Thornden and Nicolas Harpsfield, experienced but inferior officials: of whom the former had been a Benedictine of Christchurch in Canterbury, and had complied with the Reformation under Henry and Edward: the other, a more considerable man, an historian and a controversial author, denied in his writings the name and glory of martyrs to the men whom he committed to the flames.*

From the time of the memorable disputation in the Convocation House at the beginning of the reign, Archdeacon Philpot, the leader of the Protestant Catholics, had been kept in prison without trial, after an examination before Gardiner, for the words that he had spoken on that occasion, and on the suspicion of having written the report thereof which had got abroad. At length, after eighteen months, it was resolved to clear the London gaols of the religious prisoners, who obtained too much favour from the keepers, and too great resort of others unto them. Philpot was removed, October 2 of the year that we are perusing, from King's Bench to be examined by commissioners in the Newgate Sessions Hall. He protested against his wrongful imprisonment, against the conduct of his ordinary Gardiner against the imputation of heresy. He refused

Nicolas Harpsfield wrote an Ecclesiastical History of England: Historia Anglicana Ecclesiastica; which was published at Douay, 1622, by Rd. Gibbon the Jesuit, along with Campion's history of Henry's Divorce. He also wrote the six dialogues on heresy, Dialogi Sex contra summi Pontificatus Monasticæ Vitæ, Sanctorum, Sacrarum Imaginum Oppugnatores et Pseudomartyres: which had an earlier birth at Antwerp, 1566, edited by Alanus Copus Anglus, the name of Harpsfield not appearing. The last of these triumphant colloquies is devoted to proving that the cause makes the martyr. He lays down that Fox's martyrs, “si nulla alia intervenisset heresis, vel hoc solo nomine pseudomartyres non injuria censeri, quod tam scelerata seditione ad lacerandam et convellendam Petri dignitatem divinitus ei tributam coierint, et ad extremum vitæ halitum eosdem tam rebelles animos præfracte retinuerint," p. 987. Nicolas Harpsfield was archdeacon of Canterbury, John of London.

471 to answer concerning his Disputation, because his judges, being temporal men, ought not to be judges in spiritual causes, and because they showed him no authority by which they acted:* and being told that he should be sent to the Bishop of London, he denied the competency of one who was not his ordinary to examine him. Story and Cook, the two civilians who were on the Commission, used rough language to him: that he was the rankest heretic in Winchester diocese: that the Bishop. of Winchester desired to send him to London: that he was no gentleman, though the son of a knight, for that no heretic could be a gentleman. As nothing could be made of him, he was transferred to the Bishop of London's coalhouse: and the copious narratives that he has left of his adventures thenceforth unlock Bonner's prisons, reveal Bonner's character, and bring before us some of the best known persons of the age. Philpot, who was now in the height of his manhood, was a man of learning, celebrated for his knowledge of the tongues, especially of Hebrew. His temper was hot and fierce : he knew nothing of compromise: he had been at war all his life and among many other exploits, he had once excommunicated White, the new Bishop of Lincoln, being Warden of Winchester, for heresy. Under examination he showed a violence for which more than

This appears from his Fifth Examination before Bonner. "B. The Queen's commissioners sent you hither to me upon your examination had before them. I know not well the cause; but I am sure they would not have sent you hither to me unless you had made some talk to them otherwise than it becometh a Christian man. P. My lord, they sent me hither without any occasion then ministered by me. Only they laid unto me the disputation I made in the Convocation House, requiring me to answer to the same, and to recaut it: the which because I would not do, they sent me hither. B. Why did you not answer them thereto? P. For that they were temporal men, and ought not to be judges in spiritual causes, whereof they demanded me, without shewing any authority whereby I was bound to answer them and hereupon they committed me to your prison." Examinations of Philpot, Park. Soc. p. 32.

once he felt it proper to offer an apology. Bonner, on the other hand, was good-natured, coarse, and furious by turns: most reluctant to go to extremity, but too honest, in his own way, to let off a man, whom he held to be a heretic, upon any general acceptance of a common term with diverse meaning secretly attached: a course which many of the bishops were glad to take in those days. He made extraordinary efforts however to bring Philpot to an unfeigned compliance: examining him informally nearly twenty times before proceeding against him in consistory. He called in bishops, doctors, laymen, even a deputation of Pole's legatine synod, to his aid: he incurred the rebuke of the Queen and Council for his delays: he tried some cruelty. He got in return nothing but pitiless confutation, implacable defiance, the taunt that he kept to holes and corners being afraid to take the case in open court. In these curious encounters the recurrent topics are found. There is the offer of mercy: the exhortation not to be singular, but do as all the realm had done: the position that the faith was not to be disputed of: the two great matters of the Sacrament and the papal unity: the ambiguous handling of the word Church: the constant imputation of heresy, and the absolute repudiation of it. But it is particularly remarkable, in proportion to the number of learned men engaged, how scanty and flimsy seem to have been the authorities and arguments that could be brought on the Romanensian part.*

Arrived the coalhouse, Archdeacon Philpot found that he had there some fellow captives, among them.

* It will be borne in mind that Philpot himself wrote his examinations, and an allowance will be made for partiality. He seems to have written them upon the conclusion of each and he probably intended to give the truth but he was writing about himself, under strong feeling. In one place he says that there he did not say all that he wrote: but would have said it. Independently of the circumstances, it is a valuable document.

Whittle and Green, future martyrs: with whom he took up his abode in friendship. They were denied fire and candle, they slept on straw, a coalhouse is rough, the days are short and the weather cool in October: but otherwise their usage was not hard. They could go on the roof to sit their friends might send them food, books, and letters: and they made themselves so merry with psalmsinging as to be heard in the palace. When Bonner knew that he was come, he sent a mess of meat and a good pot of drink to them all, with a message of friendship to Philpot. Soon afterwards he summoned him to his presence: and shook hands with him, regretting that he was troubled with prisoners out of other dioceses: that he marvelled at it, but must obey his betters, though he knew that men spoke of him otherwise than he deserved: that he marvelled that the reason why Philpot was molested should be the disputation in the Convocation House. "Peradventure," said he, "you spoke of the Church of Christ otherwise than became you. Parliament is a place of free speech, and yet a man who spoke high treason there would soon find himself in prison. We may not by the civil law dispute of our faith." Philpot answered that he had spoken nothing that was out of the articles proposed to be disputed by the whole house with the express permission of the Queen and Council: and that as to the civil law, God's law bade us be ready to render account of our faith to all men. "Then what is your judgment of the Sacrament of the altar?" asked Bonner, leading at once to the dangerous ground. But Philpot refused to follow, saying that disputation of the faith ought not to be save in the congregation, not private unless it were to edify another, not to afford matter, and run into danger. "I perceive you are learned," said Bonner, "you must come to be of the church: for there is but one church." To

which the answer was, that he was not out of the church, the one catholic church. "You are not of the same faith that your godfathers and godmothers promised when you were baptised."-"I am: I was baptised into the faith of Christ, which I now hold."-"How can that be there is but one faith.""I am assured of that: one God, one faith, one baptism." Having got to such a point together, they fell off again, not perceiving that the faith might be variously apprehended, and yet remain one or convinced, the one as much as the other, that the differences between them were too great for mutual allowance: Bonner insisting that twenty years before Philpot was of another faith than now, Philpot replying with great absurdity that twenty years before he was of no faith at all, being an evil liver. "You are merry in the coalhouse," remarked Bonner, "you should rather be sad: we have piped unto you and ye have not wept." Philpot assisted the reciter of the Scriptures to a more exact quotation: and a cup of wine concluded this preliminary examination.

A few days afterwards Bonner sent for his prisoner before several bishops, with whom he was dining at the archdeacon's house of London. Some of them had known Philpot at Oxford, where he was of New College: and great concern was expressed for him. Bonner bade him utter his mind freely before the bishops of Bath, Worcester, Gloucester, and Doctor Cole. "But we have not sent for you to fawn upon you," remarked Bourne of Bath sharply, "but for charity's sake to exhort you to come into the catholic way of the church." Pate of Worcester suggested that the prisoner should pray for grace before speaking his mind: and Philpot, falling on his knees, uttered a prayer. And here Bonner committed himself strangely. "You did not well," said he to Pate, "to ask him to make a prayer: