428 ENGLISHMEN AT WITTENBERG July to have letters from the Wittenberg reformers. With these — if they were indeed, as seems probable, forgeries — he deceived Ambrose Blaurer at Constance, 1 after he had caused Cromwell to suspect his character by letters purporting to come from the Wittenbergers to Cranmer and Thixtoll. 2 No trace of him can be found at Wittenberg. - Whether the forged articles 3 fathered on Melanchthon and circulated in England and France to the detriment of the protestant cause were due to him, I do not know. In the same year (1539) there appeared at Wittenberg one Thomas Mintern, suspected and perhaps convicted of being an English spy. 4 Though he was sometimes called an Italian, and once definitely a Paduan, he stated, when arrested, that he was of a noble English family, born in a place which appears in the original documents once as ' Zuebun ' and once as ' Serba ' (perhaps Salisbury). His claim that he had studied in various universities of Germany is borne out by their records, but his assertion that he had come to Wittenberg only for the purpose of study was discredited by Melanchthon, to whom the task of examining him was assigned by the elector. He aroused sus- picion by loitering about Luther's house and trying to steal some of his manuscripts, which, when arrested, he claimed he wanted only as specimens of the reformer's autograph. His further assertion that he was in the diplomatic employ of Henry VIII cannot be verified. Possibly some Englishman in power was trying to collect material to discredit Luther. On being bound over by the Saxon government not to do any harm he was allowed to leave Wittenberg. An experience causing more personal inconvenience to Luther was the appearance in 1541 of an unnamed Englishman with letters of introduction from Osiander. After a short stay at the Black Cloister (Luther's house) he departed, leaving his boy in Luther's care. As he never returned to claim him, the reformer eventually had the boy sent to an orphan asylum. 5 John Rogers, the Marian martyr, is known to have lived some years at Wittenberg. He matriculated at the university on 25 November 1540. While there he took the pseudonym Thomas Matthews, under which the English Bible of 1537 was issued. 6 1 Blaurer to Bullinger, 17 May 1540, Brief wechsel der Blaurer, hrsg. von T. Schiess, ii, 1908, 47 ft 2 Merriman, i. 215 ; Letters and Papers, xiv. i. no. 806, April 1539. 3 On these cf . Luther, Werke, xxxviii. 386. 4 He had matriculated at Erfurt in the summer, 1538 (J* C. H. Weissenborn, Aden der Erfurter Universitdt, 1884, ii. 348). On his trial see W. Friedensburg, ' Ein englischer Spion in Wittenberg 1539', Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, xiv, 1917, pp. 301-10. He was evidently ' the King's scholar, Thomas Mynto ', given £5 in 1539 {Letters and Papers, xiv. ii. 781). 6 Enders, xiv. 87 ; Corpus Reformatorum, iv. 661 f. 6 Album, i. 186 ; the Diet, of Nat. Biog. does not speak of his matriculation.
