December 1979 Print

Martyrs of the English Reformation  
by Malcolm Brennan

 

It is only natural that someone who is absolutely sure of his facts is often rather casual in the way he presents them. He will state his information partially, generally, unconditionally—not to deceive but out of a kind of smug assurance. He will offer his story with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, because he is so sure of what he offers that he knows its truth does not depend on who happens to agree with him. But if his mastery of a subject is uncertain, his statements about it are likely to be reserved, circumspect, cautious; yet at the same time he is often aggressive in trying to win adherents to his point of view, as if his dubious information should gain in certainty by being widely accepted. Such is the way of the world; it seems to be a law of nature.

But then there is grace, and the law of grace exceeds the law of nature. One of the things which illustrates the difference between these two laws, of nature and of grace, is the way in which the Catholic Church treats those proposed for sainthood. Now when the Church canonizes someone, it is making an infallible pronouncement that that person has achieved beatitude. And with its divine guarantee on the validity of the canonization, we might expect the Church naturally to concentrate on the beatific qualities of the sanctified soul and to deal rather casually with the mundane details of his earthly life, perhaps invoking the miraculous to explain materials of his life that seemed dubious. But the fact of the matter is that the Church expends enormous time and energy in a canonization process on checking out historical and biographical details, in searching for other than pious motives and spiritual values to account for the material facts of the saint's life, in weighing every document, every report, every pious legend and vicious rumor: checking, searching, and weighing them according to the highest standards of historical scholarship. And the findings of these exhaustive processes must be that the candidate led a life not only holy and exemplary but one of heroic virtue.

It must be a firm belief in the Incarnation, in the very human nature of the Son of God, that teaches the Church to have such a high regard for historical fact.

No other process of examination—lengthy judicial proceeding, great scientific researches—surpasses the Roman Catholic canonization process, either for impartial objectivity or for thoroughness. A measure of how seriously the Church takes this matter is shown in this: In 1874 Cardinal Manning, after careful inquiry, proposed the names of 353 martyrs of the English Reformation as candidates for canonization, and a few other names were added later; twelve years later the title of Venerable was conferred on 261 of them; nine years after that 63 were declared Blessed. Today, over a century after the process began, fewer than fifty have been raised to the full honors of the altar with the title of Saint.

Such, very sketchily, are the nuts and bolts of the law of grace—at least a part of it. The law of nature is illustrated in the 'canonization' of 273 Protestant martyrs under the Catholic Queen Mary, 'Bloody Mary.' This was accomplished by one man, John Foxxe, in one book, his Book of Martyrs, 1563. Modern scholarship has finally proved what many people at the time knew to be true, that it is a shoddy piece of work, full of extravagances, inaccuracies, and out right distortions, the merest propaganda of a narrow-minded fanatic. And yet the book became almost a second bible in England for two centuries, and even today Foxxe's Book of Martyrs is consulted by many Protestants not as an antiquarian curiosity but as a serious account of the origins of their sects and is offered as solid proof that the Catholic Church is the mortal enemy of freedom, truth, goodness, and the Gospels.

BLESSED JOHN FOREST is one of those whose progress toward official sainthood has been arrested by the Church's meticulous regard for historical truth. Not that anything derogatory has been proved against him, for he was undoubtedly a staunch defender of the Faith and a holy man; rather the historical sources that would confirm and clarify the events of his life have apparently perished. Details of his early life are scanty: at the age of seventeen he entered the Franciscan monastery at Greenwich, in that strict branch of the Franciscans called the Observants. After nine years he was sent to Oxford to study theology, but for what degrees and for how long we do not know, though, in later life he is addressed as doctor.

In 1525 he was ordered by Cardinal Wolsey to preach at St. Paul's Cross, then the most notable pulpit in England, where he denounced certain fellow Franciscans. What happened is that Wolsey, by virtue of his authority as papal legate, had ordered a visitation of the Observant Franciscans at Greenwich; but some of the friars protested that the proposed visitation was illegal because it violated certain exemptions granted to the house by Pope Leo X, and on their own they moved to other houses. It was this act of disobedience that Friar Forest denounced. We should remember that at this time there had been no break with Rome, no suit for Henry VIII's divorce, no persecutions—although hindsight leads us to suspect that Wolsey's actions may have been preparatory to the suppression of the monasteries, which began, indeed, as plans to combine smaller houses into convents of more economical size. Father Forest seems to have continued preaching at St. Paul's Cross but no information about the sermons survive.

Next we hear that Blessed John became confessor to Queen Catherine, who had long held the Greenwich monastery in veneration. In 1529, when Henry denounced Catherine, his disfavor fell as well upon Forest and the other friars there. Yet, in his capacity as Warden of the monastery, he had been able to dissuade Henry from inflicting severe measures on the friars. As pressures on the friars mounted, two of the brothers at Greenwich, in undoubted collusion with Henry's hatchetman Thomas Cromwell, began to lodge complaints against John Forest, so persistently and so extensively that he lost all credit at Court and was removed to the Observant Friars at Newcastle, hundreds of miles to the north. At least he was spared the pain of witnessing the ceremony at Greenwich in which Archbishop Cranmer baptized Henry's bastard Elizabeth, the future Queen.

SOME CORRESPONDENCE between Friar Forest and Queen Catherine survives and, while there are some doubts about its historical accuracy in all points, it is worth looking at. The Queen's letter is addressed to Forest in prison (during which imprisonment is not certain) and commends his piety and learning as sufficient to keep him constant in the Lord. Then she laments, "But, alas, you leave me, your daughter, born to you in the wounds of Christ, for a time at least you leave me in the greatest sorrow, for I am losing in you the man who has taught me most in divine things, as he is himself excellently furnished with knowledge and piety. If I may freely say what my wish is, I had rather go before you through a thousand torments than follow you after a time. But if everyone might have what he desires, who would live on in hope? . . . Go forward then, and certainly you know that however great may be the torments you bear, I share in them." Forest's reply is in the same pious tone: he rejoices in her constancy in the Faith, he is consoled by her compassion, and he is not without advice: "Meanwhile do you keep free from the pestilent doctrine of the heretics."

Another letter from one of the Queen's ladies offered to help Blessed John escape from death awaiting him in prison, "for I fear lest my mistress the Queen, moved by so great a loss, should fall into some grave disease and die." Father Forest is patient in instructing this lady who has spoken to him as if there were no resurrection: "Amongst the good things I have taught you, there is nothing I have pressed upon you more than this; if indeed there was ever anything taught by me more earnestly than this, be sure that I went far wrong. If I were willing to break faith, and through fear of torments or love of riches were to give myself to the devil, beyond doubt I could easily escape; but pray think none of these things. Learn then to suffer for Christ's truth, and to die for His spouse, thy mother the Church, and do not try to lead me away from these torments, by which I hope to obtain eternal happiness."

The next news of Blessed John Forest is of his imprisonment in London at the end of 1534—probably in connection with the King's total suppression of the Observant Franciscans in that year. For when the Observant monasteries were suppressed, about 200 of the friars were imprisoned, some in common jails and some in houses of other Franciscans and Augustinians, and about 50 of the 200 died in prisons. Like the exact cause of his imprisonment, the disposition of Blessed John's case remains unknown.

However, he was free again in 1538, the next we hear of him, and living in a convent of Grey Friars (i.e., Conventual Friars, or Friars Minor) in Smithfield, near London. That his life there was exemplary is shown by evidence unwittingly supplied by Cromwell. He examined a number of Friar Forest's penitents concerning what had transpired in the confessional, and some of these interviews were recorded. Finding nothing actionable in this way but only sound religious instruction, Cromwell suborned a rascal to present a delicate matter of conscience regarding the King's supremacy to Blessed John in confession. As soon as this scoundrel heard Forest's advice that the King should not be regarded as head of the Church, he got up and left, declaring that he needed to hear no more.

Accordingly, our Friar was arrested in 1538 and subjected to pitiless examination. There was some doubt whether to charge him with treason or heresy. The articles drawn up against him developed through many stages but finally evolved as the following 'heretical' beliefs:

First, that the Holy Catholic Church was the Church of Rome. Secondly, that we should believe on the Pope's pardon [i.e., indulgences] for the remission of our sins. Thirdly, that we ought to believe and do as our fathers have done aforetime fourteen years past. Fourthly, that a priest may turn and change the pains of hell of a sinner, truly penitent, contrite of his sins, by certain penance enjoined him in [to] the pains of purgatory.

 

Friar Forest seems at one time to have subscribed to these statements and at another time to have refused them. The confused form of the fourth article makes the difficulty plain, especially if he were given the choice of embracing or rejecting all without qualification. To embrace them involved accepting the fourth article's misstatement of the power of absolution (as if a priest could snatch souls out of hell); but to reject the articles would repudiate important controverted points of Catholic doctrine. Exactly what happened, what choices Forest had, at what stage in his examinations he had accepted or rejected this or that point, possibly in some other formulation—all this wrapped in the obscurity of contradictory evidence. In a canonization process these are the kinds of circumstances in which the 'devil's advocate' (the 'attorney' representing the interests of the Church at large) is quick to point out that the candidate for sainthood may have wavered, may have lacked faith and courage enough to preserve him from some slight temporizing with articles of Faith. In the heroic practice of virtue, mitigating circumstances, like torture and harassment and exhaustion, do not mitigate.

In any event, he was found guilty of these heresies. In 1538 there was a short-lived outburst of iconoclasm which was made part of the martyrdom of Blessed John Forest. From the Church of St. Derfel in Wales (Darvel Gadam, in Welsh) an ancient wooden statue of the patron saint, mounted with spear and shield, had been confiscated and sent to London as an item of Papist idolatry. A popular ballad of the time indicates how our friar and the statue were linked—precisely on that point of difficulty in the fourth article:

David Darvell Gatheren, As saith the Welshmen, Fetched outlaws out of hell; Now is he come with spere and shilde In harness to burn at Smithfield, For in Wales he may not dwell. And Forest the Friar, That obstinate liar, That wilfullie shall be dead, In his contumacie, The gospell doth denie, The king to be supreme head.

 

THE PLAN TO TRY Forest for treason never developed and he was found guilty of heresy instead, for which the sentence was burning to death. A great spectacle was made of the event, with a large gathering of prelates, nobles, officials, and a huge mob. Bishop Hugh Latimer, one of Friar John's chief persecutors, at first preached at the prisoner for about an hour, apparently in the real expectation that he might recant. After failing to draw him into controversy, Latimer asked him in what state he would die. An unsympathetic witness reported his reply: "He openly declared with a loud voice to the Bishop as followeth, That if an angel should come down from heaven and show him any other thing than he had believed all his lifetime past he would not believe him, and that if his body should be cut joint after joint or member after member, burnt, hanged, or what pain soever might be done to his body, he would never turn from his old sect of this Bishop of Rome."

Other witnesses report another exchange. Latimer expressed surprise that Forest refused to follow the opinions of the most learned divines of the realm. To which our Friar replied, "Thou hast known me for many years, Latimer, and I am still more astonished at thee, that for the pomps of the world thou hast endangered thine own soul." And he recalled a controversy of some years past in which Latimer was an ardent defender of Rome against those who would deny its authority. "What wert thou then, Latimer, a Papist or a heretic?" "I was mistaken then," said Latimer, "and am now enlightened with the Holy Spirit, and if thou wilt call upon thy better self, thou wilt also receive the light, for thou art now blind." "Oh, Latimer," Blessed John answered, "I think thou has other things in thy heart, but since the king hath made thee from a poor student into a bishop, thou art constrained to say this. Open thou thine eyes; take example from that holy Bishop of Rochester [St. John Fisher] and the blessed Thomas More, who renounced the goods of this world, and chose rather to die than to lose their immortal souls."

While not many accounts of his previous encounters survive there is reason to think that this forthrightness, defiance even, was characteristic of Forest, at least after those attempts years before to reason with the King.

Accounts of the execution are confused, but it is clear that he was suspended above the fire by a chain around his waist, and that the statue of St. Derfel was thrown into the fire with great fanfare. He flinched slightly at the first touch of the flames, but then hung quietly, striking his breast and reciting the Miserere and other prayers in Latin. Some say that a strong wind prevented the flames from doing their work and thus prolonged his agony, until finally his body was dropped into the flames. The date was Wednesday, May 22, 1538.