voured to
extinguish them without having resort to the stake Tyndal's New
Testament, translated into English in 1526 at Worms, must have been
speedily smuggled across the Channel. On the Shrove Tuesday of 1527
Wolsey attended St. Paul's, accompanied by some six-and-thirty
prelates, mitred abbots, and other high dignitaries. Barnes of
Cambridge, formerly a friar, and five others, "Stillyard men," were
brought from the Fleet prison in penitential array, Barnes carrying a
heavy taper, the rest faggots. Testaments and other forbidden books
were in baskets by a fire in the nave. On their knees the penitents
recanted; while Barnes declared that he deserved to be burnt. Fisher
again preached; and the six pardoned offenders were taken inside the
rails and made to walk round the fire, after which the books were
burnt--by no means a solitary literary conflagration.

=Reformation Principles Advanced.=--In order to raise money, Henry
declared that as the clergy had acquiesced in the authority of Wolsey
as legate, and as such acquiescence was contrary to the Statute of
Provisors, all these benefices were forfeit to the Crown, and a heavy
subsidy must be paid as ransom. The clergy of the diocese of London,
considering that the arch-offender against this Statute was Henry
himself, and next to him the prelates and great mitred abbots,
attended a meeting at the Chapter House, and were assisted by a number
of their parishioners. John Stokesley, Bishop designate,[24] who
presided, and who had to see the assessment made, could neither keep
order nor gain his point: "We never meddled, let the bishops and
abbots pay." Fifteen priests and four parishioners were imprisoned,
and, of course, Henry gained his point.

Throughout 1534 the deanery was vacant. The Bishop was directed to see
that the appointed preachers at Paul's Cross taught that the Pope had
no spiritual authority of divine right. Here as elsewhere it is
remarkable with what ease and unanimity the papal jurisdiction based
on the Petrine claims was done away with. No dignitary--and Bonner
that year became Prebendary of Chiswick--no priest of humbler rank
connected with the cathedral, either resigned or got into trouble on
this important doctrinal question; although the execution of those two
earnest men, John Fisher and Thomas More, who opposed the divorce and
the abrogation of the papal claims, was followed by a pronouncement of
excommunication, deposition, and an interdict on the