power of the King's enemies from the parts beyond the sea.'[1]
In the May weather of 1534, two Middlesex clergy, 'walking to and fro in the cloyster garden at Sion, were there overheard compassing sedition and rebellion.' John Hale, an eager, tumultuous person, was prompting his brother priest, Robert Feron, with matter for a pamphlet, which Feron was to write against the King.[2] 'Syth the realm of England was first a realm,' said Hale, 'was there never in it so great a robber and piller of the commonwealth read of nor heard of as is our King.… He is the most cruellest capital heretic, defacer and treader under foot of Christ and of his Church, continually applying and minding to extinct the same; whose death, I beseech God, may be like to the death of the most wicked John, sometime King of this realm, or rather to be called a great tyrant than a King; and that his death may be not much unlike to the end of that manqueller Richard, sometime usurper of this imperial realm. And if thou wilt deeply look upon his life, thou shalt find it more foul and more stinking than a sow wallowing and defiling herself in any filthy place.'
These words were spoken in English; Feron translated them into Latin, and wrote them down. Hale then continued: 'Until the King and the rulers of this realm be plucked by the pates, and brought, as we say,
