on the last of April, Walter Philips the Dean of Rochester, one of the six who had so boldly maintained the reformed opinions in the great disputation of the last Convocation, appeared in the House and made his retractation, professing that whereas he of late with some few others had disputed against the Real Presence in the Sacrament, and against Transubstantiation, and had refused to subscribe to the articles then propounded, now on full deliberation he acknowledged his error, added his subscription, and promised to preach henceforth according to those whom heretofore he had infected. This he repeated in the Upper House.* Before they were prorogued, on May 4, the Lower House made some regulations which revealed in an assembly that had been hitherto, in comparison with Parliament, the home of right and freedom, one of the worst tendencies of the Reformation, the tendency to act by deputy, and entrust all things to commissioners. They arranged that proxies with the fullest powers might be substituted by members: and that in future they who would might select any person belonging to the Universities to be present and aid them in any business whatever that was to be transacted in the House.† This latter innovation was of a

Hugonis Latimer, per eosdem doctores ex speciali commissione eis directa habit. et fact. sub sigillo universitatis Oxon. ac subscriptione notariorum publicorum, una cum quibusdam aliis scriptis." Wilkins, iv. 94. For some remarks on the fate of this document, which was eventually published by Fox, see Strype's Cranmer, Bk. III. ch. 10, at end.

* Wilkins, iv. 94.

+ "Quarto die mensis Maii in convocatione omnes de clero consenserunt, ut quæcunque substitutiones eorum nominibus factæ firmæ permanerent ad omnia expedienda in illa domo, ac si substituentes præsentes essent. Et statutum est quod, quicunque hujus domus in futuro præsentes, possint seligere quoscunque eis placuerit ex universitatibus Oxon. et Cantabr. ad interessendum cum ipsis negotiis quibuscunque in hac domo expediendis." Wilkins, iv. 96. Mr. Joyce justly remarks on this, "These arrangements carry a suspicious air on the face of them. It looks much as if the Romanising party leaned rather on the Universities than on the

piece with that which Henry the Eighth did, when he transferred from Convocation to the Universities the business of making an authoritative version of the Scriptures.* It may have been designed retrospectively to cover, at any rate it seems to have grown out of, the commission, conglomerated of Convocation and the Universities, which had just been examining the three bishops: a commission, it may be observed, which broke the primitive practice in another respect, by setting priests to judge men of the episcopal order.† The spirit of respect for antiquity lay not with the restorers of the mediæval religion. Their lawlessness escaped not the indignant eye of Hooper in his prison. "If," said he, when he heard of these events, "our adversaries may have their way, we shall dispute one day, be condemned the next day, and suffer the day after. And yet there is no law to condemn us, that I know. So one of the Convocation House said this week to Doctor Weston; and he made this answer: 'It forceth not,' quoth he, 'for a law: we have commission to proceed with them: when they be despatched, let their friends sue the law."" The reign of Mary was necessary to show to England the solid value of the Reformation, which had been obscured by the horrible extravagances of tyranny, greed, and cruelty that had hitherto attended it. In this view the reign of Mary was a part of the Reformation.

Of Ridley and of Cranmer the sojourn in the Tower from the first had not been marked by severe deprivation. The liberty of the garden, with the opportunity of meeting sometimes, though at such interviews they were guarded, was a privilege which they had in common Church for the maintenance and propagation of their views." Sacred Synods, p. 510.

* Vol. II. 288 huj. oper.

+ So Mr. Joyce observes, Sacred Synods, p. 509.

Hooper to Ferrar, Bradford and others, 6 May. Later Writings, 504

with the Lady Jane, while she was there, and with others of the Dudleian prisoners. It was hoped that in their expatiations they might walk into the chapel at the time of Mass, and be led to acquiesce in the Latin service.* Of Ridley it is known that he dined, usually perhaps, at the Lieutenant's table: where on one occasion his fellow guests were a party of commissioners, or such he conjectured them,† consisting of Sir Thomas Bridges, Bourne the Secretary of the Council, Feckenham, Sir Thomas Pope, and Chief Justice Cholmondeley: with whom he held a long and amicable conversation, at the end of which he took the opportunity of lamenting the loss of his books, and was promised the restoration of any of them that he would have back. The treatment of Latimer, on the other hand, had been more rigorous

* Ridley is said to have gone once. "Mr. Fox says that he once was there but upon Bradford's writing to him what offence might be given thereby, he refrained ever after. I cannot but think Fox was misinformed from a passage or two in Ridley's Conference with Latimer, where he introduced the Papists inviting him to Mass in these words: 'All men do greatly marvel why you, after the liberty which you have granted unto you more than the rest, do not go to Mass. What is it that offendeth you so greatly that you will not vouchsafe once either to hear it or to see it?'" Ridley's Ridley, 434. This passage is at the beginning of Ridley's second Conference: whereas Fox says, "Mr. Bradford being prisoner there (in the Tower) at the same time, and hearing thereof, taketh his pen and ink, and writeth to him an effectual letter to persuade him from the same, and showeth the occasion that thereby should ensue, which did M. Ridley no little good, for he repented his fact therein, as he himself maketh mention, writing again in the latter end of the Book of Marcus Antonius (i. e. The Conference with Latimer) which he sent to M. Bradford, and never after that polluted himself with that filthy dregs of Anti-christian service." Fox, in the additions at end of his work. + I have not been able to trace such a commission. The interview, written by Ridley himself, is in Fox; also in Ridley's Ridley, and in Ridley's Works, p. 153.

In his conference with Latimer (of which anon) he complains that his note books, with extracts from the Fathers, were not in his possession. Whether this was before or after the conversation in question is not certain.

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from the first. He was ordered into close prison, his servant Austin to attend him, instead, it would seem, of the Lieutenant's men: and he complained of the cold that he suffered in the winter. * Ridley being desirous to seek the counsel of the immured elder, was compelled to write to him the points on which he wished to know his mind, leaving on the paper blank spaces on which Latimer might make his replies: in the well known Conferences between him and Latimer, a dialogue thus ensued, and we may hear with advantage the alternate voices. "I cannot consent to the Mass," said Ridley, "in a strange tongue: without communion: made a private table; and, where there be many priests that will communicate, every one of them having their altars, masses, and tables: the cup denied to the laity.”Speaking like aliens or madmen!" answered Latimer, making that private which Christ made common ! The Lord's death is not shown in the Supper, unless there be the partaking not of the bread only, but of the cup."-"They servilely serve the sign instead of the thing signified," proceeded Ridley, "adoring and worshipping the bread."-" Deny such a corporeal presence and transubstantiation, and their fantastical adoration will vanish away," answered Latimer. "They pluck away the honour of Christ's only sacrifice, believing the mass sacrifice to be propitiatory," said Ridley. "If any man sin," said Latimer, "we read not in St. John let him have a priest at home; but, we have an advocate." "The murmuring inaudible when the priest, in an unknown tongue, bids the people pray for him, and so on; and the people have to say Amen three times over, when they have heard nothing but, in an unknown tongue, For ever and ever," said Ridley. "The great rolling up and down of notes, when Ite missa est, is sung

*Fox. Austin, Latimer's servant, was no doubt Augustine Berneher.

to them, and the priest sends them away fasting, having eaten and drunk up all himself alone!" answered Latimer. "The other abuses," said Ridley. "The other abuses," responded Latimer, "but I have forgotten all massing matters." The name that Gardiner bore between them was Diotrephes: and they magnanimously owned to each other the dread of martyrdom that at times possessed them: Latimer confessing himself "so fearful that he would creep into a mousehole": and Ridley that he trembled lest "when the time should come he should but play the part of a whitelivered knight." They were resolved, however, whenever Diotrephes and his warriors should attack them, through the bloody law that was being prepared against them, evidently the apprehended Six Articles, "to join in fight in the open field." The accusation of heresy, and of forsaking the Church, was forcibly met by Latimer: "It is one thing to be the Church and another thing to counterfeit the Church: would God it were well known what the forsaking of the Church is! In the King's days that dead is, who was the Church of England, the King and his fautors, or massmongers in corners? If the King and the fautors of his proceedings, why be not we now the Church, abiding in the same proceedings? If clanculary massmongers might be of the Church, and yet contrary to the King's proceedings, why may not we as well be of the Church, contrarying the Queen's proceedings?" And Ridley stated the question when he said, "If it were any one trifling ceremony, if it were some one thing indifferent, I could bear it for the continuance of the common quietness. But things done in the Mass tend openly to the overthrow of Christ's institution. I deny that any general council has at any time allowed the Mass, such as ours was of late." For the rest, Latimer intimated that in the struggle which he thought to be impending,