Read The Courier's Tale Online
Authors: Peter Walker
‘This excellent and most sainted cardinal must remain with us. He will not come to Rome, not for any occasion.’
‘It is impossible for us to revoke our decree,’ said the Pope. ‘That would be derogatory to our dignity. But a solution has appeared. I have just remembered a certain old Englishman, a bare-footed friar named Peto, who was once the Queen’s confessor. I have decided to make him a cardinal and given him the legation to England.’
‘With regard to Peto personally,’ said Carne, ‘I am willing to accept your opinion that he is learned, and a good Christian, yet I do not think the appointment a good one, for he is also an old dotard who can bear no fatigue and who will remain in his cell reciting his orisons. Nor do I see how this is supposed to please the Queen. To take away from her a close relation whom she dearly loves and replace him with a decrepit old friar who was never, in fact, her confessor – he confessed her once when she was seven – no, it’s out of the question. Nor will it please anyone else in England. As you know, the English esteem only those who are wealthy or powerful or of noble blood. Friar Peto is none of those things and will have no respect paid to him whatever.’
‘We are unable to change our mind,’ said the Pope. ‘We choose to have our son Cardinal Pole here to assist us in certain very difficult enquiries. Together with the brief for the new cardinal, we command him to come to Rome at once.’
‘You may do as you please,’ said the ambassador, ‘but you will have to send your own courier. I do not dare convey such a message to my sovereign.’
Many months passed and neither side would give in. The Pope refused to restore Pole’s legation. The Queen forbade any messenger from Rome entry to the kingdom. The Pope had still not given any reason for Pole’s recall. One day, Navagero went to see him to say that a certain bishopric in Venice was about to fall vacant, as the incumbent was dying.
‘The Signory of Venice,’ he said, ‘ask me to remind you of the promise, called an
accesso
, that the bishopric will pass to Alvise Priuli, one of their own noblemen and brother to the present Doge.’
On hearing the name of Priuli, Pole’s oldest friend, the Pope held up his hand to prevent further speech and stood for a moment muttering and swinging his right arm, and gazing at the ground like someone who is greatly oppressed by his thoughts.
‘Magnifico Ambassador,’ he said at length, ‘say no more on the matter. We are ready to do whatever we can for the Signory, but now they must limit their appetites and not misuse the love we bear them.’
‘The Signory seeks only something that is reasonable,’ said Navagero.
‘Were our considerations weighed against yours,’ said the Pope, ‘they would greatly over-balance them, ours being most exalted and firmly grounded, so much so that we cannot listen to you without nausea. What is the meaning of this word
accesso
? Never was there an invention more diabolical than this one, nor one that has more scandalised the whole world. It was never heard of by the ancient fathers. It deprives a pope of his liberty, and besides that it points a dagger at the throat of the living bishop. For that reason we have recently repealed all
accessi
granted by our predecessors.’
‘If the term
accesso
displeases you,’ said Navagero, ‘perhaps you will find another way to satisfy my government.’
‘You speak of a thing which is impossible,’ said the Pope. ‘Besides the
accessi
being diabolical inventions, we repealed them precisely on account of Priuli.’
Then putting his mouth close to Navagero’s ear, he whispered: ‘We must at any rate tell you – Priuli is a heretic.’
‘Holy Father!’ said Navagero, ‘the whole of Venice consider him a Catholic who leads a good life. As he may have been slandered by someone, you should not deprive him of his right. That would be to condemn him before he knows the charges, which he might well refute.’
‘We do not speak of something we do not know for a certainty,’ said the Pope. ‘It is a fact. There are many who know it, we have witnesses. Priuli is of the accursed school and the apostate household of Pole, the Cardinal of England. Why do you suppose we deprived Pole of the legation? You will soon see what is coming: we mean to proceed. Pole was the master, and Morone, whom we have here in the castle, the disciple. Priuli is on a par with both of them, and as bad as Marc’Antonio Flamminio, whom we would certainly have to burn if he were not already dead, just as we had his brother burnt the other day in front of the church of the Minerva. Oh Magnifico Ambassador, let us not speak any further on the matter! If our own father was a heretic we would carry the faggots to burn him. Say no more, we beseech you – our cognisance of this case stinks in the nostrils.’
As to why his old suspicion of Pole had crept back into the Pope’s mind, he gave no indication.
In the early weeks of the war, at the same time as Alba’s army could be heard approaching Rome, a procession of about thirty people was seen crossing the fields of eastern England. Anyone watching them long enough would have noticed something very strange. At the outskirts of all the towns they passed through, they stopped, and a single long rope was looped around the waists, hands and shoulders of most of the party so that they appeared to be under restraint.
Leaving town, they stopped again, the rope was removed and they went on their way through the fields of wheat.
The procession consisted of a sheriff and six or seven guards, and twenty-two men and women who had been arrested in Colchester on suspicion of heresy and who were being marched to London to be examined by Bishop Bonner. It was just before harvest and it would have been easy for prisoners to run away and be hidden in the wheat which was moving this way and that in the wind. This, however, they assured the sheriff they did not wish to do. On the contrary, they were eager to meet their judge, and they sang hymns as they went across the fields. The sheriff was so pleased with their behaviour he saw no need to tie them up, except in the towns, where he might otherwise get into trouble.
When they reached London, the rope came out again and this time was properly tied around wrists and shoulders. The captives attracted immense attention. By the time they reached Bonner’s palace in Fulham, they were accompanied by several thousand people.
Bonner became alarmed. He wrote quickly to Pole, saying he had examined all the prisoners and found them all to be desperate heretics who should be despatched at once, but ‘fearing your Lordship’s wrath’ – which he had recently incurred in a like case – he sought permission first.
A reply came back forbidding this action and ordering the captives to be sent to the Lollards’ Tower at Lambeth Palace. There they languished for about a week. Then one day Pole himself appeared at the door of their cell. After talking to the prisoners for a while, he set them all free, on their swearing of an oath which he himself devised, of the lightest terms imaginable: ‘that they promised to be good Christians and subjects to the Queen’.
The twenty-two then set off and walked home through Essex. Their release, which took place on 22 October, occasioned much comment. Nothing like it could be recalled. But the story did not end there. A few months later, in December or January, their parish priest, Sir Thomas Tye, wrote to Bonner and to Lord Darcy, Lieutenant of Essex, about some of the prisoners released by Pole.
Since their coming home, they maliciously and seditiously have seduced many from coming to the church, mocking those that frequent the church, calling them church owls, and calling the blessed sacrament a blind god.
In the town of Colchester, ministers of the church are hemmed at in the open streets, and called knaves, the blessed sacrament of the altar is blasphemed and railed upon in every ale house and tavern.
At this, new warrants were sworn and three of them were re-arrested, taken to the moot hall and then to Colchester Castle, where they were examined again. They answered very stoutly, saying the mass was an abominable idol, that the bread and wine were not changed by consecration into the body and blood of Christ – if anything they were rather the worse for it – and that all these things stank in the nostrils of God.
‘So you will not be a member of us?’ asked Doctor Chadsey, the judge.
‘I am no member of yours,’ said one, a girl named Rose Allen, ‘for you are a member of Antichrist and will have the reward of Antichrist, unless you repent.’
‘Then what do you say of the Holy See and the authority of the Pope?’
‘I am none of his,’ she said, ‘and as for his sea – it is for crows, kites, owls and ravens such as you are to swim in and by the Grace of God I shall never swim in it as long as I live.’
All three were later taken out and burnt at the stake, calling out from amid the flames to beware of idolatry.
All of this was well known in England. My nephew Clement, for instance, who was eager for me to adopt his religious views, wrote and told me about it. But there is no reason to think the story would have ever reached Rome and come to the ears of the Pope except for one thing: Bonner informed him. The imperialist postmaster in Venice, who had a marvellous way with sealing-wax, had opened his letters and read them, and it was soon known all over Venice that a great English bishop had been sending ‘evil reports’ of Pole to Rome.
It was this tale of the twenty-two prisoners of Colchester which, I think, revived the Pope’s ancient suspicions. He, in any case, saw heresy everywhere without the slightest evidence. What then would he think of this story – Pole, the arch-heretic, beautifully disguised in the red robe of a cardinal, appearing in the prison door to set free his agents and send them forth to seduce many more, to mock church owls, blind gods and the blessed sacrament of the altar?
The Pope knew also that he must be nearing the end of his own life. Another conclave would soon be held. His greatest dread returned: at any hour, a certain English heretic might ascend the chair of Peter and induce everyone to lead his sorry life.
That was the calamity at hand, ‘as close as the lightning which follows the limbo’. For my part, I could not help noting that Pole had appeared at the door of the Lollards’ Tower and set the prisoners free at about the same time as my little book,
The
Fine and Witty Letter
, reached London.
Although the war had come to an end in Italy, in the north it was still thundering on, bringing a rain of calamities.
First came the news that Calais had fallen. At a stroke, we lost our mastery of the Channel, the power to harass France at will, three hundred artillery pieces and a great quantity of wool and other booty.
The French were in seventh heaven. Even here in Mantua the French party ran through the streets in velvet slippers carrying roast dinners to one another’s houses.
Next came the battle of Gravelines. This time the French army was attacked by Egmont with three thousand horses and all his German infantry. The French ran away and crossed the River Aa, thinking they would be safe, but the Imperialists kept them in sight, and eventually the two sides met.
The battle was fought on the seashore, in the presence of the English fleet, which, unable to assist in any other way, shot off its cannons from afar. The French cavalry were instantly routed; the infantry stood firm for an hour and were then utterly dispersed.
This news, reaching Paris, made everyone turn pale.
By that time, which was early this year, 1558, the Pope had completed his transit from the French to the Imperialist side. He now found himself delighted with Philip, the King of England.
‘He is as great a prince as any that has ever reigned in Christendom,’ he told Navagero, ‘and is soon to be even greater. Negotiating with him is much more secure and solid than with certain other persons whom we might name . . .’
The war against the Emperor and Philip, he added, had been a great mistake, foisted on him by certain wicked persons.
‘I should send their heads flying from their shoulders and it is greatly to my regret that I am too kind-hearted to do so,’ he added, staring hard at the French cardinals who were present.
He had quite forgotten, said Navagero, that it was his nephew Carlos who was the master spirit of the war.
Carlos was now sent to Philip in Brussels to undertake certain vital negotiations, chief among them the extradition of Pole to Rome. He came with a glittering retinue and set about a great round of banquets, gambling and hunting. He was also armed with a summary of the charges against the Cardinal of England.
He saw no need for discretion. On the contrary, he was a model of candour. Soon the whole court, and then the world, knew the extent of the depravity of Reginald Pole and his household.
Reginaldus Polus . . . an accomplice of heretics . . . a favourer of heretics . . . He approached people in conversation to find out their doctrine. He persuaded others to the heretical view . . . He broadcast it . . . He considered heretics his friends . . . He was commonly thought of by Catholics as a heretic . . . He defended Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone . . . He condemned the theology of the schools . . . He said there was no harm in what he believed . . . He argued that the gospel should be declared pure and simple . . . He asserted that a vow of chastity should not be observed unless it was a gift from God . . . He was the father and spiritual teacher of false doctrine to the Marchioness . . . He was chosen by her alone . . . and adored by her with excessive reverence and affection . . . and extolled excessively by her . . . a lover of that man, as can be seen from many letters . . . whom she lavishly praised . . . and called her Elijah . . . and felt burning love for . . .