the Spanish government daily more odious; and
Philip, sensible of the hatred which he incurred, endeavored to remove
the reproach from himself by a very gross artifice: he ordered his
confessor to deliver, in his presence, a sermon in favor of toleration;
a doctrine somewhat extraordinary in the mouth of a Spanish friar.[***]
But the court, finding that Bonner, however shameless and savage,
would not bear alone the whole infamy, soon threw off the mask; and
the unrelenting temper of the queen, as well as of the king, appeared
without control. A bold step was even taken towards introducing the
inquisition into England. As the bishops' courts, though extremely
arbitrary, and not confined by any ordinary forms of law, appeared not
to be invested with sufficient power, a commission was appointed, by
authority of the queen's prerogative, more effectually to extirpate
heresy.

* Fox, vol. iii. p. 747. Heylin, p. 57. Burnet, vol. ii. p.
337.

** Burnet, vol. ii. p. 306.

*** Heylin, p. 56.

Twenty-one persons were named; but any three were armed with the powers
of the whole. The commission runs in these terms: "That since many false
rumors were published among the subjects, and many heretical opinions
were also spread among them, the commissioners were to inquire into
those, either by presentments, by witnesses, or any other political way
they could devise, and to search after all heresies; the bringers in,
the sellers, the readers of all heretical books: they were to examine
and punish all misbehaviors or negligences in any church or chapel; and
to try all priests that did not preach the sacrament of the altar;
all persons that did not hear mass, or come to their parish church to
service, that would not go in processions, or did not take holy bread or
holy water; and if they found any that did obstinately persist in such
heresies, they were to put them into the hands of their ordinaries, to
be punished according to the spiritual laws; giving the commissioners
full power to proceed as their discretions and consciences should direct
them, and to use all such means as they would invent for the searching
of the premises; empowering them also to call before them such witnesses
as they pleased, and to force them to make oath of such things as might
discover what they sought after."[*] Some civil powers were also given
the commissioners to punish vagabonds and quarrelsome persons.

To bring the methods of