Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/208

of the indignation which these and similar outrages created in the body of the nation, may be gathered from a scene which took place when an audacious offender was seized by the law, and suffered at Ipswich. When the fire was lighted, a commissary touched the victim with his wand, and urged him to recant. The man spat at him for an answer, and the commissary exclaimed that forty days' indulgence would be granted by the Bishop of Norwich to every one who would cast a stick into the pile. 'Then Baron Curzon, Sir John Audeley, with many others of estimation, being there present, did rise from their seats, and with their swords cut down boughs and threw them into the fire, and so did all the multitude of the people.'^[1] It seems most certain that the country only refrained from taking the law into their own hands, and from trying the question with the Protestants, as Aske and Lord Darcy desired, by open battle, from a confidence that the Government would do their duties, that in some way the law would interfere, and these excesses would be put down with a high hand.

April.The meeting of Parliament could be delayed no longer; and it must be a Parliament composed of other members than those who had sat so long and so effectively.^[2] Two years before it had been demanded by the northern counties. The promise had

1. This story rests on the evidence of eye-witnesses.—Foxe, vol. v. p. 251, &c.
2. The late Parliament had become a byword among the Catholics and reactionaries. Pole speaks of the 'Conventus malignantium qui omnia illa decreta contra Ecclesiæ unitatem fecit.'—Epist. Reg. Pol., vol. ii. p. 46.