Page:History of england froude.djvu/562

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540
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
[ch. 6.

of their success, Doctor London went on to relate the following remarkable proceeding:

'After Master Garret escaped, the commissary being in extreme pensiveness, knew no other remedy but this extraordinary, and caused a figure to be made by one expert in astronomy—and his judgment doth continually persist upon this, that he fled in a tawny coat south-eastward, and is in the middle of London, and will shortly to the sea-side. He was curate unto the parson of Honey Lane.[1] It is likely he is privily cloaked there. Wherefore, as soon as I knew the judgment of this astronomer, I thought it expedient and my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises; that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of London. It will be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works, which he carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul, opening of many privy heresies, and extinction of the same.'[2]

Tuesday, Feb. 24.We might much desire to know what the Bishop's sensations were in reading this letter to know whether it occurred to him that in this naïve acknowledgment, the Oxford heresy hunters were themselves confessing to an act of heresy; and that by the law of the Church, which they were so eager to administer, they were liable to the same death which they were so zealous to secure for the poor vendors of Testaments. So indeed they really were. Consulting the stars had
  1. Dr Forman, rector of All Hallows, who had himself been in trouble for heterodoxy.
  2. Dr London to the Bishop of Lincoln, Feb. 20, 1528: Rolls House MS.