James Aitken Wylie - The History of Protestantism (Complete 24 Books in One Volume)

The sentence was not to be executed till afmr fifty days. This respite, so unusual, may have been owing to a lingering affection for his old friend on the part of the king, or it may have been prompted by the hope that he would submit himself to the Church, and that his recantation would deal a blow to the cause of Lollardism. But Lord Cobham had counted the cost, and his firm resolve was to brave the horrors of Smithfield, rather than incur the guilt of apostacy. His persecutors, at last, despaired of bringing him in a penitent's garb, with lighted tapers, to the door of St. Paul's, as they had done humbler and weaker confessors, there to profess his sorrow for having scoffed at the prodigious mystery of transubstantiation, and placed the authority of the Scriptures above that of the Church. But if a real recantation could not be had, a spurious one might be fabricated, and given forth as the knight's confession. This was the expedient to which his enemies had now recourse. They gave out that "Sir John had now become a good man, and had lowlily submitted himself in all things to holy Church;" and thereupon they produced and published a written "abjuration," in which they made Lord Cobham profess the most unbounded homage for the Pope (John XXIII.!), "Christ's Vicar on earth and head of the Church," his clergy, his Sacraments, his laws, his pardons and dispensations, and recommend "all Christian people to observe, and also most meekly to obey, the aforesaid;" and further, they made him, in this "abjuration," renounce as "errors and heresies" all the doctrines he had maintained before the bishops, and, laying his hand upon the "holy evangel of God," to swear that he should nevermore henceforth hold these heresies, "or any other like unto them, wittingly."

The fabricators of this "abjuration" had overshot the mark. But small discernment, truly, was needed to detect so clumsy a forgery. Its authors were careful, doubtless, that the eye of the man whom it so grievously defamed should not light upon it; and yet it would appear that information was conveyed to Cobham, in his prison, of the part the priests were making him act in public; for we find him sending out to rebut the slanders and falsehoods that were spread abroad regarding him, and protesting that as he had professed when he stood before the archbishop, so did he still believe, "This abjuration," says Fox, "never came into the hands of Lord Cobham, neither was it compiled by them for that purpose, but only to blear the eyes of the unlearned multitude for a time." Meanwhile — whether by the aid of his friends, or by connivance of the governor, is not certainly known — Lord Cobham escaped from the Tower and fled to Wales, where he remained secreted for four years.

Table of Contents

Spread of Lollardism — Clergy Complain to the King — Activity of the Lollards — Accused of Plotting the Overthrow of the Throne and Commonwealth — Midnight Meeting of Lollards at St. Giles-in-the-Fields — Alarm of the King — He Attacks and Disperses the Assembly — Was it a Conspiracy or a Conventicle? — An Old Device Revived.

LORD COBHAM had for the time escaped from the hands of his persecutors, but humbler confessors were within their reach, and on these Arundel and his clergy now proceeded to wreak their vengeance. This thing, which they branded as heresy, and punished in the fire, was spreading over England despite all their rigors. That the new opinions were dangerous to the authority of the Roman Church was sufficiently clear, but it suited the designs of the hierarchy to represent them as dangerous also to the good order of the State. They went to the king, and complaining of the spread of Lollardism, told him that it was the enemy of kings and the foe of commonwealths, and that if it were allowed to remain longer unsuppressed, it would in no long time be the undoing of his realm. "The heretics and Lollards of Wicliffe's opinion," said they, "are suffered to preach abroad so boldly, to gather conventicles unto them, to keep schools in men's houses, to make books, compile treatises, and write ballads; to teach privately in angles and corners, as in woods, fields, meadows, pastures, groves, and caves of the ground. This," they added, "will be a destruction to the commonwealth, a subversion to the land, and an utter decay of the king's estate royal, if a remedy be not sought in time."

This picture, making allowance for some little exaggeration, shows us the wonderful activity of these early Protestants, and what a variety of agencies they had already begun to employ for the propagation of their opinions. It justifies the saying of Bale, that "if England at that time had not been unthankful for the singular benefit that God then sent it in these good men, the days of Antichrist and his tyrannous brood had been shortened there long ago."

The machinations of the priests bore further fruit. The more effectually to rouse the apprehensions of the king, and lead him to cut off the very men who would have sowed the seeds of order in his dominions, and been a bulwark around his throne, they professed to adduce a specific instance in support of their general allegations of disloyalty and treason against the Lollards. In January, 1414, they repaired to Eltham, where the king was then residing, and startled him with the intelligence of a formidable insurrection of the Wicliffites, with Lord Cobham at their head, just ready to break out. The Lollards, they declared, proposed to dethrone the king, murder the royal household, pull down Westminster Abbey, and all the cathedrals in the reahn, and to wind up by confiscating all the possessions of the Church. To give a coloring of truth to the story, they specified the time and place fixed upon for the outbreak of the diabolical plot. The conspirators were to meet on a certain midnight "in Ficket Field beside London, on the back side of St. Giles," and then and there begin their terrible work. The king on receiving the alarming news quitted Eltham, and repaired, with a body of armed men, to his Palace of Westminster, to be on the spot and ready to quell the expected rebellion. The night came when this terrible plot was to explode, and to leave before morning its memorials in the overthrow of the throne, and the destruction of the hierarchy. The martial spirit of the future hero of Agincourt was roused. Giving orders for the gates of London to be closed, and "unfurling a banner," says Walden, "with a cross upon it" — after the Pope's example when he wars against the Turk — the king marched forth to engage the rebels. He found no such assembly as he had been led to expect. There was no Lord Cobham there; there were no armed men present. In short, instead of conspirators in rank and file, ready to sustain the onset of the royal troops, the king encountered only a congregation of citizens, who had chosen this hour and place as the fittest for a field preaching. Such, in sober truth, appears to have been the character of the assembly. When the king rode in among them with his men-at-arms, he met absolutely with no resistance. Without leaders and without arms, the multitude broke up and fled. Some were cut down on the spot, the rest were pursued, and of these many were taken.

The gates of the city had been closed, and why? "To prevent the citizens joining the rebels," say the accusers of the Lollards, who would fain have us believe that this was an organised conspiracy. The men of London, say they, were ready to rush out in hundreds to support the Lollards against the king's troops. But where is the evidence of this? We do not hear of a single citizen arming himself. Why did not the Londoners sally forth and join their friends outside before night had fallen and they were attacked by the soldiery? Why did they not meet them the moment they arrived on Ficket Field? Their coming was known to their foes, why not also to their friends? No; the gates of London were shut for the same reason, doubtless, which led, at an after-period, to the closing of the gates of Paris when a conventicle was held outside its walls — even that the worshippers, when attacked, might not find refuge in the city.