great difficulty, on the representation of the bishops that the translation was faulty, and on their undertaking themselves to supply the place of it with a corrected version. But in obtaining the order, they supposed themselves to have gained a victory; and their triumph was celebrated in St Paul's Churchyard with an auto da fé, over which the Bishop of London consented to preside; when such New Testaments as the diligence of the apparitors could discover, were solemnly burned.
From occupation such as this a not unwholesome distraction was furnished by the intimation of the premunire; and that it might produce its due effect, it was accompanied with the further information that the clergy of the province of Canterbury would receive their pardon only upon payment of a hundred thousand pounds—a very considerable fine, amounting to more than a million of our money. Eighteen thousand pounds was required simultaneously from the province of York; and the whole sum was to be paid in instalments spread over a period of five years.[1] The demand was serious, but the clergy had no alternative but to submit or to risk the chances of the law; and feeling that, with the people so unfavourably disposed towards them, they had no
- ↑ 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 15.
lated, and also that in them were prologues and prefaces that sounded unto heresy, and railed against the bishops uncharitably. Wherefore all such books were prohibited, and commandment given by the King to the bishops, that they, calling to them the best learned men of the Universities, should cause a new translation to be made, so that the people should not be ignorant of the law of God.—Hall, p. 771. And see Warham's Register for the years 1529–1531. MS. Lambeth.
