elf
was gone--utterly gone. Dalaber was obstinate, and no clue to the track
of the fugitive could be discovered. The police were at fault; neither
bribes nor threats could elicit anything; and in these desperate
circumstances, as he told the bishop, the three heads of houses
conceived that they might strain a point of propriety for so good a
purpose as to prevent the escape of a heretic. Accordingly, after a full
report of the points of their success, Doctor London went on to relate
the following remarkable proceeding:

"After Master Garret escaped, _the commissary being in extreme
pensiveness, knew no other remedy but this extraordinary, and caused a
figure to be made by one expert in astronomy--and his judgment doth
continually persist upon this, that he fled in a tawny coat
south-eastward, and is in the middle of London, and will shortly to the
sea side_. He was curate unto the parson of Honey Lane.[73] It is likely
he is privily cloaked there. Wherefore, as soon as I knew the judgment
of this astronomer, I thought it expedient and my duty with all speed to
ascertain your good lordship of all the premises; that in time your
lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of London. It will
be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works, which he
carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul, opening of
many privy heresies, and extinction of the same."[74]

[Sidenote: Tuesday, Feb. 24.]

We might much desire to know what the bishop's sensations were in
reading this letter--to know whether it occurred to him that in this
naive acknowledgment, the Oxford heresy hunters were themselves
confessing to an act of heresy; and that by the law of the church, which
they were so eager to administer, they were liable to the same death
which they were so zealous to secure for the poor vendors of Testaments.
So indeed they really were. Consulting the stars had been ruled from
immemorial time to be dealing with the devil; the penalty of it was the
same as for witchcraft; yet here was a reverend warden of a college
considering it his duty to write eagerly of a discovery obtained by
these forbidden means, to his own diocesan, begging him to communicate
with the Cardinal of York and the Bishop of London, that three of the
highest church authorities in England might become _participes
criminis_, by acting on this diabolical information.

[Sidenote: The principal ports set for Garret's capture.]

Meanw