374
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
[ch. 5.
lowing year busy procuring copies of the Bishop of Rochester's book against the King, which was broadly disseminated on the continent, and secretly transmitting them into England; in close correspondence also with Fisher himself, with Sir Thomas More, and for the ill fortune of their friends, with the Court at Brussels, between which and the English Catholics the intercourse was dangerously growing.[1]
The Greenwich friars, with their warden, went also a bad way. The death of the persecuted brother was attended with circumstances in a high degree suspicious.[2] Henry ordered an inquiry, which did not terminate in any actual exposure; but a cloud hung over the convent,
- ↑ Vaughan to Cromwell: State Papers, vol. vii. p. 489–90. 'I learn that this book was first drawn by the Bishop of Rochester, and so being drawn, was by the said Bishop afterwards delivered in England to two Spaniards, being secular and laymen. They receiving his first draught, either by themselves or some other Spaniards, altered and perfinished the same into the form that it now is; Peto and one Friar Elstowe of Canterbury, being the only men that have and do take upon themselves to be conveyers of the same books into England, and conveyers of all other things into and out of England. If privy search be made, and shortly, peradventure in the house of the same Bishop shall be found his first copy. Master More hath sent oftentimes and lately books unto Peto, in Antwerp—as his book of the confutation of Tyndal, and of Frith's opinion of the sacrament, with divers other books. I can no further learn of More's practices, but if you consider this well, you may perchance espy his craft. Peto laboureth busylier than a bee in the setting forth of this book. He never ceaseth running to and from the Court here. The King never had in his realm traitors like his friars—[Vaughan wrote 'clergy.' The word in the original is dashed through, and 'friars' is substituted, whether by Cromwell or by himself in an afterthought, I do not know]—and so I have always said, and yet do. Let his Grace look well about him, for they seek to devour him. They have blinded his Grace.'
- ↑ Ellis, third series, vol. ii. p. 262, &c.
