people, he communicated through the lay authorities, not choosing to trust himself on this occasion to the clergy. The magistrates at the quarter sessions were directed 'to declare to the people the treasons committed by the late Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas More; who thereby, and by divers secret practices, of their malicious minds intended to seminate, engender, and breed a most mischievous and seditious opinion, not only to their own confusion, but also of divers others, who have lately suffered execution according to their demerits.'[1] To Francis, Cromwell instructed Gardiner, who was ambassador in Paris, to reply very haughtily. The English Government, he said, had acted on clear proof of treason; treason so manifest, and tending so clearly to the total destruction of the commonwealth of the realm, that the condemned persons 'were well worthy, if they had a thousand lives, to have suffered ten times a more terrible death and execution than any of them did suffer.' The laws which the King had made were 'not without substantial grounds;' but had been passed 'by great and mature advice, counsel, and deliberation of the whole policy of the realm, and' were 'indeed no new laws, but of great antiquity, now renovate and renewed in respect to the common weal of the same realm.'
With respect to the letter of the King of France, Gardiner was to say, it was 'not a little to his High-
- ↑ Strype's Memor. Eccles., vol. 1., Appendix, p. 211. These words are curious as directly attributing the conduct of the monks to the influence of More and Fisher.
