who had flinched from the stake when Bilney was burnt, Shaxton, who subsequently relapsed under Mary, and became himself a Romanist persecutor, was now strutting in his new authority, and punishing, suspending, and inhibiting in behalf of Protestant doctrines which were not yet tolerated by the law.[1] Barlow had been openly preaching that purgatory was a delusion; that a layman might be a bishop; that where two or three, it might be, 'cobblers or weavers,' 'were in company in the name of God, there was the Church of God.'[2] Such ill-judged precipitancy was of darker omen to the Reformation than Papal excommunications or Imperial menaces, and would soon be dearly paid for in fresh martyr-fires. Latimer, too, notwithstanding his clear perception and gallant heart, looked with bitterness on the confiscation of establishments which his mind had pictured to him as garrisoned with a Reforming army, as nurseries of apostles of the truth. Like most fiery-natured men, he was ill-pleased to see the stream flowing in a channel other than that which he had marked for it; and the state of his feeling, and the state of the English world, with all its confused imaginings, in these months, is described with some distinctness in a letter written by a London curate to the Mayor of Plymouth, on the 13th of March, 1535–6, while the bill for the suppression of the abbeys was in progress through Parliament.
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REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. 10.
