and done so at great worldly sacrifices, she wrote a letter to Cromwell in his behalf, the original of which is still in existence.

ANNE THE QUEEN.

TRUSTY and right well-beloved, we greet you well. And whereas we be credibly informed that the bearer hereof, Richard Harman, merchant and citizen of Antwerp, in Brabant, was, in the time of the late Lord Cardinal, put and expelled from his freedom and fellowship of and in the English house there, for nothing else (as he

meth) but only for that he still, like a good Christian man,1 did, both with his goods and policy, to his great hurt and hindrance in this world, help to the setting forth of the New Testament in Eng

we therefore desire and instantly pray you, that with all peed and favour convenient, ye will cause this good and honest merat being my lord's true, faithful, and loving subject, to be restored to his pristine freedom, liberty, and fellowship aforesaid, and the acer at this our request, and at your good leisure to hear him on ch things as he hath to make further relation unto you in this -Given under our signet, at my lord's manor of Greenwich, the 14th day of May.

To our trusty and right well-beloved, Thomas Cromwell, squire, Chief Secretary unto my Lord the King's Highness."

This letter, though the date of the year is not given, was probably written in 1534; and if so, Cromwell had been made chief secretary of state only a week before, and the act of justice to Harman here Pasted, must have been one of his earliest acts in his new office.

To do fall justice to Anne Boleyn for her gracious interposition in bedalf of Harman, it is necessary to take into consideration the

la the original, the pen has been drawn across the words "still like a good Chrisanta Hence Strype has omitted them altogether, and Sir Henry Ellis has Sced them in a note at the bottom of the page. But there is reason to think that wettle person has perpetrated this erasure. The words are in harmony with the we spirit of the letter, and there is no conceivable reason why, having once written them, she should thus obliterate them.

* Laan's Original Letters, first series, vol. ii, pp. 45, 46.

violent hostility of those in high places, at that period, to the dis semination of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue. In March 1526, Henry had condemned Tyndale's translation of the New Testament into English to be burned, and "sharp correction and punishment" to be inflicted on "the keepers and readers of the same," under the pretext that it contained "many corruptions of the sacred text, as also certain prefaces and other pestilent glosses in the margins, for the advancement and setting forth of his [Luther's] abominable heresies." In the same year Cuthbert Tonstal, Bishop of London, had, for similar reasons, denounced it, both the copies with "glosses" and those without them, and charged his archdeacons to warn all within their archdeaconries to bring in and deliver up such copies as they possessed to his vicar-general, within the space of thirty days. In 1527, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, had purchased all the copies of Tyndale's New Testament he could meet with, that they might be destroyed, expending in such purchases a sum equivalent to not less than £1000 of our present money; and in the following year, the readers and importers of the same book were seized and punished. In 1529 Tonstal had purchased all the copies of Tyndale's New Testament which he could find in Antwerp; and in May, 1530, he made a bonfire of them, and of other heretical books, in St. Paul's church-yard, London. In 1532 Sir Thomas More condemned to the stake such as affirmed that it is lawful for every man and woman to have God's word in their mother tongue.1 Such were the times in which Anne Boleyn lived, and such was the character of the most of those by whom she was surrounded; for though Wolsey and Warham were now in their graves, and Sir Thomas More in the Tower, the courtiers, with few exceptions, were not less hostile to the diffusion of the Scriptures in the English tongue than these men had been. In such circumstances, to vindicate Harman as acting the part of "a good Christian man," in his zealous exertions to disseminate the Scriptures, and to interpose for his restoration to the

1 Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., pp. 112, 118, 158, 262, 333.