John Nicholson, or Lambert, was a Norfolk man who studied at Cambridge. He’d come to the attention of Katherine of Aragon and it was due to her nomination that he was elected fellow. However, he shifted away from the Catholicism of his birth and moved to Antwerp where he became acquainted with Tyndale.
He returned to London when it seemed that England was to have its own reformation when Anne Boleyn was in the ascendent. He taught Latin and Greek but unfortunately for him he got into a dispute about a year after Anne’s execution when the official religious hue of the country was shifting back to its starting point. This argument was reported to the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk accused Lambert of heresy and had him imprisoned.
During his imprisonment Lambert wrote a paper justifying his belief that Christ was not present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist which he presented to his accusers who promptly handed it over to Thomas Cranmer.
Lambert’s crime was to deny transubstantiation which at this point in the Church of England’s history made him a heretic. The Ten Articles left no room for manoeuvre in this matter. Cranmer tried him and found him guilty of heresy, which is ironic because Cranmer would himself deny transubstantiation as soon as he felt it safe to do so.
Lambert appealed his case directly to Henry VIII – perhaps he thought the monarch was a rational man with Protestant tendencies – after all he’d broken with Rome. Little did he realise that he was going to be at the heart of a show trial to demonstrate that having broken with Rome Henry intended to go no further down the road towards Protestantism. In fact even when the monasteries were being suppressed there were heresy trials and executions. Henry didn’t have any truck with Lutherans or Zwinglians or any of the other protestant sects that were springing up across Europe. It wouldn’t be long in England and Wales before the Ten Articles shrunk into the Six Articles which were essentially catholic in view but with Henry in charge.
Henry summoned assorted bishops and theologians to Westminster rather fancying himself as a learned theologian himself – afterall he was the Defender of the Faith having launched his repost to Luther in 1521. He also arranged for an audience to gather on specially erected tiered seating.
Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester was the ringmaster for the day. He explained to the gathered courtiers and bishops that Lambert had appealed his case to Henry and that Henry was going to demonstrate that it was far from the case that he’d turned German in his religious sympathies. Sampson went on to say that whilst Henry had given the monks the big heave ho it was because they were an idle bunch who encouraged superstition. He also explained that in giving the Bible to the people in English it was to encourage them in their true understanding and away from the superstitious nonsense of the past – a humanist approach if you will.
Henry then exchanged words with the accused who had to explain about having two surnames which didn’t go down well with Hal but the king very graciously said that as Lambert was his subject he wanted him to have the opportunity of understanding the error of his ways and come back into the fold of the true faith even if he was an untrustworthy sort of bloke with two different names which was in Hal’s opinion just plain shifty.
Five hours later six or so bishops including Cranmer and Gardiner had disputed with Lambert who hadn’t budged an inch in his views during the entire time. Henry announced Lambert must die on account of the fact he didn’t patronise heretics. Cromwell recorded it as an occasion of Henry’s “inestimable majesty” when he wrote about the event which suggests that the Vicar General might have thought that someone was reading his letters before they were delivered to their intended recipients.
As he burned on November 22 1538 at Smithfield, Lambert called out, “None but Christ.”
Those of you of a gentle disposition may wish to stop reading at this point.
Henry, allegedly, decreed that Lambert’s suffering should be extended as a warning to all other heretics so the poor man was lifted on pikestaffs from the flames as his legs burned.
Its that time of week again when I delve through Henry VIII’s letter and papers looking for the thoughts of Thomas Cromwell.
The Benedictine nunnery of King’s Mead in Derby dedicated to the Virgin Mary was the only Benedictine foundation in Derbyshire and its inhabitants were initially under the spiritual and temporal guidance of the abbot of Darley Abbey – an Augustinian foundation. History reveals that in the twelfth century there was a warden who acted as chaplain to the nuns as well as looking after the nuns’ business affairs. The nunnery grew its land holdings over the next hundred or so years so that it included three mills at Oddebrook. One of the reasons that this may have occurs was because Henry III gave the nuns twelve acres of land. Because the king had shown an interest it is possible that more donors followed suit in an effort to win favour. Equally donors such as Lancelin Fitzlancelin and his wife Avice who gave land and animals to the nunnery in 1230 or Henry de Doniston and his wife Eleanor could expect a shorter term in Pergatory after their deaths because the nuns would be expected to hold them in their prayers as a result of the land transaction.
It’s that time of the week when I take the opportunity to ferret through Henry VIII’s 1535 papers in order to find out what Cromwell and his friends were up to during the coming week. There’s no prizes for guessing that many of the notes were about monasteries and money.
The Cistercian abbey of Croxden, in the care of English Heritage, is in Staffordshire, one of approximately thirty religious houses across the county. Its story is similar to many other monasteries. It built its wealth on sheep in the twelfth century and then ran into debt as the political landscape of the countryside changed. By the late thirteenth century it was considerably poorer as a consequence of Edward I’s wars with Scotland and the loans it was forced to make to the warrior monarch. Murrain, plague and poor harvests didn’t help. It never recovered. It’s income in 1535 was given as £103 6s. 7d. which was substantially less than its early income and provided Cromwell with evidence, if he needed it, of the decline of the monasteries.
William Cavendish had been a servant of Cardinal Wolsey. He also seems to have been very efficient at taking the surrenders of abbeys. According to Bess of Hardwick’s biographer, Mary Lovell, there was a point in 1538 where he was overseeing ten surrenders a week. He’d begun by auditing the abbey at St Albans and gone on to gain a job with the Court of Augmentations when it was set up in 1536 by Cromwell specifically to oversee the transfer of Church land to the Crown. He earned twenty pounds a year in addition to the ‘profits of office.’ As Lovell observes, the Cavendishs were not alone in making their fortunes from the reformation but Cavendish seems to have been rather good at it. As for William, these days he is more famous for his third wife – Bess of Hardwick, the foundation of Chatsworth House and his role as Mary Queen of Scot’s jailer.
The Cistercian monks at Jervaulx Abbey in Wensley Dale were renowned for their horse breeding. Their skill brought great wealth which was a tad tricky for a group of people who’d taken vows of poverty.
These days Jervaulx is a picturesque ruin but there is one other remarkable survival to see in St Andrew’s Church, Aysgarth. The rood screen, so the handy guide in the church tells me, is from the Ripon School of Carving. In fact when I looked closer I recognised the elephant on the Jervaulx screen as an old friend from Ripon Cathedral. The screen, renovated by those pesky Victorians, is beautiful but it does rather question the Cistercian rule of austerity. The screen must have been even more spectacular when it was first installed. There’s a frieze of foliage and animals running the length of the screen – that’s where the elephant can be found- as well as a dragon, a fox, a boar, an antelope, an eagle and a lion. The message is clear if you’re a medieval church goer. You’re being reminded of all those sins out there waiting to trip you up. Apparently the antelope is a warning against drink and lustfulness on account of the fact that his horns are entangled in the foliage around him. Oddly enough I wouldn’t have known that unless I’d read it in the handy guide – clearly the medieval mind was much more switched on to visual symbolism.
Symbolism was the least of Aysgarth’s worries. As Tudor England became more Protestant it became more dangerous for the parishioners to keep the Jervaulx screen and the original loft and statues which accompanied it. In 1567 several churchwardens were required to do penance for having hidden old papist relics. The screen inevitably was badly damaged in the ensuing centuries. It was once part of a much larger edifice. The statues that belonged with it were burned.
The first week of November 1535 brought a flurry of letters to Thomas Cromwell’s door. His monastic visitors were in East Anglia and the South of the country at the time. The letters he received from his visitors, local gentry and from the clerics themselves are typical of the correspondence he received during the collection of information for the Valor Ecclesiaticus and the Comperta in 1535 and 1536. Visits would continue until 1540 when the last monastery was suppressed – Cromwell would himself be executed the very same year – who says Henry VIII didn’t have a sense of irony?
I’ve been doing one of my favourite things, reading Henry VIII’s letters and papers. In particular I look for the correspondence between Cromwell and the commissioners charged with visiting all the monastic houses in England and Wales during 1535/36. As Vicar-General Cromwell organised a national visitation of monastic houses. It was the first and last time such a thing was done in England and Wales.
The Pole family descended from Margaret, Countess of Salisbury (the daughter of the duke of Clarence who was allegedly executed in a vat of malmsey and Isobel Neville – elder daughter of the earl of Warwick a.k.a. The Kingmaker). She had four sons; Henry (Lord Montagu), Arthur, Reginald and Geoffrey. There was also a daughter called Ursula. Had Richard III won the Battle of Bosworth and remained childless and Margaret’s brother the young earl of Warwick been deemed unfit to rule then his heirs would have been the Poles.
Its that time of year again when my mind turns to teaching. This term I’m back with Henry VIII and his wives and mistresses; the Norman Conquest and the English Reformation so that should keep me out of mischief for a while, though thankfully Henry’s love life is rather closely bound to the progress of the English Reformation. Today though I’m sticking with cathedrals: Rochester Cathedral to be specific – it has links with all the courses I have just mentioned one way or another.
