_, when promising to reintroduce Falstaff once
more, Shakspeare says, "where for anything I know he shall die of the
sweat, for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." He had,
therefore, certainly been supposed to _be the man_, and Falstaff
represented the English conception of the character of the Lollard hero.
I should add, however, that Dean Milman, who has examined the records
which remain to throw light on the character of this remarkable person
with elaborate care and ability, concludes emphatically in his favour.

[29] Two curious letters of Henry VI. upon the Lollards, written in
1431, are printed in the _Archaeologia_, Vol. XXIII. p. 339, &c. "As God
knoweth," he says of them, "never would they be subject to his laws nor
to man's, but would be loose and free to rob, reve, and dispoil, slay
and destroy all men of thrift and worship, as they proposed to have done
in our father's days; and of lads and lurdains would make lords."

[30] Proceedings of an organized Society in London called the Christian
Brethren, supported by voluntary contributions, for the dispersion of
tracts against the doctrines of the Church: _Rolls House MS._

[31] Hale's _Precedents_. The London and Lincoln Registers, in Foxe,
Vol. IV.; and the MS. Registers of Archbishops Morton and Warham, at
Lambeth.

[32] Knox's _History of the Reformation in Scotland_.

[33] Also we object to you that divers times, and specially in Robert
Durdant's house, of Iver Court, near unto Staines, you erroneously and
damnably read in a great book of heresy, all [one] night, certain
chapters of the Evangelists, in English, containing in them divers
erroneous and damnable opinions and conclusions of heresy, in the
presence of divers suspected persons.--Articles objected against Richard
Butler--London Register: Foxe, Vol. IV. p. 178.

[34] Foxe, Vol. IV. p. 176.

[35] Michelet, _Life of Luther_, p. 71.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid. p. 41.

[38] Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_.

[39] Foxe, Vol. IV. p. 618.

[40] The suspicious eyes of the Bishops discovered Tyndal's visit, and
the result which was to be expected from it.

On Dec. 2d, 1525, Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York, then king's
almoner, and on a mission into Spain, wrote from Bordeaux to warn Henry.
The letter is instructive:

"Please your Highness to understand that I am certainly informed as I
passed in this country, that an Englishman, your subject, at the
solicitation and instan