LATIMER
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clearly marked out. Hitlicrto lie had been quite ortho- dox ill points of theoretic belief. '■ His mind," says Froude, " was practical rather than speculative, and he was slow in arriving at conclusions which had no im- mediate bearing upon action."' Now he broke loose al- together from the position of the Cambridge authorities, and probably became defiant of them. But Wolsey (t 15;50) feU from grace, and there was reason to fear that Latimer would now, at last, also faU a prey to the malice of his formidable adversaries, greatly increased in numbers by his success in gaining followers, who were drawn towards him by his clo(juence, his moral conduct, and his kindness of disposition, as well as by the mer- its of his cause. Unexpectedly, however, and quite to the chagrin of the Cambridge men, he found a fresh protector in the king himself. lie had preached before Henry in the Lent of 1530, having been introduced to his royal master by the king's physician. Dr. Butts ; and lie won the favor of Henry by his honest, straightfor- ward logic and his enthusiasm. In this new position he performed his duty as faithfully as ho had in preaching at Cambridge, and he dared to speak the truth in a place wliere the truth is generally forgotten. A special op- portunity to speak in defense of the Protestant cause was afforded him by the persecutions to which the truest men in Henry's dominions were subjected at this time on account of their religious faith ; and, though he did not succeed in staying the hand of persecution by this address of almost unexampled grandeur, it yet remains " to speak forever for tlie courage of Latimer, and to speak something, too, for a prince that could respect the nobleness of the poor yeoman's son, who dared in such a cause to write to him as a man to a man. To have written at all in such a strain was as brave a step as was ever deUberately ventured. Like most brave acts, it did not go unrewarded; for IIcnr\' remained ever af- ter, however widely divided from him in opinion, yet his unshaken friend" (Froude, ii, 104). Perhaps it may not be out of place here to say that Henry VIII himself, however nobly he may have acted towards Latimer and the Reformers after 1530, was perhaps, in the main, in- cited to his friendly deeds towards Latimer by the posi- tion the latter had taken in 1527. Froude and most of the English historians forget, in their great endeavor to cleanse Henry Till from all sin, that, however greatly the Church of England has been l)cnefited by his work, his object was not reform in the Church, but the estab- lishment of a second papacy and his own enthronement as pope, and that he was only led to take this step when he found so many pliant tools to carry out his project of separation from his first wife, Catharine of Aragon. Of the commission appointed by the LTniversity of Cam- bridge to investigate the king's rights in this matter, Latimer had been a member, and had taken decided ground in favor of the king. This of itself was sufficient to secure the good offices of his royal master. Latimer's record of course, both before and after this event, clearly proves that he was not a pliant tool in the hands of the king, but actually believed Henry Till justified in his separation from Catharine.
Jlost prominent and influential at this time among the king's favorites, or the Anne Boleyn party, as they are sometimes termed, as the advocates of her cause and the justness of king Henr^-'s marriage with her, was lord Thomas Cromwell (q. v.; comp. also Froude, History of Enf/lnnd, ii, 109 sq.). By Cromwell's exertions. Latimer, in 1531, was presented with the benefice of West King- ston, in Wiltshire, where he preached the reformed doc- trines with such plainness and emphasis as to bring upon him a public accusation and citation before the liisliop of London, who had only been watching for an opportunity to punish him as a heretic. The citation was issued and served .January 10, 1532. Articles were drawn up, mainly extracts from his sermons, in which he was charged with speaking lightly of the worship of the saints, and with affirming that there was no mate- rial fire of a purgatorial description, and that, for his
own part, he would rather be in purgatory than in the Lollard's tower! He set ou: for London in the depth of winter, and under a severe fit of the stone, determined to defend the justness of his course. He was submitted by the different bishops to the closest cross-questionings, in the hope that he M'oidd commit himself. "They felt," says Froude (ii, 107), "that he was the most dan- gerous person to them in the kingdom, and thev labored with unusual patience to insure his conviction." Lati- mer, however, baffled his episcopal inquisitors with their own weapons, and when they dared to excommunicate and to imprison him, he dared to appeal to the king in the face of their formidable opposition, and was permit- ted to escape with a simple submission to the archbish- op, instead of an obligation to subscribe to a certain fist of articles. These latter were as follows : " That there is a purgatory to purge the souls of the dead after this life; that the souls in purgatory are holpen with the masses, prayers, and alms of the living: that the saints do pray as mediators now for us in heaven ; that they are to be honored ; that it is profitable for Christians to call upon the saints that they may pray for us unto God; that pilgrimages and oblations done to the sepulchres and relics of saints are meritorious; that they which have vowed perpetual chastity may not marrj', nor break their vow, without the dispensation of the pope ; that the keys of binding and loosing delivered to Peter do still remain with the bishops of Kome, his successors, al- though they live wickedly, and are by no means, nor at any time, committed to laymen; that men may merit at God's liand bj' fasting, prayer, and other works of piety ; that they which are forbidden of the bishop to preach, as suspected persons, ought to cease until they have purged themselves; that the fast Avhich is used in Lent, and other fasts prescribed by the canons, are to be observed; that God, in evcrj' one of the seven sacra- ments, giveth grace to a man rightly receiving the same; that consecrations, sanctifyings, and blessings, by custom received into the Church, are profitable; that it is laudable and profitable that the venerable images of the crucifix and other saints should be had in the Church as a remembrance, and to the honor and wor- ship of Jesus Christ and his saints ; that it is laudable and profitalile to deck and clothe those images, and to set np burning lights before them to the honor of said saints." Historians disagree as to the attitude of Lati- mer towards the bishops, who demanded that he should sign at least two of the articles, viz. the one respecting the observance of Lent, and that concerning the crucifix and the lawfulness of images in churches. Fox doubts that Latimer signed any ; (iilpin, in his memoir of Lat- imer, denies it outright ; Hook {Eccles. Biogr. vi, 5G2) says that the fact of Ids signing " is put beyond all ques- tion by the minutes of the Convocation, where it is recorded that in the month of March, 1532, Latimer appeared, and, kneeling down, craved forgiveness, ac- knowledging that he had erred in preaching against the aforesaid two articles." Froude, however, holds that Latimer signed "all es-ccpl two — one apparently on the power of the pope ; the other I am unable to conjecture." (Comp. Burnet, Hist, of the Jief. iii, 116, Latimer's Re- mains, p. 466.)