to insist,
and the prior being still unable to give other answer, he was sent with
Father Humphrey, our proctor, to the Tower." There he remained for a
month; and at the end of it he was persuaded by "certain good and
learned men"[428] that the cause was not one for which it was lawful to
suffer. He undertook to comply, _sub conditione_, with some necessary
reservations, and was sent home to the cloister. As soon as he returned,
the brethren assembled in their chapter-house "in confusion and great
perplexity," and Haughton told them what he had promised. He would
submit, he said, and yet his misgivings foretold to him that a
submission so made could not long avail. "Our hour, dear brethren," he
continued, "is not yet come. In the same night in which we were set free
I had a dream that I should not escape thus. Within a year I shall be
brought again to that place, and then I shall finish my course." If
martyrdom was so near and so inevitable, the remainder of the monks were
at first reluctant to purchase a useless delay at the price of their
convictions. The commissioners came with the lord mayor for the oath,
and it was refused. They came again, with the threat of instant
imprisonment for the whole fraternity; "and then," says Maurice, "they
prevailed with us. We all swore as we were required, making one
condition, that we submitted only so far as it was lawful for us so to
do. Thus, like Jonah, we were delivered from the belly of this monster,
this immanis ceta, and began again to rejoice like him, under the shadow
of the gourd of our home. But it is better to trust in the Lord than in
princes, in whom is no salvation; God had prepared a worm that smote our
gourd and made it to perish."[429]
[Sidenote: The convent hears of the Treason Act.]
This worm, as may be supposed, was the act of supremacy, with the
statute of treasons which was attached to it. It was ruled, as I have
said, that inadequate answers to official inquiry formed sufficient
ground for prosecution under these acts. But this interpretation was not
generally known; nor among those who knew it was it certain whether the
crown would avail itself of the powers which it thus possessed, or
whether it would proceed only against such offenders as had voluntarily
committed themselves to opposition. In the opening of the following year
[1535] the first uncertainty was at an end; it was publicly understood
that persons who had previously given cause for suspici
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