the
English soil, like an exhalation of the morning, at the brightness of
the papal return. The chancellor and the clergy were springing at the
leash like hounds with the game in view, fanaticism and revenge
{p.189} lashing them forward. If the temporal schemes of the court
were thwarted, it was, perhaps, because Heaven desired that exclusive
attention should be given first to the salvation of souls.

For all past political offences, therefore, there was now an amnesty,
and such prisoners as remained unexecuted for Wyatt's conspiracy were
released from the Tower on the 18th of January. On the 25th a hundred
and sixty priests walked in procession through the London streets,
chanting litanies, with eight bishops walking after them, and Bonner
carrying the host. On the 28th the cardinal issued his first general
instructions. The bishops were directed to call together their clergy
in every diocese in England, and to inform them of the benevolent love
of the Holy Father, and of the arrival of the legate with powers to
absolve them from their guilt. They were to relate the acts of the
late parliament, with the reconciliation and absolution of the Lords
and Commons; and they were to give general notice that authority had
been restored to the ecclesiastical courts, to proceed against the
enemies of the faith, and punish them according to law.

A day was then to be fixed on which the clergy should appear with
their confessions, and be received into the church. In the assignment
of their several penances, a distinction was to be made between those
who had taught heresy and those who had merely lapsed into it.

When the clergy had been reconciled, they were again in turn to exhort
the laity in all churches and cathedrals, to accept the grace which
was offered to them; and that they might understand that they were not
at liberty to refuse the invitation, a time was assigned to them
within which their submissions must be all completed. A book was to be
kept in every diocese, where the names of those who were received were
to be entered. A visitation was to be held throughout the country at
the end of the spring, and all who had not complied before Easter day,
or who, after compliance, "had returned to their vomit", would be
proceeded against with the utmost severity of the law.[438]

[Footnote 438: Instructions of Cardinal Pole to the
Bishops: Burnet's _Collectanea_.]

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