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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY year, that the mayor and aldermen complained to the Privy Council of the offenders, most of whom were connected with the court. ^^ The Privy Council also examined and imprisoned a large number of booksellers, one being Richard Grafton, for printing or circulating unlawful books.'" Among these were probably the works of Thomas Becon, a priest who had recanted three years before but had continued to write under an assumed name. On Relic Sunday he recanted at Paul's Cross, cutting in pieces with his own hands eleven of his books. Two other priests recanted at the same time. One of them, Robert Wisdom, nephew of a citizen and curate at St. Mary Aldermary under Dr. Crome, had twice before been suspected of heretical opinions. In his sermons he had denied man's free will, and spoken against prayers to saints.'^* In I 544 seven persons, one of them Bishop Gardiner's secretary and the others all priests, were executed for denying the royal supremacy,'*^' and John Heywood recanted at Paul's Cross his ' erroneous opinion ' that the Bishop of Rome was supreme head of the universal Church of Christ on earth. ^^^ The curate of St. Martin Iremonger did penance for absence from a general pro- cession and for neglecting to hear confessions in his parish, by walking in the next procession without a surplice, bearing a lighted candle. Cases of clerical neglect of duty seem to have been dealt with very lightly at this period, even when the nature of the offence made it highly probable that the priest held some at least of the ' new opinions.' '" The great ecclesiastical event of i 544, the introduction by authority of the use of part of the Church services in English, had long been anticipated in London. The Te Deum had been sung in English as early as 1538.'*^ In May 1542 the curate of St. Mary Colechurch was forbidden for the present to administer any sacrament verbis vulgaribus. Next January, how- ever, Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch were granted the privilege of printing the mass-book, grail, antiphoner, hymnal, portas, and primer, in Latin and English, which had formerly been printed abroad,'**^ and in June 1544 the king 'set forth a Litany in English,' to be sung in every parish church in England, ' which was the godliest hearing that ever was in this realm,' says Wriothesley. Several of the London churches bought new ' processionar books ' in i 545. On St. Luke's Day ' Paul's quire sung the procession in English by the king's injunction.' ^ '" Z,. and P. Hen. Fill, xviii (i), 327 ; Jets of P.C. i, 103-4, >°^> '°8> '°9> O; 2> "4> '^z, 125; Stow, Annals; cf. the royal proclamation allowing 'white meats' to be eaten; Lond. Epis. Reg. Bonner, fol. 52^. In February a 'lewd person' had been punished for misbehaviour in church ; Sharpe, Lond. and the Kingdom, i, 422 ; Rec. Corp. Letter Bk. Q, fol. 102. ^" Acts of P.C. i, 107, 115, 117, 120, 125, 126, 128; d. L. and P. Hen. VIII, xTt (z), ^16 ; Hale, A Series of Precedents, 133. "' Foxe, op. cit. V, App. xii, xxii* ; Wriothesley, op. cit. i, 142. Cf Strype, Mem. i (ii), 463 et seq. ; L. and P. Hen. Fill, xi, 136-8 ; Diet. Nat. Biog. '^' Monum. Franc. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 206 ; Stow, Annals. For Larice, who three years before had been rector of St. Ethelburga (Hennessy, Novum Repert.), cf. Lond. Epis. Reg. Bonner, fol. ^ib. '*" Wriothesley, op. cit. i, 148 ; Foxe, op. cit. v, 528, 834. '" Hale, A Series of Precedents, 136 ; cf the case on p. 129, the result of which is given in Lond. Epis. Reg. Bonner, fol. 18. ^^ Fide supra, p. 269. It was also sung in English in 1543, when the offender was told to observe the accustomed order until ' aliter habuerit in mandatis ' of the iiing or his council ; Hale, op. cit. 133. "' Hale, op. cit. 131 ; L. and P. Hen. Fill, xviii (l), 100 (31). "' Wriothesley, op. cit. i, 148, 161 ; Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 86g ; Lond. Chron. 17 in Camd. Misc. iv ; Par. Rec. St. Alphage, St. Andrew Hubbard, St. Mary Woolnoth, St. Margaret Westminster, St. Martin in the Fields. 283