baptists, Socinians, or professors of the more advanced forms of opinion, could alone fall within the scope of punishments merely traditional.
Renard wrote that the tempers of men were never worse than at that moment. In the heat of the debate, on the 28th of April, Lord Thomas Grey was executed as a defiance to the liberal party. Gardiner persuaded the Queen, perhaps not without reason, that he was himself in danger of being arrested by Paget and Pembroke;[1] and an order was sent to the Lieutenant of the Tower that if the chancellor was brought thither under warrant of the council only, he was not to be received.[2]
On the other hand, twelve noblemen and gentlemen undertook to stand by Mary if she would arrest Paget and Pembroke. The chancellor, Sir Robert Rochester,
- ↑ Renard to Charles V., May 13: Rolls House MSS.
- ↑ Noailles.
qu'ilz entendoient l'hérésie estre extirpée et punie.' The chancellor informed Renard that, 'Although the Heresy Bill was lost, there were penalties of old standing against heretics which had still the form of law, and could be put in execution.' And, on the 3rd of May, the privy council directed the judges and the Queen's learned counsel to be called together, and their opinions demanded, 'what they think in law her Highness may do touching the cases of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, being already, by both the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, judged to be obstinate heretics, which matter is the rather to be consulted upon, for that the said Cranmer is already attainted.'—MS. Privy Council Register. The answer of the judges I have not found, but it must have been unfavourable to the intentions of the Court. Joan Bocher was burnt under the common law, for her opinions were condemned by all parties in the Church, and were looked upon in the same light as witchcraft, or any other profession definitely devilish. But it was difficult to treat as heresy, under the common law, a form of belief which had so recently been sanctioned by Act of Parliament.
