sacrament. In the worst temper of the Inquisition they revived the crippled functions of the spiritual courts: they began to inquire again into private conduct—who went seldom to church—who refused to receive holy bread or holy water who were frequent readers of the Bible, 'with a great many other such branches.'[1] 'They so sped with their branches' that in a fortnight they had indicted five hundred persons in London alone. In their imprudent fanaticism they forgot all necessary discretion. There was not a man of note or reputation in the City who had so much as spoken a word against Rome, but was under suspicion, or under actual arrest. Latimer and Shaxton were imprisoned, and driven to resign their bishoprics.[2] Where witnesses were not to be found, Hall tells us significantly, 'that certain of the clergy would procure some, or else they were slandered.' The fury which had been pent up for years, revenge for lost powers and privileges, for humiliations and sufferings, remorse of conscience reproaching them for their perjury in abjuring the Pope, whom they still reverenced, and to whose feet they longed to return, poured out from the reactionary churchmen in a concentrated lava stream of malignity.
- ↑ Hall's Chronicle, p. 828. Hall is a good evidence on this point. He was then a middle-aged man, resident in London, with clear eyes and a shrewd, clear head, and was relating not what others told him, but what he actually saw.
- ↑ In Latimer's case, against Henry's will, or without his knowledge. Cromwell, either himself deceived or desiring to smooth the storm, told Latimer that the King advised his resignation; 'which his Majesty after wards denied, and pitied his condition.'—State Papers, vol. i. p. 849.
