Another source of information as to the opinions held by the now dominant party is in the articles presented against those who were prosecuted and in many cases put to death. The statements drawn up by Convocation in 1554 with a view to the trial of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer have already been quoted. To these may be added a few representative instances from the indictments of less famous prisoners.
The interrogatories administered by Bishop Bonner to William Pigot and John Laurence in February, 1555, included the question—
“Whether do you think and steadfastly believe that it is a Catholic, faithful, Christian, and true doctrine to teach, preach, and say that in the Sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine there is without any substance of bread and wine there remaining by the omnipotent power of Almighty God and His holy word really, truly, and in very deed the true and natural body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, the self-same in substance, though not in outward form and appearance, which was born of the Virgin Mary and suffered on the cross.”
The articles of Bishop Bonner against John Taylor, or Cardmaker, in May, 1555, contained statements that—
“The belief of the Catholic Church is that in having the body and blood of Christ really and truly contained in the Sacrament of the altar is to have by the omnipotent power of Almighty God the body and blood of Christ there invisibly and really present under the said Sacrament, and not to make thereby a new God, or a new Christ, or a new body of Christ.… The body of Christ is visibly and truly ascended into heaven, and there is, in the visible form of His humanity; and yet the same body in substance is invisibly and truly contained in the said Sacrament of the altar.… Christ at His Last Supper, taking bread into His hands, blessing it, breaking it, giving it to His Apostles, and saying, ‘Take, eat, this is My body,’ did institute a Sacrament there, willing that His body really and truly should be contained in the said Sacrament, no substance of bread and wine there remaining, but only the accidents thereof.”
In the articles objected by Bishop Bonner against John Warne in the same month, May, 1555, were the following accusations:—
“Thou … hast believed, and dost believe, firmly and steadfastly, that in the Sacrament commonly called the Sacrament of the altar there is not the very true and natural body of our Saviour Christ in substance under the forms of bread and wine.… Thou hast believed, and dost believe, that after the words of consecration spoken by the priest there is not, as the Church of England doth believe and teach, the body of Christ, but that there doth only remain the substance of material bread as it is before the consecration, and that the said bread is in no wise altered or changed.… Thou hast said and dost believe that, if the Catholic Church do believe and teach that there is in the Mass now used in England, and in other places in Christendom, a sacrifice wherein there is a Sacrament containing the body and blood of Christ really and truly, then that belief and faith of the Church is naught and against God’s truth and the Scripture.… Thou didst both then and also before believe no otherwise than at this present thou dost believe, that is to say, that in the Sacrament of the altar there is neither the very true body or blood of Christ nor any other substance but the substance of material bread and wine; and to receive the said material bread and wine, and to break it and to distribute it among the people only is the true receiving of Christ’s body, and no otherwise, so that thy faith and belief is that in the said Sacrament there is no substance of Christ’s material body and blood, but all the thing that is there is material bread and the receiving thereof as afore, and that the substance of the natural and true body of Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, is only in heaven and not in the Sacrament of the altar.”
The indictments against William Wolsey and Robert Pigot presented by Fuller, the Chancellor of Ely, in May, 1555, included the following charges:—
“You have said, affirmed, and holden opinions many times and in divers companies in 1553, 1554, and 1555 that the natural body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ is not really present in the Sacrament of the altar (which he called an idol).… He obstinately and persistently kept to his perverse opinion, publicly and shamelessly saying in English words, The Sacrament of the altar is an idol; and the natural body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ is not really present in the said Sacrament.… You said you could not away with processions, with bearing and following of the cross nor with the Sacrament of the altar, which you cannot believe nor will do any reverence or worship to it.… You will not believe the real presence after consecration.”
In January, 1556, seven persons, Thomas Whittle, priest, Bartlet Green, gentleman, John Tudson, artificer, John Went, artificer, Thomas Browne, Isabel Foster, wife, Joan Warne or Lashford, maid, were prosecuted under one indictment by Bishop Bonner. The indictment included the charge—
“Thou, … misliking and not allowing the sacrifice of the Mass and Sacrament of the altar, hast both refused to come to thy parish church to hear Mass and to receive the said Sacrament, and hast also expressly said that in the said Sacrament of the altar there is not the very body and blood of our Saviour Christ really, substantially, and truly, but hast affirmed expressly that the Mass is idolatry and abomination, and that in the Sacrament of the altar there is none other substance but only material bread and material wine, which are tokens of Christ’s body and blood only, and that the substance of Christ’s body and blood is in no wise in the said Sacrament of the altar.”
The articles administered in July, 1556, to Joan Waste by Bayne, the Bishop of Lichfield, included:—
“She did hold the Sacrament of the altar to be but only a memory or representation of Christ’s body, and material bread and wine, but not His natural body, unless it were received. And that it ought not to be reserved from time to time over the altar, but immediately to be received.… She did hold, in the receiving of the Sacrament, she did not receive the same body that was born of the Virgin Mary and suffered upon the cross for our redemption.… She did hold that Christ at His Last Supper did not bless the bread that He had then in His hands but was blessed Himself; and by the virtue of the words of consecration the substance of the bread and wine is not converted and turned into the substance of the body and blood of Christ.”
With the indictments in prosecutions may be compared the recantation made by Sir John Cheke in 1556. In the declaration which he himself drew up he stated:—
“I do profess and protest that, whatsoever mine opinion of the Blessed Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, and of the sense of Christ’s words spoken of the same, hath been heretofore, I do now … believe firmly the real presence of Christ’s very body and blood in the Sacrament, and none other substance there remaining, moved thereunto by invincible reasons of the Catholic doctors against the Arians of Christ’s very true and natural being in us, and also by the consent of Christ’s Catholic Church.”
This declaration being thought insufficient, a longer form of recantation was written by Cardinal Pole and made by Sir John Cheke before the court. In this longer form Sir John Cheke spoke of his former “arrogant blindness” and “great madness” and “pernicious sentence”; of his consent to “confess and retract” what he had previously thought; and of his willingness “for an assured token that I say with my mouth that which I think with my heart,” since he had “fallen into the error which Berengarius fell into,” to “make the self-same confession that he did”. Cheke then recited the declaration made by Berengar at the Council of Rome in 1059, including the statement that “the real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ” “are held and broken by the hands of the priests, and are crushed by the teeth of the faithful”.
It is to be noticed that in the formal statements of belief and in the articles of indictment the phrases “natural body” and “material body” of Christ occur in descriptions of the body which is present in the Eucharist; and that the recantation imposed on Sir John Cheke contained the assertion that the body of Christ is “broken” in the Sacrament. The phrases “natural body” and “material body” were probably used, like the phrase “natural body” in some of the formularies of foreign Reformers, to emphasise that the body in the Eucharist is the same body as that which was born of the Virgin and suffered on the cross; the expression that the body of Christ is “broken” to emphasise that the consecrated Sacrament is the body. As in the Berengarian controversy, the influence of panic produced by denials of what was held dear may have had much to do with the choice of language which would not be congenial to the more careful advocates of Transubstantiation. That the phraseology “natural body” and “material body” begins after the widespread denials of Transubstantiation and of the Real Presence in the reign of Edward VI., and that the phrase declaring the body of Christ to be “broken” should have been revived at this particular time after being laid aside for centuries, tends to indicate that such an influence was at work. But this is not the whole explanation of the use of such language. That the body of Christ was said to be “broken” denotes much forgetfulness of the philosophic teaching by the aid of which the doctrine of Transubstantiation was developed in the thirteenth century; and the application of the words “natural” and “material” to the body of our Lord in its present state shows that the change in the condition of His body at the resurrection, which had been much emphasised in the middle ages, was but little remembered. The use of the phrase “natural body” by Gardiner in a passage where he is at great pains to maintain the spiritual character of the presence of Christ’s body in the Sacrament is a sign that it does not necessarily imply a carnal view of the presence on the part of those who used it; at the same time, it is a phrase which would readily lend itself to such a view.