Page:VCH London 1.djvu/338

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

A HISTORY OF LONDON had read or possessed Lutheran books ; one thought that a priest in mortal sin cannot malce [non conftcit) the Sacrament of the Altar ; two had eaten flesh on fast days ; one said that the pope has no more power than other bishops.'* On a rainy Sunday in February two of these Easterlings, with Dr. Robert Barnes (an Austin Friar from Cambridge) and two others, bore faggots at St. Paul's : Wolsey was present in state, with eleven bishops, and Fisher again preached against Luther's opinions.'^ Another foreigner was enjoined a similar penance ; he did not believe in purgatory, objected to prayers for the dead, and said that images should not be honoured, that fasting was not obligatory, that no prayers but the Paternoster should be used and it was better to pray privately than in church, that prelates were Antichrists, and that preachers should have meat and drink but no money." Some months later Barnes was visited at the house of his order in London by Essex Lollards, to whom he sold at about 3J. each copies of Tyndale's New Testament, which was ' of more cleaner English ' than the ' old books ' of the Gospels and some Epistles they already had.'* They found with him ' a merchant man reading in a book, and two or three more.' That autumn Bishop Tunstall, preaching at Paul's Cross, denounced Tyndale's work as ' naughtily translated.' Humphrey Monmouth afterwards declared that till then he had not ' suspected . . . any evil by him,' and that shortly after he burnt all the letters, treatises, and sermons of Tyndale's which he had. In October the aldermen were directed to search for books of heresy,^"" and the bishop ordered his archdeacons to summon all persons to deliver up copies of the new translation, which had been dispersed throughout his diocese in great numbers."^ Tunstall was also connected with the efforts made during the following winter to destroy the New Testaments in the hands of the printers in the Netherlands."^ In 1527 a Cambridge scholar named Thomas Bylney, who had found peace in the doctrine of justification by faith, '°^ preached in London against the worship of saints and the reverence paid to their images. Another Cambridge man, Thomas Arthur, exhorted the people at St. Mary Wool- church to pray for those in prison for preaching the true gospel ; he also held it wrong to pray to the saints."* They both seem to have been arrested soon after. A third Cambridge student and priest, Richard Bayfield, a monk of Bury, was said to have praised their lives and maintained their doctrines, declaring that hundreds of men were ready to preach the same, and that ' he was entreated by his friends ... to abide in the City, against his will, to make the [bishop's] chancellor, and many more, perfect Christian men ; for as yet many were pharisees, and knew not the perfect declaration of the Scripture.' He proposed to read a common lecture every day at St. " L. and P. Hen. Fill, iv, 1962. " Possibly four were of the Steelyard ; cf. the authorities given. ^ Hall, Chron. ; Monum. Franc. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 192 ; Stow, Annals. For Barnes cf Foxe, op cit. v, 416- 1 9, and Diet. 'Nat. B'tog. ^' L.andP. Hen. Fin, iVi, 1^22 (wrongly dated) ; iv, 2073. Cf. iv, 2169, and Foxe, op. cit. iv,App. 751. Strype, Mem. i (ii), 54-5 ; L. and P Hen. Fill, iv (2), 4850. " Strvpe, Mem. i (ii), 366 ; cf. L. and P. Hen. Fill, iv (2), 4693. "" Re'c. Corp. Letter Bk. O, fol. i -jb. '"' Lond. Epis. Reg. Tunstall, fol. 45 (Engl, trans, in Foxe, op. cit. iv, 666) ; cf. Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 706. '"' L. and P. Hen. Fill, iv, 2642, 2649, 2652, 2677, 2721, 2778, 2797, 2903, 2904. "" Letters from him to Tunstall, in Foxe, op. cit. iv, 633 et seq., 757 et seq '"* Lond. Epis. Reg. Tunstall, fol. 1331^, 1351^ ; printed in Foxe, op. cit. iv, App 254