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A HISTORY OF LONDON to him the jury of citizens extended their investigations much beyond the scope of the Act, to include misdoings which they termed ' branches ' of it ; they indicted ' of mahce ' a large number of persons, and if the king had not granted his pardon many would have been burnt. , On i August the inquiry was stopped by the king's order.'"' Foxe's account ' of the Troubles at London in the time of the Six Articles" gives the names of just over two hundred 'persons presented^ with the causes of their persecution.' More than half of these were indicted for offences altogether beyond the scope of the Act.'"^ Some were said to have 'maintained' Barnes and other preachers, others to have disturbed divine service by ' brabbling of the New Testament ' or ' with loud reading of the English Bible ' ; while the commonest offences were contempt of ceremonies, neglect to come to confession or receive the sacrament at Easter, and non- attendance at church or irreverent behaviour there. Only sixty-one were said either to be ' sacramentaries ' or to have behaved in a way which might possibly have led to their punishment under the first of the Six Articles ; while offences against the other five Articles are even less numerous. Most of the cases would twenty years earlier have been dealt with by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. On 4 August 1540 Thomas Epsam, a monk of Westminster, who had been imprisoned in Newgate for more than three years, refused to take the oath of supremacy : ' Wherefore his monk's garment was plucked from his back and he repried till the king knew his malicious obstinacy ; and this was the last monk that was seen in his clothing in England."* On the same day about ten persons were executed for treason, in most cases for denying the royal supremacy, having been condemned by Act of Attainder.'"^ But this wholesale execution, which seems to have been the result of a determination to empty the prisons,'"* completes the list of Henry's victims during that terrible summer ; the four Londoners — Farmer, Dr. Wilson, Bishop Sampson, and the keeper of New- gate — who had been imprisoned through Cromwell's influence were released.'"* The next five years were comparatively peaceful. The uncertainty as to what was to be considered erroneous teaching existed no longer, and heretics "" Hall, Chron. 31 Hen. VIII ; Rec. Corp. Letter Bk. P, fol. 2191J. This gives a copy of a writ to the bishop, mayor, and other commissioners under the Act, ordering them to send information immediately of all that had been done by virtue of that commission, and meanwhile to cease proceedings. The return to this writ was made by the mayor and the recorder. As Hall does not mention the bishop or his officials in connexion with the inquiry it would seem that this attempt to root out heresy by extending the already extra- ordinary powers given by the Act was mainly the work of the City authorities. Holinshed reprints Hall's account, with some significant omissions, but there seems to be no other authority for it. The silence of the two contemporary chroniclers — Wriothesley and the author of that printed in Camd. Misc. iv — is remarkable, and so is that of Grafton, who must have been partly responsible for the account in Hall (cf. Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation, ii, 201-2), and whose chronicle for this period is in other respects almost verbally the same as Hall's. '°* Foxe, op. cit. V, 44.3 ; cf. iv, 586 et seq. "* The similarity of these to the ' branches ' mentioned by Hall, together with the fact that the recanta- tions of two of the clergy named took place in 1543, seems to show that although Foxe gives 1541 as the date, the cases collected either occurred at various times or are, with the exception of a few at the end of the list, actually those of the persons indicted in 1540. Cf the references to Calais and the Lord Chancellor on p. 451 with L. and P. Hen VIII, xv, passim, and Hall, ut sup. ^« Hall, Chron. 32 Hen. Mil ; Stow, Annals. '"' Ibid. ; Wriothesley, op. cit. i, 121 ; Orig. Letters, , 211 ; Marillac, Corresp. 6 Aug. ; L. and P. Hen. nil, XV, 498 (i, 56-9 ; cf ii, cap. 49). '"' Marillac, Corresp. 23 June. ^ L. and P. Hen. VIII, xv, 1005 (cf. xvi, 947 [73]) ; Orig. Letters, i, 21 1 ; Hall, Chron. 32 Hen. VIII ; Foxe, op. cit. V, 452. 278