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CHAP.

V.

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The hapless woman, Jane Shore, accused as a witch and an accomplice of Hastings, did penance in S. Paul's. May, 1483. Whether she moved commiseration or aversion (as bringing disgrace on citizens' wives) with the wondering citizens, is doubtful. Her extraordinary beauty made a deep impression, as she walked in very scanty attire with a cross before her, and a paper in her hand, the gaze of 'the people flushing her pale cheeks with exquisite colour; men were more amorous of her body than curious of her soul; they thought less of her shame than of the cruelty of the Protector."

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King Richard himself, on his accession and his acknowledgment by the Spiritual and Temporal Peers, rode solemnly to the cathedral church of London, and was ' received there with processions, with great congratulation ⚫ and acclamation of all the people in every place, and by the way that the King was in, that day.'2

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In the plan for a general rising against Richard, the Bishops of Exeter and Salisbury took a leading part. It may be hoped that Kemp of London was at least in heart with his brethren.

Throughout all these terrible and disastrous times-the civil wars, the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., Edward V., Richard, down to the fourth year of Henry VII.—Thomas Kemp was still Bishop of London. How far he sanctioned by his presence, or by his tacit connivance, those oaths taken in his Church only to be broken, the hollow attempts at reconciliation, the acceptance of the strongest as the lawful king, the exposure in his Church of the bodies slain in battle, by public execution or by murder; how far he retired behind the more authoritative primate, I find no distinct record. We hardly know whether he was Yorkist or Lancastrian, or whether he lived aloof at

2 The official account, in Ellis's Historical Letters, 2nd series, vol. i. p. 148.

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his quiet palace of Fulham, mourning in Christian sorrow over crimes and miseries which he had no power to prevent; or, in prudent regard for his own safety and dignity, declined to commit himself openly to either cause. That he had given no unpardonable offence to the House of York appears from a singular document. The Pope had made a demand of more than 40,000 ducats, alleged to be due from the Bishop, no doubt as treasurer of the Papal revenues from England, although agents from the Pope himself acknowledged that nothing was due. This was during the pontificate of Pius II. King Edward IV. interfered with the new Pope, Paul II., to stop proceedings so unjust and vexatious against the Bishop.3

But the civil wars, it should seem, did not interfere with the revenues of the bishopric, which accumulated during Kemp's episcopate to a vast amount; and Thomas Kemp was a magnificent and munificent prelate, who knew how to spend those treasures. S. Paul's Cross, which he rebuilt, was for a long time, from its imposing grandeur and consummate gracefulness, one of the chief ornaments of the city of London. It became its position, and during two centuries was the pulpit from which the preachers of each successive generation addressed not only the citizens of London but the chief dignitaries of the State and of the Court. Kings sometimes sate at its foot. It was destroyed at length by Puritan fanaticism, which would not endure its form. Of the other buildings of Kemp at S. Paul's more hereafter. But his generosity did not confine itself to his own cathedral. The beautiful Divinity School at Oxford was built at his cost; and we must give him credit, not merely for his munificence, but, to a certain extent, for the exquisite grace of the architecture of that admirable edifice.

Wharton, p. 168.

CHAP.
V.

110

LAMBERT SIMNEL AT S. PAUL'S.

CHAP.

VI.

CHAPTER VI.

S. PAUL'S, ON THE APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION.

1

THERE are few noteworthy incidents relating to S. Paul's during the reign of Henry VII. The King was busily employed on his splendid chapel at Westminster. But before the close of Kemp's long episcopate (the Bishop of London, perhaps from age or infirmity, was not present), the Primate Morton, with his suffragans, held a Convocation at S. Paul's. There appeared William Symonds, Priest, who confessed before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, that at Oxford he had set up the son of one Originakes as Earl of Warwick, and had conveyed him to Ireland. Symonds made full confession; and, at the demand of the Archbishop, he was committed by the Mayor and Aldermen to the Tower. King Henry, after his victory over the partisans of Simnel, went on two successive days in solemn procession to the Cathedral. On the first day Te Deum was sung; on the second there was a sermon at Paul's Cross. The King rode with Lambert Simnel at his side, whose life he spared in contemptuous mercy, and degraded him to a servile office as a scullion in the royal kitchen. The impostor was exhibited in the King's train in S. Paul's; and, according to all accounts, condemned as no Earl of Warwick.2

Archbishop Morton's Convocation proceeded to other

'Lord Verulam in Kennet, p. 588. Verulam does not notice Simnel in his procession. 2 Maitland's London, vol. i. p. 217.

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business. There was a charge against the Prior of S. John of Jerusalem, that certain of his Order had abused their privileges, and preached at Paul's Cross against the church and churchmen in the presence of laymen, who are always hostile to the Clergy." On a further day the Prior of S. John's appeared, and promised to amend these errors. On a third day, after a subsidy had been voted, appeared many learned persons, secular as well as religious, accustomed to preach at Paul's Cross the Word of 'God.' They were admonished by the Primate not to preach against ecclesiastical persons. But the next monition rather justified these bold and learned preachers. It was a rebuke to the Clergy, especially Priests in the city of London, against the evil fame of haunting taverns, hostelries, and cookshops. All this was ominous of the coming Reformation.1

After the long episcopate of Thomas Kemp followed a rapid line of prelates, mostly undistinguished, and who passed over the throne of London to higher places. Richard Hill, 1489-1496; Thomas Savage, 1496; translated to York 1501. William Warham only alighted on London on his way to Canterbury. He was appointed to London by Papal provision, October 1501; consecrated not before 1502; Archbishop of Canterbury, 1503. William Barons, or Barnes, was bishop hardly more than ten months, 1504, 1505. Richard Fitz James, translated from Chichester, 1506-1522. Cuthbert Tonstall held the episcopate of London rather more than seven years; and this kind, gentle, and blameless prelate, as the threatening clouds of the Reformation began to lower, withdrew, as if in terror of these, to him, uncongenial times, to remote and safer Durham (A.D. 1530).

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6

Qui semper Clericis sunt infesti.'

See the whole curious report of

this Convocation in Wilkins, vol. iii.
p. 618.

CHAP.

VI.

CHAP.
VI.

112

JOHN COLET, DEAN OF S. PAUL'S.

But if the Bishops of London were mostly men obscure to us, though perhaps of fame in their own days for learning and piety, there appears at this juncture, as Dean of S. Paul's, one of the most remarkable and admirable men who have held dignity in the Church of England, assuredly in the church of S. Paul's.

John Colet is by some only vaguely known as the intimate and bosom friend of Erasmus, yet to have been the intimate friend of Erasmus implies a knowledge and love of letters, a high amount of learning, views of religion of a purer character, a prophetic presentiment of the great change preparing in Christendom, with a wise prevision of the best means of making that change, with as little convulsion as might be, by a slower perhaps, but less violent disruption. Whether the more peaceful revolution was possible may be doubted; but to have foreseen its inevitable necessity, and to have attempted to mitigate the terrible shock, was the part of a wise churchman, of an exemplary Christian.

These two great reformers before the ReformationColet and Erasmus-were in some respect closely kindred, in intellect and in opinion; in others, and in the circumstances of their lives, they offer the strongest contrast. They were kindred in their revolt from that mediævalism which, if for a time a splendid and beneficent, though rigidly restrictive, caparison of the human mind, had become an intolerable burden; kindred in their contempt for that grovelling superstition which, especially under the countless degenerate, ignorant, obstinately, arrogantly ignorant Monks and Friars, had suffocated the higher truths of religion; kindred in their aversion from the scholastic theology which had made that science a metaphysical jargon, and from the scholastic logic which had reduced the human reason into a machine for spinning out, with

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