to be suppressed. Latimer used his influence with Cromwell that the houses of Black and Grey Friars in Worcester might be bestowed on the city in relief of its burdens. In October he was at the head of a commission to investigate the nature of the famous 'blood of Hailes,' which was found to be honey or some yellowish gum, long venerated as the blood of Christ.
Latimer depended much on Cromwell's support, and approved many of that minister's unpopular acts; but the terms in which he applauded the sacrifice of Cardinal Pole's innocent family to the vengeance of Henry VIII in the end of 1538 can only excite horror. 'I heard you say once,' he wrote to Cromwell, 'after you had seen that furious invective of Cardinal Pole, that you would make him to eat his own heart, which you now have, I trow, brought to pass; for he must now eat his own heart, and be as heartless as he is graceless.' Latimer excused himself to Cromwell for not giving him a very handsome Christmas present that year by an account of his finances. During the three years that he had been bishop he had received upwards of 4,000l. For first-fruits, repairs, and debts he had paid 1,700l., and at that time he had but 180l. in ready money, out of which he would have to pay immediately 105l. for tenths and 20l. for his New-year's gifts—to the king presumably.
In 1539 he was called to London to attend the parliament which met on 28 April, and convocation, which began at St. Paul's on 2 May. It was important to show, in the face of a papal excommunication, how little England had departed from the old principles of the faith, and Latimer was appointed one of a committee of divines, both of the old school and of the new, who were to draw up articles of uniformity. They failed to agree in ten days, and under pressure from the king the Act of the Six Articles was carried on 16 June. During the next three days Latimer, who had been a regular attendant in parliament, was absent from his place. The act was quite opposed to his convictions, and even he was hardly safe from its extreme severity. It received the royal assent on the 28th, and on 1 July he and Shaxton, bishop of Salisbury, both resigned their bishoprics.
Latimer afterwards declared that he had resigned in consequence of an express intimation from Cromwell that the king wished him to do so. This the king himself subsequently denied. But it is clear his resignation was accepted without the least reluctance, while he, according to Foxe, gave a skip on the floor for joy, on putting off his rochet. A contemporary letter (MS. in Lisle Letters in Public Record Office) says that he escaped to Gravesend and was brought back. He was at once ordered into custody, and remained nearly a year in the keeping of Sampson, bishop of Chichester. His confinement was not rigorous, but for some time he daily expected to be called to execution. From this fate, it would appear by a letter of later date, he was saved by the intervention of some powerful friend (probably Cromwell), who is reported to have said to the king, 'Consider, sir, what a singular man he is, and cast not that away in one hour which nature and art hath been so many years in breeding and perfecting' (State Papers, Ireland, Eliz. vol. x. No. 50). In May 1540, when Bishop Sampson was sent to the Tower, it was at first thought that Latimer would be set free, and even made bishop once more (Correspondance Politique de M M. de Castillon et de Marillac, p. 188). The king, however, ordered that he should still be kept in Sampson's house under guard. In July he was set at liberty by the general pardon; but before the month was out his patron Cromwell had been sent to the block, and his chaplain Garrard and his old friend Barnes had perished at Smithfield. That he attempted to intercede for Barnes at this time (which he was hardly in a position to do) rests only on a misinterpretation of some words of Barnes's own in a misdated letter. On his liberation, Latimer was ordered to remove from London, desist from preaching, and not to visit either of the universities or his own old diocese (Original Letters, p. 215, Parker Soc.). For nearly six years his life becomes an absolute blank, except that we are told by Foxe that soon after he had resigned his bishopric he was crushed almost to death by the fall of a tree.
In 1546, when his friend Crome had got into trouble for his preaching, Latimer and some others were brought before the council, charged with having encouraged him 'in his folly.' When apprehended, his goods and papers in the country were well searched (Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, i. 458). He admitted having had some communication with Crome, but complained of a set of interrogatories administered to him, and desired to speak with the king himself before he made answer. He at length made a reply which the council did not consider satisfactory. But he was released from the Tower next year by the general pardon, on Edward VI's accession, and his eloquence was at once recognised as likely to be serviceable to the new government.
On Sunday, 1 Jan. 1548, after eight years' silence, Latimer preached the first of four
