before Cromwell with an entreaty to be excused the submission. For answer to their petition they were sent to the Tower, where they were soon after joined by Father Reynolds, one of the recalcitrant monks of Sion. These four were brought on the 26th of April before a committee of the privy council, of which Cromwell was one. The Act of Supremacy was laid before them, and they were required to signify their acceptance of it. Wednesday,
April 28.They refused, and two days after Wednesday, they were brought to trial before a special commission. They pleaded all 'not guilty.' They had of course broken the Act; but they would not acknowledge that guilt could be involved in disobedience to a law which was itself unlawful. Their words in the Tower to the privy council formed the matter of the charge against them. It appears from the record that on their examination, 'they, treacherously machinating and desiring to deprive the King our sovereign lord of his title of supreme Head of the Church of England, did openly declare, and say, the King our sovereign lord is not supreme Head on earth of the Church of England.'[1]
- ↑ Baga De Secretis; Appendix II. to the Third Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records.