260 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 43. April, Bishop of London was besieged in his house at St Paul's by mobs of raging women whom he vainly entreated to go away and send their husbands instead. Unable to escape from the hands of these Amazons he was about ' to pray aid of some magistrate ' to deliver him ; and was rescued only by one of the suspended clergy who persuaded them to go away quietly ' yet so as with tears they moved at some hands compassion/ 1 Every- where ( the precise Protestants ' ' offered their goods and bodies to prison rather than they would relent/ Simultaneously and obviously on purpose Elizabeth forced upon the people the most alarming construction of the persecution. On Good Friday, her almoner Guest, the high church Bishop of Rochester, preached a sermon in the Chapel Royal on the famous Hoc est corpus memn. He assured his con- gregation again and again ' that the bread at the sacrament was the very body, the very same body which had been crucified/ 'and that the Christian must so take it and so believe of it/ and an enthusi- astic Catholic in the audience was so delighted to hear the old doctrine once more in the Sovereign's presence, that he shouted out ' That is true, and he that denies it let him be burnt/ On Easter Tuesday Elizabeth in stiff black velvet and with all solemnity and devotion publicly washed the feet of a poor woman ; and the washing business V Parker to Cecil, March 26, March 28, April 3, April 12 : Lana- iowm MM. Griudal to Cecil, May 4 : Domestic MS8. t Elizabeth, vol. xxxix.. Rolls House.
