The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 15
SECT. XV.
WEre the Histories of Popish Prelates worthy to be joyned to those of Kings and Princes, wee might fill up a large Tract with Gods judgements powred upon them: For as most of them have been given up to lust and crapulositie, so have many of them been bitter enemies of the truth, and stingie persecutors. We have seen the fall of the Cardinall of Guise, and all ages have cause to admire the exemplary judgements of God powred out upon that bastard-slip, Stephen Gardner, Bishop of Winchester, in the very instant of his plauditees and caresses for the vivicombury of reverend Latimer, and learned Ridley. But I shall content my selfe to have abstracted, as a taste for the rest, the notorious punishments inflicted by a higher hand upon two Arch-Prelates, the one of England, the other of Scotland: Thomas Arundell Arch-bishop of Canterbury, having been the successefull traytor, by the help of his reverend fellow-Bishops, to establish Henry the 4th in the Throne of R. the second his liege Lord, and Cousin-German, pressed the new King (whose broken title needed his Prelates supportment) to use his temporall sword for the destroying the disciples of John Wicklesse, whose numbers were so increased at that time, as they even filled the kingdome; the King assents, and having by their mercilesse instigation shed the bloud of Gods Saints, he raigned neither long nor happily: H. 5. a brave and martiall Prince, his son, succeeding him, the Protestants began to meet more publikely, and to professe the truth more openly then before; the Archbishop thereupon renews his former suit to the son he had before pressed with successe upon the father, and prevailed. In particular, he first aimed at the destruction of Sir John de Old Castle, Knight, commonly called the Lord Cobham, who had most affronted him. This noble Gentleman was extracted from an ancient Family of Wales, where he had large possessions, and much alliance, by whose means he after lay long-hidden there, notwithstanding all the search his bloudy enemies made after him: he had issue by Katherine, daughter of Richard ap Yevan his first wife, John, who died before himself, and Henry de Old Castle, who survived him, and to whom King Henry the sixth, in the 7th yeare of his raign, restored divers Mannors and Lands which had been entailed upon him; he married to his last wife, Joan, the sole daughter and heire of Sir John de la Pole, Knight, whom he had begotten upon the sole daughter and heire of the Lord Cobham of Kent, which Joan had been first married to Sir Robert de Hemenhale a Suffolk Knight, and was secondly the wife of Sir Reginald de Braybroke, Knight, by whom shee had onelyonly issue that survived her; the said Sir John de Old Castle her third husband, in her right enjoyed the Castle of Couling in Kent, and many other large and great possessions; and by the marriage of her also he was neerly allied to the Duke of Suffolk, the Earl of Devonshire, and many other great Peers of the Realme at that time, and did doubtlesse enjoy the stile and title of Baron Cobham, as is infallibly proved by severall Writs of Summons sent unto him, being all entred upon Record in the Close Rolls, by which he was summoned to assist in the House of Peers in Parliament by that name, in the time of H. 4. and H. 5. All which I have thought fit to transmit to posterity touching this noble martyr, being no where to be found in any publike story, not onelyonly to shew how many supportments he had, besides the favour of King Henry himself, to have retarded the Clergie from questioning him, but also, how easily he was destroyed by the bloudy Prelates of those endarkened times, when the Soveraign had but permitted them the use of his power to ancillate to their cruell resolutions; of which impotent act of the Kings, saith Archbishop Parker himselfe, Rex virum clarum sibi que familiarissimum Episcoporum potestati, & carnificinae permisit, who yet overlived that excarnificating Arch-Prelate two yeares at the least: For the Archbishop having murthered divers godly martyrs in H. 4. time, and been a great stickler in State-affaires, when long before he procured himself to be made Lord Chancellor of England; and lastly, in a Synod held by himself at Rochester, having forbad the reading of the Scriptures in English, and limited Preachers under a heavie censure what they should treat upon in the Pulpit, was soon cut short himself by the immediate hand of God, after he had condemned that warlike Gentleman, Sir John de Old Castle, Lord Cobham, before he could see him executed, his tongue being so benummed and swoln, that he could neither swallow nor speak, as Thomas Gascon relates in his Theologicall Dictionary, for a few dayes before his death, it being, faith another, the just judgement of God upon him (and may be a faire warning to all other wicked Popish Prelates) that as he had muzled up the mouths of Preachers, and kept the Scriptures from the knowledge of the people being their spirituall food; so he should neither be able to speak nor to swallow from that very minute this judgement fell first upon him, but died within a few dayes after in great torment and extremity, by a languishing silence and famishment. The last example is of later dayes, and concernes the admirable punishment of David Beton, Archbishop of St. Andrews in Scotland, being also a member of the purpurated Conclave at Rome, he had continued divers yeares an inveterate enemy of the Gospel in that Kingdome, under James the fifth, and after his death taking advantage of the infancy and pupillary age of the Princesse Mary, the hereditary Queen of that Realme, he thought it a work worthy of himself to double-die his Cardinall robes in the bloud of the Saints; and therefore, to make a sull and cleare way for that his sanguinary project, he forged a Will of the deceased King, establishing himself chief Regent there during the young Ladies incapability to govern; from which, upon the discovery of his false play, he being removed, and a while committed to safe custody, he was no sooner delivered, but he presently enterprised to raise a new and fatall war between England and Scotland, and to root out the professors of the truth, by a violent and bloudy persecution. Amongst others, cited and imprisoned, or exiled in the yeare 1545. he seized on George Wischart, a very eloquent and learned Preacher, who by the Latine Writers of that age, is surnamed Sophocardius, and contrary to their own Popish Canons, adjudged him to present death himself, (which is never done, except in the merciless Inquisition of Spain, by those bloudy Wolves themselves, but by delivering the martyrs into the power of the lay-Magistrate) and in the Court before his Castle of St. Andrews, caused the same to be executed, the said George being first strangled, and his body afterwards burnt to ashes, the Cardinall in the mean time had a chamber prepared for him, with Carpets and Cushions on the windows, out of which to be a triumphant spectator of this godly mans murther, from which he departed not more delighted then (as he himself thought) secured, beginning to fortifie his said Castle against all assaults: But Gods judgement from eternity awarded against him for this latter as well as his former cruelties exercised upon his faithfull servants, slept not; for within a few weeks after, the Cardinall having falsified his promise to the Lord Norman Lesle, son of the Earle of Rothsey, a devout Romanist, he upon the thirteenth day of May, the same yeare, with some fourteen resolute Gentlemen in his company, entred the same Castle of St. Andrewes, where the Cardinall lay; and having first assured himself of the command within, and the gates without, he executed that bloudy Prelate in his bed, without law or justice, who had but a little before, most unjustly condemned and murthered the aforesaid George Wischart; and willing to expose the dead carcasse of that purpurated persecutor, as it were, all weltered and besmeared with bloud to the view of the people, who abhorred his cruelties, and rejoyced at his fall; they casually and contingently laid it along to be seen of all men upon that very window out of which a little before, leaning at his ease upon rich Cushions, he had proudly beheld the butchering of that godly martyr. The Cardinals end, 'tis likely, had neither been so sudden nor so shamefull, had he followed the wholsome counsell and seasonable advice of John Viniram a learned Priest and moderate Papist, who by his command preaching before him and divers others of the Romish Clergie then assembled together, for the condemnation of that godly martyr, George Wischart, told them plainly, That nothing did more encrease the number of Heretiques, then their own stupid ignorance and wicked lives; and that there was no other sword to be used for their extirpation then that of Gods Word, by which they were to be tryed and convinced, because every error which might properly and truly be called an Heresie, was directly and flatly against the same written Word.