which he refused to sign, his case was transferred to Convocation. The Convocation, as we know, were then in difficulty with their premunire; they had consoled themselves in their sorrow with burning the body of Tracy; and they would gladly have taken further comfort by burning Latimer.[1] He was submitted to the closest cross-questionings, in the hope that he would commit himself. They felt that he was the most dangerous person to them in the kingdom, and they laboured with unusual patience to ensure his conviction.[2] With a common person they would have rapidly succeeded. But Latimer was in no haste to be a martyr; he would be martyred patiently when the time was come for martyrdom; but he felt that no one ought 'to consent to die,' as long as he could honestly live;[3] and he baffled the episcopal inquisitors with their own weapons. He has left a most curious account of one of his interviews with them.
'I was once in examination,' he says,[4] 'before five or
- ↑ 'I pray you, in God's name, what did you, so great fathers, so many, so long season, so oft assembled together? "What went you about? What would ye have brought to pass? Two things taken away—the one, that ye (which I heard) burned a dead man,—the other, that ye (which I felt) went about to burn one being alive. Take away these two noble acts, and there is nothing else left that ye went about that I know,' &c. &c.—Sermon preached before the Convocation: Latimek's Sermons, p. 46.
- ↑ 'My affair had some bounds assigned to it by him who sent for me up, but is now protracted by intricate and wily examinations, as if it would never find a period; while sometimes one person, sometimes another, ask me questions, without limit and without end.'—Latimer to the Archbishop of Canterbury: Remains, p. 352.
- ↑ Remains, p. 222.
- ↑ Sermons, p. 294.
