St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation

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CHAPTER XII. THE HERESIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY-(CONTINUED)

II.- REIGN OF EDWARD VI

16. The Duke of Somerset, as Guardian of Edward VI, governs the kingdom.
17. He declares himself a heretic, and gives leave to the heretics to preach; invites Bucer, Vermigli, and Ochino to England, and abolishes the Roman Catholic Religion.
18. He beheads his brother, the Lord High Admiral.
19. He is beheaded himself.
20. Death of Edward; the Earl of Warwick makes an attempt to get possession of the kingdom, and is beheaded, but is converted, and dies an edifying death.



16. Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, was one of the guardians appointed by Henry to his son; he was maternal uncle to the young King, being brother to Jane Seymour, his mother. Although he passed all along as a Catholic, he was a Zuinglian, and as the majority of Edward’s guardians were Catholics, he intrigued with some of the principal nobility of the kingdom, and pointed out how dangerous it would be to their interests that the young King should be left in the hands of those gentlemen; that the consequence would be that they should have, sooner or later, to surrender again the Ecclesiastic property given them by Henry; that the suppressed and ruined churches should be again repaired and rebuilt, to the great impoverishing of the Royal treasury; and that the only way to avoid such evils was that he should be made Governor of the kingdom. He craftily suppressed Henry’s will, and substituted another, in which Edward was declared head of the Church of England, and he was appointed Regent; he then got himself created Duke of Somerset, and took the title of Protector of the Kingdom (1).


17. No sooner had he got the supreme power into his hands, as Protector, than he at once took off the mask, proclaimed himself a Protestant, and appointed preachers to disseminate the heresy. He prohibited the Bishops from preaching, or ordaining, without the King’s permission, and he then refused permission to any one to preach, unless to the Zuinglian Ministers.

Among the rest the impious Cranmer, pseudo Archbishop of Canterbury, now began publicly to preach against the Catholic Church, and published a Catechism filled with the most wicked doctrines against the Faith, and was not ashamed to marry publicly, with the approbation of the Regent, a woman who lived with him as concubine before he was made Bishop (2). Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Winchester but deposed from his See for preaching, in London, against the Real Presence was now appointed, by Somerset, principal preacher of the Zuinglian errors. He invited, at the same time, from Strasbourg, three famous ministers of Satan, apostate Religious, well known through all Europe Martin Bucer, now seventy years of age, and three times married; Peter Martyr, and Bernard Ochin and appointed them to Professors Chairs in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to poison the minds of the poor youths studying there, and he banished every Catholic Professor out of these Colleges.

To complete the work of iniquity, he appointed, as tutors to the young King, Richard Crock, a priest, who violated his vows, by marrying, and John Check, a layman of debauched life fit instructors for a young Prince in vice and heresy (3). He tried, by sending Bucer, Peter Martyr, and Ochino, to Mary, to induce her to forsake the Church, like wise (4); but she showed such determined opposition, that he never tried it again. His next step was to abolish the six Articles of Henry VIII., and on the 5th of November, 1547, he obtained the sanction of Parliament, for abolishing the Roman Catholic Religion, the Mass, the veneration of Sacred Images, and for the confiscation of the sacred vessels and ornaments of the altar (5); and thus, under him, the whole plan of Religion established by Henry and the Parliament (N. 10), six Articles, and all, were done away with. Here we naturally wonder how so many Bishops and Theologians could establish, in Henry’s reign, a form of worship of such little value, as to be abolished almost immediately on his death. Burnet says, that these Theologians were ignorant of the truth. Behold, then, the reformed Faith, called by him ” The Work of Light.” They sanctioned articles of Faith without having a knowledge of the truth.

The Reformation may, indeed, be called a work of darkness, since it upset Faith, Religion, and all Divine and human laws, in England (6). Somerset next ordained, that Communion should be administered under both kinds that the Scriptures should be generally read in the vulgar tongue and that all Bishops, or other Ecclesiastics, refusing obedience to this order, should be sent to prison, and deprived of their benefices, and Reformers installed in their places (7). In this he followed the advice of Calvin, who wrote him a long letter from Geneva on the subject, advising him to abolish the Catholic Religion by persecution; and the prisons of London were, accordingly, filled with suspected Catholics. At this period, three-fourths of the clergy had shaken off the law of celibacy (8).


18. Such were the crimes of the Duke of Somerset against the Church; but the Divine vengeance soon overtook him, in a most unexpected manner (9). He had raised his brother, Thomas Seymour, to the dignity of Lord High Admiral of the Kingdom, and this nobleman had gained the affection of Henry’s last Queen, Catherine Parr, and had his consent to the marriage. This was highly displeasing, however, to the Duchess of Somerset, as, in case of his marriage with Catherine, she should resign to her the precedence which she enjoyed, as wife of the Protector, and, though she yielded to the Queen Dowager, she was unwilling to take rank beneath her sister-in-law; and thus a quarrel was commenced between the ladies, in which their husbands were soon engaged. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was an enemy to both parties, and bent on their destruction; and, to accomplish it with greater certainly, he pretended to be a mediator, while he dexterously encouraged the strife between them, and succeeded so well, that Somerset engaged Sharington to accuse his brother of high treason. He appeared to be highly displeased when the accusation was first made; but then he alleged that the King’s life and honour were more dear to him than his brother’s life, and he gave orders to proceed with his trial.

The Admiral was condemned, and executed on the 20th of March, 1549. His lady, Queen Catherine, according to some, died of a broken heart; but we believe that she had previously died in childbirth (10).


19. On the death of the Admiral, Earl Warwick was entire master of Somerset’s mind; he wound him round as he pleased, and had sufficient interest to appoint friends of his own to several important places, by which he laid the foundation of the Duke’s ruin. He strengthened his party, besides, by the adhesion of the Catholic lords very numerous still who were persuaded by him, that there was no hope of reestablishing the Catholic Religion while Somerset was in power. About the same time, the English lost Boulogne, in the ancient province of Picardy, and the Regent was severely censured, for not having sent reinforcements in time, to save it from the French. Several of the barons and nobility, likewise, had enclosed commonages, in different parts of the kingdom, to the great grievance of the people, who looked to the Regent for redress, and not obtaining it, broke out into rebellion, and Warwick got the Parliament convoked. He had a very strong party in both houses, so the Regent was attainted, and sent to the Tower, and was executed on the 22nd of January, 1552, and both Catholics and Protestants rejoiced at his death (11).


20. The Earl of Warwick having now disposed of all his rivals, took the administration of affairs even during Edward’s lifetime into his own hands, and got another step in the Peerage, being created Duke of Northumberland; and not satisfied with all this, prevailed on the King to leave his crown, by will, to his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, excluding Mary, daughter of Queen Catherine, as she was declared illegitimate in the reign of Henry VIII, and Elizabeth, as daughter of the adultress, Anna Boleyn.

Edward died soon after, in the sixteenth year of his age, on the 7th of July, 1553, and Northumberland, it is said, immediately gave orders that Mary should be secured; but his secretary, a Catholic, thought it too bad that the heiress of the crown should be thus deprived of her right, and he escaped from his master, and arrived in Mary’s presence two hours sooner than the person the Duke sent to arrest her (12). Mary immediately fled to Norfolk, where the people showed their attachment to her cause, by taking up arms in her defense. She collected an army of fifteen thousand men, and though Northumberland marched against her with thirty thousand, he was deserted by most of them (some say he never had more than six thousand in the beginning), and returned to London; but the citizens would not now admit him, and the fleet, likewise, declared for Mary. When Queen Mary was settled in the government, Northumber land was indicted for high treason, and, as there was no doubt of his guilt, he was condemned and executed. His sons suffered, likewise, and his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, Henry’s niece, who wore the crown for ten days against her will, paid the penalty of her treason on the scaffold. Elizabeth was, likewise, kept in custody on suspicion. Northumberland had embraced Protestantism merely from political motives, but now he returned again to the Faith, confessed to a Priest, and declared on the scaffold, that it was merely the ambition of obtaining the crown for his family that caused him to dissemble his Faith, and that he looked on his punishment now a grace of God to procure his salvation. His sons and others, executed for the same crime, made a similar declaration. It is melancholy to see in this history so many persons condemned to death for trying to elevate themselves above their sphere, and England become immediately on her loss of the Faith a field of slaughter for her children (13).

(1) Varillas, Istor. t. 2, p. 100; Nat. Alex. t. 19, c. 13, a. 4; Hermant, 1st. t. 2, c. 267; Gotti, Ver. Rel. c. 114, s. 1, n. 1.
(2) Varillas, loc. cit. p. 101; Gotti, loc. cit. n. 2; Hermant, c. 267
(3) Varillas, t. 2, I. 17, p. 105, & seq.; Nat. Alex. art. 4.
(4) Varillas, l. 17, p. 116. .
(5) Bossuet, n. 90.
(6) Bossuet, t. -2, l. 7, n. 96.
(7) Gotti, loc. cit. sec. 1, n. 3; Nat. Alex. loc. cit.; Bossuet Hist. l. 7, n. 86.
(8) Varillas, I 17, p. 126.
(9) Varillas, loc. cit. . 126, coll. 2.
(10) Varillas, l. 17, p. 120.
(11) Varillas, t. 2, l. 17, p;. 131, & l. 20, p . 1.
(12) Varillas, t. 2, l. 20, p. 208.
(13) Varillas, l. 20, p;. 209, a. 211; Nat. Alex. t. 19, c. 13, art. 5; Gotti, c. 114, sec. 1, n. 4; Hermant, c. 208.