Page:VCH London 1.djvu/343

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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY been abroad, and had brought over many forbidden books during the last year ; " on 20 November he w^as condemned as a relapsed heretic, a few days later publicly degraded from the priesthood, and on 4 December burnt in Smithfield.'" On the first Sunday in Advent the preacher at Paul's Cross forbade, on the authority of the bishop, the selling or reading of thirty books, nearly all written in English."^ Tewkesbury, who was burnt as a relapsed heretic on 20 December,^*' may be said to be the last Lollard who suffered that penalty. James Bainham, a lawyer of the Middle Temple, was burnt in Smithfield in April 1532 ; he had been induced to abjure and do penance, but had repented almost at once and was rearrested. Latimer, who had been induced to make before the bishops a confession of faith similar to Crome's,^** visited him in Newgate and reproved him for ' vanity ' and lack of faith in being troubled because his wife would be disdained as the widow of a heretic.'" In 1 53 1 several of the London clergy got into trouble, in one case, at least, for serious misconduct,'*' and many were involved in an extraordinary riot which occurred when the bishop summoned them to St. Paul's to assess the amounts they were to contribute to the grant made by Convocation. According to Hall at least 600 assembled, and when certain were called by name into the chapter-house a great number of others, ' stomached and comforted' by 'temporal men,' forced their way in after them. They protested that 20 nobles a year [^b 13^. 4^d.) was 'but a bare living for a priest ; ' 'let the bishops and abbots, which have offended, pay.' Some of the bishop's servants who gave the priests ' high words ' were buffeted and stricken, so that the bishop began to be afraid and ' prayed them to depart in charity,' with a pardon for their violence. Afterwards, how- ever, several priests and laymen were arrested on Stokesley's complaint, and sent to various prisons. Another account states that the affair had been planned beforehand, that the rioters were armed, and that they attacked the bishop's palace besides assaulting him and his servants in the chapter- house.'" The position of the London clergy had been greatly affected by the fate of Wolsey : ' when he was fallen they followed after.' '** The tithe contro- versy had entered a new phase, the citizens attacking and the curates defending the 15th-century settlement.'*' In April 1532 the bishops stated that clergymen had been treated with violence by ' ill-disposed and seditious ' laymen ; ' injured in their own persons, thrown down in the kennel in the "» Foxe, op. cit. iv, 682-8. '" Wriothesley, Chron. (Camd. Soc), i, 17 ; cf. Rec. Corp. Journ. xiii, fol. 289^. '" Three itfth-cent. Chron. (Camd. Soc), 89. Cf the list of books brought over by Bayfield. Foxe, op. cit. iv, 684. '"Ibid. 692-4. The 'purser' mentioned by Wriothesley and in MoHaw. fraw. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 195, was probably Tewkesbury, as was the 'haberdasher' of Harl. MS. 421, fol. 1 2d. and the ' pouchmaker ' of the chronicle printed in $ongs, Carols, Sec. (Early Engl. Text Soc), App. 162. '" Diet. Nat. Biog. ; Lond. Epis. Reg. Tunstall, fol. 142. "^ Foxe, op. cit. iv, 697-705, App. 770 ; Wriothesley, Chron. (Camd. Soc), i, 17. The Grey Friars' Chronicle (Monum. Franc, ii, 194) says that two others were burnt with him. "" Stow, Surf. (ed. Kingsford), i, 347 ; L. and P. Hen. Fill, v, 559 (34) ; Accts. of St. Andrew Hubbard, I 53 1-2 ; Monum. Franc. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 194. '" Hall, Chron. 22 Hen. VIII ; Foxe, op. cit. v, App. iv. The mayor and aldermen assured the bishop of their willingness to assist him ' concerning the rebellion late made by the priests ' ; Rec. Corp. Repert. viii, fol. 178. "' Hall, Chron. 22 Hen. VIII. '" Fide supra, pp. 250-1. 259