unexpected tragedy, killing one of the
standers-by, the gun casually going off on the stage, which he
suspected not to be charged. O the difference of divers men in the
tenderness of their consciences! some are scarce touched with a
wound, whilst others are wounded with a touch therein. This poor
armorer was highly afflicted therewith, though done against his will,
yea, without his knowledge, in his absence, by another, out of mere
chance. Hereupon he resolved to give all his estate to pious uses: no
sooner had he gotten a round sum, but presently he posted with it in
his apron to the Court of Aldermen, and was in pain till by their
direction he had settled it for the relief of poor in his own and
other parishes, and disposed of some hundreds of pounds accordingly,
as I am credibly informed by the then churchwardens of the said
parish. Thus, as he conceived himself casually (though at a great
distance) to have occasioned the death of one, he was the immediate
and direct cause of giving a comfortable living to many."

_Burning of Wickliffe's Body by Order of the Council of
Constance_.--"Hitherto [A.D. 1428] the corpse of John Wickliffe had
quietly slept in his grave about forty-one years after his death,
till his body was reduced to bones, and his bones almost to dust. For
though the earth in the chancel of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire,
where he was interred, hath not so quick a digestion with the earth
of Aceldama, to consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet such the
appetite thereof, and all other English graves, to leave small
reversions of a body after so many years. But now such the spleen of
the Council of Constance, as they not only cursed his memory as dying
an obstinate heretic, but ordered that his bones (with this
charitable caution,--if it may be discerned from the bodies of other
faithful people) be taken out of the ground, and thrown far off from
any Christian burial. In obedience hereunto, Richard Fleming, Bishop
of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutterworth, sent his officers (vultures with
a quick sight, scent, at a dead carcass) to ungrave him. Accordingly
to Lutterworth they come, Sumner, Commissary, Official, Chancellor,
Proctors, Doctors, and their servants, (so that the remnant of the
body would not hold out a bone amongst so many hands,) take what was
left out of the grave, and burnt them to ashes, and cast them into
Swift, a neighboring brook, running hard by. _Thus this brook has
conveyed his ashes into