A TUDOR CHRONICLE.*
Tins work begins to assume the character of an original chronicle in 1521, and that of a more minute political diary in 1533, under which year (the last but fourteen contained in the present volume) the proclamation of Queen Anne is described with all the interest becoming a Londoner of a rising family, and the formality of a member of the Heralds' College. Before touching on more dismal records, we may observe, according to Mr. Hamilton's instructive introduction, that his author has claimed cousinship with Thomas Wriothesley, afterwards Lord Chancellor, executor of King Henry and Earl of Southampton ; he has thus been identified as a Charles Wriothesley, whose father and grandfather were Garter Kings at Arms ; and who was himself a pursuivant in his seven- teenth year (1524), and Windsor Herald soon after the event we mentioned. For the years preceding his teens, Charles Wriothesley borrowed some items from other chroniclers through the medium of the " Customes of London," a work written by Richard Arnold, who had been connected with his family, and of whom some his- torical editors appear to have regarded him as a continuator. Mr. Hamilton shows carefully and satisfactorily that this chronicle is not founded on Stow's, as one might be tempted to infer from a reference of the transcriber's, nor even of so late a date as that historian, though it has been reduced to the orthography of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, Wriothesley is more copious and sometimes more picturesque than his predecessor, as may be judged by his account of King Henry's first interview with Anne of Cleves, which our editor has in a singular way contrasted with Hume's idea of the business, as though we could not fail to be struck with the superiority of the contemporary chronicler, who has left us "so lively a picture of the manners of those times." The fact is that our chronicler registers all pageants and executions with the punetilious particularity of a Gazette, and with scarcely any scrutiny of the antecedents or the merits of each transaction. We do not deny that he shows some ebullitions of feeling when a queen defends herself with dignity against monstrous imputa- tions, when a woman is burnt for treason who happens to be very handsome, or when a preacher has roundly denounced some Anti-Tudorian heresy, but he has not the slightest inclination to look steadily below the mask of history. A writer of this kind may still deserve careful examination on -some points ; and Wriothesley has, in Mr. Froude's judgment, "given more par- ticulars about Anne's fall than any other English writer of the time." On the other hand, he is not so particular as Stow about those May-day jousts at Greenwich at which King Henry is held to have conceived a sudden jealousy of his wife and Norreys, not- withstanding that measures had been taken a week earlier to institute a judicial investigation of the Queen's conduct. It may not, however, be the less probable that the King retired abruptly from this scene, and that Wriothesley received the news of the jousts without any uncourtly particularities about his Majesty's deportment there. Again, Wriothesley has observed, with some reluctance, that the Duke of Richmond, Henry's bastard son, who died about six weeks after Anne Bullen, was commonly thought to have received poison from her ; he shows also that the Duke was present at her execution, which may possibly indicate that he had similar suspicions of her. The correspondence of Chapin, the Imperial Ambassador, which has lately been brought to light by Mr. Fronde, shows also that King Henry had believed, or affected to believe, his wife a poisoner. This prevalent opinion may have contributed to bring about her condemnation ; but Mr. Hamilton, who thinks that Anne was erroneously convicted, but * A Chronicle of England during the Reim of The Tustcrs,from A.D. 1485 to lass. By Charles Wriothesley, Windsor Herald. Edited from a MS. in the possession of Lieutenant-General Lord H. H. Percy, .11.0.B, dm, by William Douglas Hamilton, F.S.A. VoL L Printed for the Camden Society. 11115.
not through any unfair pressure exercised by the King on her judges, seems to us to have taken up rather trivial grounds for the reopening of this great question in his Introduction. The argument he adopts is no doubt plausible, but it is an unmerited compliment to a shallow witness like Wriothesley that a new trial of a case should be instituted to hear his evidence. It is true that the curious discoveries of antiquaries would be too hastily perused by the public, if attention were not drawn to their possible bear- ings by pertinacious dissertations of this kind.
It is another noticeable point that Jane Seymour, according to Wriothesley, was "at first a waiting gentlewoman to Queen Katharine," as well as afterwards to Queen Anne. She died, not two, but twelve days after the birth of her son,—that is, on the 24th of October, though the date has been falsified even in this docu- ment ; but the menticin of the day of the week, and even the order of the entries, show sufficiently that the text has been altered to suit other accounts, whence the tradition that Edward came into the world in Macduff's way. Respecting the divorce of Anne of Cleves, and the impeachment and death of Catharine Howard, our author speaks in his most perfunctory manner.
Apart from controverted historical questions, the Wriothesley Chronicle may represent to us all too vividly the varied character which the "daily news" in London must often have -worn under Henry VIII., and more than one of his successors. We cannot say the author has described processions, jousts, or banquets with more circumstance than Miss Strickland -accumulates ; but that which every decent historian must soften, the habitual savagery of the executions of these times, he dins into us by the ruthless repetition of plain phrases ; he omits no vivisection of the human subject or cremation of the living female in a case of treason, or even of coining. He was probably -an eye-witness of many such solemnities, as he records in one place the hanging of a hangman who had been "a cunning butcher in quartering men ;" and in another estimates that there were ten thousand spectators at the barbarous execution of Friar Forrest, where a peculiar insult had been devised for the "old believers" of the time, by using as fuel for the victim "an idol brought out of North Wales." This he describes as made of wood, "like a man of arms in his harness, having a little spear in his hand, and a casket of iron about his neck hanging with a ribbon ;" it was honoured by the people of North Wales as a saint, "and called in Welsh Darrell Gadarn.' " The narrator of many such astounding experiments on the popular conscience has little or nothing to tell us of the feelings with which they were received by the generality of the spectators. He had doubtless many reasons to be reserved about his own sentiments, though he has discovered some sympathy with the progress of the Reformed religion ; he had fears for his own security, and personal regards for many relatives who were attached to the Catholic system, as, for instance, an aunt, who was in the " virtuousest " of the monasteries, namely, that at Sion House ; and he may have seen only a reflex of his own dissimulation on most of the "ten thousand" faces that surrounded him. It required time to show how many revolutions, and what deadly dangers to the organi- sation and independence of the nation, had their seeds sown in the government of one lawless and churchless tyrant.
Meantime our editor has drawn attention to a more peculiar narrative, regarding the preachings of a layman, who, he thinks, may be described as the father of modern Dissenters. This eccle- siastical difficulty was still novel, and seems to have been treated in a somewhat hesitating manner by the existing powers. In 1538, the same year in which Forrest suffers,—
" In June and July, a bricklayer called Henry Daunce (in White- chapel parish, without Aldgate, in London) used to preach the word of God in his own house in his garden, where he set a tub to a tree ; and therein he preached divers Sundays, and other days early in the morn- ing, and at six of the clock at night, and had great audience of people, both spiritual and temporal ; which said parson had no learning of his book, neither in English nor other tongue, and yet he declared Scrip- ture as well ae he had studied at the Universities ; but t the last, the Bishops had such indignation at him, by reason the people followed him, that they sent for him to my Lord of Canterbury, where he was de- manded many questions; but they could lay nothing to his charge, but did inhibit him from preaching, because of the great resort of people that drew to his sermons.' My Lord of Canterbury (enema* was at this very time preparing a Bible to be set up in all the parish churches to be read by the parishioners, but the liberty allowed them required still to be used with caution, for the Sunday afore Christmas Day, Henry Daunce, bricklayer, which did use to preach in his house this summer past, bare a faggot at Paul's Cross for heresy, and two persons more with him, one being a priest, for heresy also.'"
It seems a pity that our editor has not glanced at the nearest parallel cases to that of Daunce which he may have observed in the records of the Reformation.
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