a man. To have written at all in such a strain was as brave a step as was ever deliberately ventured. Like most brave acts, it did not go unrewarded; for Henry remained ever after, however widely divided from him in opinion, his unshaken friend.
In 1531, the King gave him the living of West Kingston, in Wiltshire, where for a time he now retired. Yet it was but a partial rest. He had a special license as a preacher from Cambridge, which continued to him (with the King's express sanction)[1] the powers which he had received from Wolsey. He might preach in any diocese to which he was invited; and the repose of a country parish could not be long allowed in such stormy times to Latimer. He had bad health, being troubled with headache, pleurisy, coiic, stone; his bodily constitution meeting feebly the demands which he was forced to make upon it.[2] But he struggled on, travelling up and down, to London, to Kent, to Bristol, wherever opportunity called him; marked for destruction by the bishops, if he was betrayed into an imprudent word, and himself living in constant expectation of death.[3]
At length the Bishop of London believed that Latimer was in his power. He had preached at St Abb's, in the city, 'at the request of a company of merchants,'[4] in the beginning of the winter of 1531; and soon after
- ↑ Latimer to Sir Edward Baynton: Letters, p. 329.
- ↑ Letters, p. 323.
- ↑ He thought of going abroad. 'I have trust that God will help me,' he wrote to a friend; 'if I had not, I think the ocean sea should have divided my Lord of London and me by this day.'—Remains, p. 334.
- ↑ Latimer to Sir Edward Baynton.
