Dr. Burnet AGAINST Mr. Thevenot and Mr. Le Grand A LETTER TO Mr. THEVENOT Containing A CENSURE of Mr. Le Grand's HISTORY OF King Henry the Eighth's Divorce To which is Added A CENSURE of Mr. de Meaux's HISTORY OF THE Variations of the Protestant Churches Together with Some further Reflections on Mr. Le Grand Both Written By GILBERT BVRNET D. D. Licensed and Entred according to Order LONDON Printed for Iohn Starkey and Richard Chiswell MDCLXXXIX A LETTER TO Mr. THEVENOT Containing a Censure of Mr. Le Grand's History of K. Henry the Eighth's Divorce SIR INstead of offering you all those expressions of Respect which on many accounts are so justly due to you I shall satisfy my self at present with this one which is That I consider you as a Person of so much Probity and Sincerity that notwithstanding all the difference of Perswasion that is between you and me yet I can make an Appeal to you and refer my self to your Decision in the Contests that are like to be between Mr. le Grand and me in a Subject that has a great Relation to Matters of Religion Matters of Opinion and the Inferences and Speculations that arise out of Matters of Fact appear indeed differently to Men according to their various apprehensions of things While Matters of Fact have but one face and appear the same to all who desire to find out Truth And therefore since our Dispute is like to run wholly on Matters of Fact I know I run no hazard when I apply my self to you as an Arbiter While I was last at Paris I was so happy as to have the Honour of waiting sometimes on you and saw how just a Title you had to the Esteem and Admiration which is so universally paid you I had in my own particular all possible Reason to acknowledge the high Civilities that you put on me and among others the trouble that you put your self to in bringing Mr. le Grand and me to a Conference before your self and Mr. Auzout I confess I apprehended that I had a man to deal with from whom nothing was to be expected but fair dealing A Man that lived in the House of one that was no less Eminent for his Sublime Vertue than for those high Employments thro' which he has gone one that was much with that Learned and Worthy Gentleman Mr. Bulteau and that saw often the Famous Mr. Baluze whose Sincerity is equal to his Learning which is one of the greatest things of the Age and that valued himself on Mr. Thevenot's Friendship seemed to be such an Antagonist as one would have wisht for I will not put you on so uneasy a thing as the remembring the poor and inconsiderable things that were proposed in your hearing of which you were both so weary and for which you owned your selves so much ashamed not only to me when Mr. le Grand was gone but to a great many others You seemed fully fatisfied that all he proposed deserved not to be mentioned and that such as it was it was fully answer'd by me Mr. Auzout indeed desired me not to boast much of what had past with which it was very easy for me to comply for to tell you freely I did not find that my Antagonist was such a Person that a Victory over him afforded matter for a Triumph and in the account that I found it convenient to give of a part of our Conversation in my Remarks on Mr. Varillas I managed Mr. le Grand with all the Respect that he could have expected from me but if hereafter I touch him a little more sensibly he has none to blame for it but himself I can very easily bear all his Reflections on me p. 30. for my Ignorance and want of Capacity and in particular for my Ignorance of the History and Laws of England p. 2 and 3. This comes soon after a very high and undeserved Commendation that he had given of me and it seems he himself thought I did not deserve it since he changed his Stile so soon It is too common Artifice to pass upon me to give a Man a good Title to reproach another by introducing those Injuries with high Commendations But I must be contented with my small measure of Knowledge and the low degree of Capacity that belongs to me and I have the more Reason to bear with my own defects at present since I have to do with one of so moderate a Talent as Mr. le Grand shews himself to be I wish only that those who desire to be rightly informed of the famous Transaction now in Dispute will be at the pains to read Sander's History and mine and next to examine Mr. le Grand's History and then I am confident that they will conclude that there must be some Errour in the Printing of the Title Page in which there is mention made of a Defence of Sander's and a Refutation of my History for the bulk of his work does so agree with mine except in some places where he uses an Art for which I do not envy him that I am tempted to think that in Writing it he intended to make good his offer made in your hearing that he would furnish me with a vast number of Papers for the Confirmation of my Work. I have yet only seen his first part so I cannot imagine how he can justify Sanders having given him quite up in the whole thread of his History The whole Story of Anne Bullen and all the Branches of it are abandoned which yet was the chief thing aimed at by Sanders as being a nullity in Q. Elizabeth's Title and by consequence an encouragement to Rebellion The Decretal Bull is confessed the Behaviour of Sir Thomas More is not insisted on by our Author In short if one will examine about eighty Errours for which I have charged Sander's History in my Appendix he will find above seventy of my contradictions of Sanders confirmed by Mr. le Grand which will be easily made appear if this Work of his is judged of that importance as to deserve a more particular censure I say nothing of his manner of Writing for that will offer it self to every Reader who must needs find in him more of the Stile of one that pleads a Cause than of one that undertakes to relate Matters An earnestness in proving and an injuriousness of Stile are indecencies that are scarce to be forgiven to one that pretends to be an Historian And there is somewhat that is Sacred even in the Ashes of Crowned Heads that claims a Modesty of Stile So that even when they are censured softer words than Lies and Impostures ought to be sought for And the chief point in this whole Matter being whether the King's Cause ought not to have been judged rather in England and by his own Clergy than at Rome The supporting the Pope's pretensions in opposition to this as it agrees very ill with the Principles of the Gallican Church so it seems a little strange at this time in
which the Thunders of the Vatican are so little regarded at Versailles And when an Appeal from a Pope to a General Council is after so long an intermission again made use of in so critical a time It might have been expected that this Matter should have been handled with a little more decency at least unless this is one of the Artifices of a sort of Men whom Mr. Talon has mentioned more freely than I will do who perhaps intend to blast what Lewis the Great is doing by representing Henry the 8th in ill Colours But perhaps our Author is not a Man of so much Intriegue as to have such remote Speculations and this being his first Essay it is possible he thought that less application was necessary since he reckoned that he had to do with a Man of so small a Capacity as mine is I will at present only single out six of the Errours that he has committed which are a very small proportion as to their number since you will find a much longer List if I enter upon a more Crititical Enquiry into this History but as these are all of great consequence so I have limited my self to this number that I may not inlarge at present beyond those narrow bounds to which I restrain my self in a Paper of this Nature 1. He questions much the Contents of the Decretal Bull Pag. 89. 10 92. that Cardinal Campegio brought over and thinks that since it was only shewn to the King and Cardinal Wolsey no body can affirm what it was and if it was a Bull that determined the whole Matter he does not see how there could be any more occasion for the Legats and he fancies that upon a Bull the King would have proceeded to a second Marriage without giving himself any further trouble as Lewis the 12th had done If Mr. le Grand had given himself the trouble to have Read the Decretal Bull which I have Published Collect. 2. lib. Num. 10. he would have seen that all this Discourse was to no purpose The Bull was drawn in England and sent to Rome and tho' some few Clauses were altered yet by all the Letters that passed between Rome and England it appears that it was upon the Matter the same Bull that was sent over by Campegio Now the Bull declared indeed the justice of the King's Pretensions and empowered the Cardinal Legates to examine the Truth of these Pretensions and upon the Proofs of that it Authorized them to Judge the Cause so that tho' the Pope did by this Decretal give a definitive Sentence in case the Pretensions were found to be true yet here was still matter left for the Legates to proceed upon To wit whether the King had himself desired the Marriage whether there was any danger of War at that time between England and Spain whether the Dispensation was not annulled by the Protestation the King had made when he came of age against the Marriage and whether those Princes or any of them upon whose account the Dispensation was granted dyed before the Marriage took effect And till all these things were found true the Bull dissolving the Marriage that was granted upon that supposition could have no effect So that all his Reasoning upon this matter is in the Air. P. 85. But since I have named Cardinal Campegio I acknowledge that Mr. le Grand seems to be in the right as to his Son whom I had called a Bastard but he proves him Legitimate from Sigonius's Life of Campegio which I confess I never saw and Sigonius is so good an Author that I acquiesce in his Authority But Mr. le Grand ought to have taken notice that I cite an Author for what I say of that Bastard Pelerin Iuglese which was a Discourse writ by Sir William Thomas a Clerk of the Council at that time and it seems he took Cardinal Campegio's Son for his Bastard So if Mr. le Grand had pleased to have looked to the English Edition he might have rectified this Errour with less acrimony of Stile since it is no forgery of mine and indeed this is the only omission that seems to be well grounded of all those for which he accuses me 2. Mr. le Grand makes much ado to shake the credit of the Decision made by the Sorbon P. 179. to 184. in Favours of King Henry tho' after all the Printing the Decision it self the next year and its passing for genuine no Man having in that Age pretended that it was a Forgery is so concluding a Proof for it that no Insinuation to the contrary can be received Neither Cardinal Pool who was at Paris when it past nor any other Writer of the Roman Communion accused the King of an Imposture in this Matter And as the Bishop of Tarbe's continuing to advance the King's Interests in the Court of Rome when he was promoted to be a Cardinal and his not disowning the share that King Henry laid on him in publick before the Legates of his Scruples concerning his Marriage is an evident confirmation of it notwithstanding all our Author's suggestions to the contrary So the Sorbonnes never disavowing this matter p. 135. is an evident proof that the Judgment was truely given by them and all the presumptions that our Author offers to the contrary amount to no more but that great opposition was made and that Beda behaved himself very factiously in it It is also to be considered that as the whole Gallican Church was highly dissatisfied with Francis the 1st for his having destroyed their Liberties by the Concordat so the University of Paris was too much concerned in that matter which stuck still deep with them not to be full of Malecontents and perhaps this might have contributed to make the opposition the greater since the King supported King Henry's Concerns with much Zeal yet after all our Author owns that in the Scrutiny there were fifty three for the Divorce and only forty two against it and five were for the referring it to the Pope so here was enough for justifying the Judgment as it is Printed which bears only that the greater number gave it for the Divorce and against the lawfulness of the Marriage And this justifies likewise those words of the first President 's Letter that it would rather prejudice than advance the King's Affair since the whole Bodies in other Universities had judged for the King whereas it was carried only by a plurality of Voices in the Sorbonne 3. Mr. le Grand pretends to give an Abstract of the Reasons that were brought against the Marriage of King Henry Page 189. to p. 2â—â— and yet he does not mention that which was the strength of the Cause which was that according to the main hinge upon which all the Decisions in the Roman Church turn Scripture expounded by Tradition is that by which all Controversies ought to be decided So here they brought a Series
the King's Matter but after all our Author cannot enough aggravate Crammer's taking the Oath of Obedience to the Pope at his Consecration with the Protestation that limited it with several restrictions Which he also reports upon the credit of some spiteful Authors quite contrary to what appears upon Record For he made the Protestation to be twice Read at the Altar when he was Consecrated So it is plain he had no mind to equivocate for he owned publickly all that he did And Protestations renouncing all Clauses that were in Bulls contrary to the King's Prerogative having been ordinarily made by Bishops it seems the Canonists who were accustomed to double dealing prevailed so far on Cranmer as to make him take the method of Swearing the Oath and then limiting it by a Protestation made at the same time In which it is plain that if he committed an Errour it was rather a mistake in his Judgment than a want of Sincerity 6. Mr. le Grand saies that the King pardoned More and Fisher the business of the Maid of Kent p. 280. to 282. and tho' he owns that More calls her in a Letter the silly Nun yet he takes no notice of that long Letter of Mores which I published among the Instruments of my second Volume in which he treats that matter as one of the horridest Impostures that ever was and for which Fisher tho' our Author denies it was Condemn'd for concealing Treason To this he adds that the Chancellor having asked Fisher and More what they thought of the Acts of the last Parliament they answered nothing but said that being cut off from all Civil Society they thought of nothing but our Saviour's Passion and this cost them their life This is such a corrupting of History that I forbear to give it its true name And indeed a prevarication in this matter is the less excusable because our Author might have found advantage enough by representing the matter truly as I had done from the Records They were Condemn'd first in a Premunire that imports loss of Estate and perpetual Imprisonment for refusing to swear the Oath for the Succession by the King's Marriage Enacted by Parliament And after that they were prosecuted for having spoken against the King's Supremacy and there is one Incident in More 's Process which perhaps would be thought enough at present for Condemning a Man as Guilty of High Treason for he said that as the Parliament could make a King so it could likewise Depose him But I limited my self to six Heads and I will not go beyond them The abundance of Matter that is before me makes it uneasie for me to pass over many important things which our Author has left out of his History tho' they are in that Collection of Letters published by Camusat and which I never saw till he himself not only shewed it me but did me the Honour to present it to me He does not tell us that the Pope promised to Cardinal de Tournon Melanges Hist. 1532. folio 8. M. that he would do all that was in his Power for the King of England and that the thing should be done tho' he must take such a Method in the point of Form as not to seem too partial to him And that the Cardinal thought he was sure of the Pope in that Matter The same Cardinal writes the 17 of Aug. 1533. that tho' the Cardinals of the Imperial Faction forced the Pope to what he had done fol. 9. N. yet if the King of England would save his Honour he would with all his Heart do what he desired and did not doubt but he should propose Expedients for this at the Interview that was to be at Marseilles fol. 19. O. By another Letter it appears that Francis the First owned to the English Ambassadours that the Pope had said to himself that he knew the King's Cause was just and he only stood upon a Procuration For the King being cited to appear at Rome in Person or by Proxy the King would take no notice of this fol. 177. and so Karne was sent over Excusator to excuse the King's Appearance But it appears by that Collection that he was sent over in the Name of the Nation and not in the King's Name So the King 's refusing to appear being thought a great Contempt the Pope promised to grant the Divorce if the King would so far acknowledge his Authority as to appear at Rome by a Proxy upon his Summons And in this Francis the First thought the King was in the right and he approved of his Marriage so far that he ordered his Ambassadour to Christen the Child in his Name fol. 140. P Q R. fol. 174 175 176 177. if it proved a Son. The French Ambassadour at Rome did also in many Letters to the Court of France write that the Pope would do all that was desired for the King of England and much more if he durst but he was so hard pressed by the Imperialists that against God and Reason and even against the Opinion of many of the Imperialists themselves he was forced to do whatsoever the Cardinal Dosme asked of him And that they wanted much the Cardinal Grandmont who was Bishop of Tarbes for no man durst speak Truth to the Pope It is true the Ambassadour who was then the Bishop of Auxerre says that he expected no good of the Pope and that all was but dissimulation Yet to shew that crafty Ambassadours change their Stile so that it is hard to know how much one ought to trust to their Letters the same day in which he had writ the former Letter to the Legate that was in France he wrote another to the Great Master in which he tells him that the Pope had said that the King of England 's Matter had been now four years in his hands and was not yet touched by him and that if he could do as he would it should be as they all would And he writes that he spoke this in such a manner to him that he believes he said what he thought fol. 177. S. These Letters bear all Date the 7th of February 1532. But the 13th of Iuly thereafter he writes that the Pope said to him that he resolved to put off the Business to a good time and he saw clearly what he meant by a good time and adds that if the thing had been then judged the Old and Learned Cardinals would have been for the King of England but the Imperialists were so much the stronger Party that it would have been carried clear against them And tho' Mr. le Grand speaks doubtfully of that Critical Matter that a Currier came from England within a day or two after the Sentence was given and passes over the haste in which it was given as a thing of which he knew nothing yet in that Collection there is a Letter writ from Lyons by Pompone Trivulce fol. 177. T. Cardinal Trivulce's Brother Dated
of Councils Provincial and General of many Popes of all the chief Fathers both Greek and Latine particularly of the four great Fathers of the Latine Church whereas on the other side there was not one Father nor Doctor alledged And tho' Mr. le Grand pretends only that the Canons of some Provincial Councils against Incontinence and some passages out of Tertullian S. Basil and S. Ierome upon Virginity and against second Marriages were alledged Here I am sure the Reader will censure him for the want of somewhat that is more important to an Honest Man than great Capacity For the Canons of those Councils and Passages of those Fathers speak expresly of the degrees of Marriage forbid in the Book of Leviticus And tho' he names only three Popes whose Letters were cited to the same purpose he passes over the chief of them with Relation to England Gregory the Great in whose time the Saxons were Converted to the Christian Faith who gave an express Instruction to Austin the Monk to annul all Marriages with a Brother's Wife And this being a Rule setled in England when the Christian Religion was received in it it was consider'd as one of the chief supports of the King's Cause and therefore if Mr. le Grand had desired to have the Reputation of a sincere Writer he ought not to have passed it over nor ought he to have passed over all that was said against the Pope's Dispensing even with the Laws of the Church and much less with the Laws of God Nor that other Branch of the King's Plea that the Church of England according to the Council of Nice ought to judge this Matter and that it did not belong to the Pope If Mr. le Grand is a true Son of the Gallican Church he cannot disown those Principles and at least if he would be esteemed a sincere Historian he ought not to have passed them in silence But if he was defective in his account of the King's Plea he adds as much of his own to the Queens For he has pickt up a great many instances in History that were never mentioned in the Books to of that time and yet they all amount to no more but shew that these Rules of the degrees of Marriage were not at all times observed with the same exactness But the Church is Govern'd by Rules and not by Examples And all that he saies of the Law in Deuteronomy appointing the Brother to Marry his Sister-in-Law when his Brother dyed without Children had been ever looked on in the Christian Church as an exception from the general Law that belonged only to the Iewish Nation with relation to their Succession which being taken away under the Christian Religion the Laws in Leviticus which have been ever considered in the Church as Moral Laws must now take place Universally In short if any man will be at the pains to compare the Books that were Written upon this matter and the Accounts that are given of them by Mr. le Grand and by my self he will soon see which of us have Writ with the greatest sincerity and I will not envy Mr. le Grand's Opinion of his own Capacity so long as an unbiassed sincerity is acknowledged to belong to me 4. p. 222. Mr. le Grand tells us that the Parliament abolished the Oath which the Bishops were bound to sware to the Pope at their Consecration and drew a new one which they should make to the King. Here he gives me just Reason to say severer things than he may be willing to hear for in the Parliament the two Oaths that the Bishops swore both to the Pope and to the King were Read and it appearing that they contradicted one another they being both of the nature of an Oath of Homage which can only be made to one Superiour all that the Parliament did was to Repeal the Oath to the Pope and to let the other to the King remain in its full force I have given an undeniable Instance that the Oath to the King was in all former times made by the Bishops in a Record which I put at the head of my Collection of Instruments and which Mr. le Grand may have seen for tho' these Instruments have not yet appeared in the French Translation yet Mr. Bulteau has my Work in English where all these Records are In that Cardinal Adrian not only renounces all Clauses in his Bull that were contrary to the King's Prerogative or to the Laws of England but swears fidelity to the King in the same terms in which our Kings have continued ever since to have Homage Sworn to them by their Bishops And the Oath to the Pope as it was a Novelty not known before the twelfth Century so it contains in it so many wide and indefinite Clauses that it seems very hard to reconcile the taking of it either with the Doctrines of the Gallican Churches or with that Subjection which all Bishops owe their Lawful Prince since it is plain that is an Oath of Homage to the Pope 5. Mr. le Grand sets himself with no small force p. 244. to 257. tho' not with equal success to give Cranmer the worst Character that he could make for him He accuses me for endeavouring to make him pass for a Gentleman but tho' I knew he was one yet I said not a word of it for I thought that was too inconsiderable a thing to have a place among the Honours that belong to the Memory of that Great Man. He cannot believe that he was in Germany when by Warham's Death he was named to the Arch-Bishoprick of Canterbury And thinks that he could not have stayed seven weeks there after he had the News of his intended Promotion since he was present at the King's Marriage with A. Bolen Nor can he allow my saying that the thing was slowly set forward since there passed but three Months between September and Ianuary in which he was preconised at Rome Nor can he believe the Provincial Synod of Canterbury judged the matter of the King's Marriage Here are Errours enough for Mr. Varillas himself In Cranmer's Printed Tryal he appeals to his Judges who were all Witnesses of that Matter that he had unwillingly accepted of that See and that he had delayed his return out of Germany after he had the News of the King's Intentions for seven Weeks and this was passed over by the Bishops that judged him without any answer which was a plain acknowledgment of the Truth of it 2. There were twelve Weeks between Warham's Death that fell out the 23 of August and the King's Marriage on the 14th of November So allowing two weeks for the Currier to go to him ther is room enough for his seven weeks delay But our Author to turn five Months into three shuts out both September and Ianuary out of the account tho' both ought to be included And the Sentence of Divorce bears expresly that both the Provincial Synods of England had judged