for mutual forbearance and charity; when some of the most amiable and most wise of your contemporaries have advocated the abolition of the penal code against the roman-catholics; when those, who think that the time for it is not arrived, avow their wish for its arrival, and ardently and anxiously exhort both parties to goodwill, to kindness, to all that can sooth, and all that conciliate:-In the midst of this general disposition to unity,-you,―a gentleman and a scholar,--have coolly and deliberately compiled a thousand pages, admirably calculated to revive past animosities, to inflame prejudice, to perpetuate discord; and,-by holding in full view all that you think likely to injure us, and concealing almost all that you think likely to do us honour,have endeavoured to ruin our moral and religious character, and to hold us up to our fellow-subjects as an abomination. In this, where is wisdom, where is good policy, where is charity? How different is it from the conduct and the manners,I will not say of Pitt, of Fox, of Burke, of Canning,--but of our most honourable and most estimable adversaries, lord Liverpool in the upper, and Mr. Peele in the lower, house! How different is the spirit of Your Book from that which animated our sovereign, when he invited the duke of Norfolk,—a man, who does honour to man, but a member of that religious community which it pleases you to vilify,-to officiate at his coronation?which led him to carry the olive branch to Ireland? -which led him to sanction the act for dispensing with the earl marshal's obligation of taking the oath of supremacy? and the act for reversing the attainder

of lord Stafford? For these exertions of kindness, of enlarged wisdom, and of liberal policy, eight millions of his majesty's British subjects bless his name:-there is not one of them who does not read your book with every feeling of insulted integrity and so confident are they of the universal goodwill of their fellow-subjects to them, that they are quite assured that, if you should offer the services of your pen to any of those, who, in either house, oppose, or rather seek to postpone catholic emancipation,-half-a-dozen members in both houses would not be found who would accept your offer."The time is gone by,"-would be the almost unanimous voice ;-" no good subject now reads "with pleasure any abuse of the roman-catholic "church, or its members. Take it to the admirers "of father Fox! his mantle has descended to you!" Don't wear it! you are qualified for much better things.

XIV. 2.

Archbishop Cranmer and Bishop Latimer.

THAT archbishop Cranmer and bishop Latimer were guilty of high treason, by an active co-operation, in the attempt of the duke of Northumberland, to place lady Jane Grey on the throne, to the exclusion of Mary, their lawful sovereign, and of the princess Elizabeth, the presumptive heir, is universally allowed. My opinion, that the sentence which, after the pardon of their treason, condemned them to the flames for heresy, was execrable, I have explicitly averred in my "Historical

"Memoirs of the English, Irish, and Scottish "Catholics:" I now deliberately repeat it. And, in respect to Cranmer, I also willingly repeat, that his protection of the princess Mary, from the fury of her father; his exertions to save sir Thomas More, bishop Fisher, and lord Cromwell; his long resistance to the passing of the six sanguinary articles; and his encouragement of literature, are entitled to a high degree of praise: no person can give it more willingly than I do, or wish more sincerely that his failings should rest interred with his bones. But when he is described as a model of virtue, and every effort of composition is used to exalt him, at the expense of the roman-catholics and their religion, and, by highly-coloured relations of his virtues and sufferings, to raise a storm of public indignation against us ;—then,

Facit indignatio versum,And I must ask some questions.

Although he adopted the Lutheran principles so early as his residence in Germany, on the business of the divorce, he yet continued, during the fifteen subsequent years of Henry's reign, in the most public profession of the catholic religion, the article of the supremacy of the pope alone excepted ;was this justifiable before God or man?

Although, when he was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury, he took the customary oath of obedience to the see of Rome, did he not, just before he took it, retire into a private room, and protest against it ? was this honourable?

Although he subscribed, and caused his clergy

to subscribe, the six articles, the third and fourth of which enjoined celibacy to the clergy, and the observance of the vow of chastity, was he not married, and did he not continue to cohabit with his wife?-was not this dissimulation?

Although he knew Anne Boleyn was under no pre-contract of marriage, did he not, to use bishop Burnet's expression, extort from her, standing, as she then did, on the very verge of eternity, a confession of the existence of such a contract?-was not this culpable subserviency to his master's cruelties? was it not prevailing on the unhappy woman to die with a lie upon her lips?

Was he not instrumental in bringing Lambert, Anne Askew, Joan Bocher, Van Parr, and others, both catholics and anabaptists, to the stake?

Did he not make too successful exertions to induce the infant Edward to sign the sentence for Joan Bocher's condemnation?

Was he not, in all these instances, guilty, both of the theory and practice of religious persecution? Did he not, previously to Henry's marriage with Anne of Cleves, declare, that the negotiations for her marriage, with a prince of the house of Lorraine, were not a lawful impediment to her marriage with Henry? yet, did he not, within six months after the marriage, declare, that they had created such an impediment ?—was not this a deliberate and solemn untruth? Did he not then solemnize the monarch's adulterous marriage with lady Katharine Howard?—was not this a sacrilege? And, finally, notwithstanding the undoubted

rights of the princesses Mary and Elizabeth to the throne, did he not, on the death of their royal brother, strive to exclude them from it, and to place lady Jane Grey upon it?-was not this both ingratitude and high treason?

Can you justify his conduct in any one of these instances, without incurring the flagrant guilt of making "vice, virtue ?"

I have quoted your expression, that "the active part which Cranmer took in the burning of Joạn "Bocher, is the saddest page in his history; the 66 only one which admits no extenuation."

Are

not all the parts acted by him in the transactions I have mentioned, very sad pages in his history? Does any one of them admit of any substantial extenuation?

-

Still, the sentence which, after he had been pardoned for his treason, condemned him to the flames for heresy, was, I repeat the word,-execrable, His firmness under the torture, to which it consigned him, has seldom been surpassed: it presents an imposing example, and we then willingly forget what history records against him. But when we read in the Biographia Britannica, and in other works, that he was the glory of the English "nation, and the ornament of the reformation;" and prejudice against the roman-catholics is, by these representations of his virtues, sought to be aggravated, his misdeeds rush on our recollection; we are astonished at the effect of party spirit, and the intrepidity of his biographers and encomiasts.

66

As to Latimer, whom you so highly celebrate ;