as
dangerous as acts; and liberty of conscience was a plea which could be
urged with a bad grace for men who, while in power, had fed the stake with
heretics. They were summoned for a last time, to return the same answer as
they had returned before; and nothing remained but to pronounce against
them the penalties of the statute, imprisonment at the king's pleasure, and
forfeiture. The latter part of the sentence was not enforced. More's family
were left in the enjoyment of his property. Fisher's bishoprick was not
taken from him. They were sent to the Tower, where for the present we leave
them.

Meanwhile, in accordance with the resolution taken in council on the and of
December,[721] but which seems to have been suspended till the issue of the
trial at Rome was decided, the bishops, who had been examined severally on
the nature of the papal authority, and whose answers had been embodied in
the last act of parliament, were now required to instruct the clergy
throughout their dioceses--and the clergy in turn to instruct the
people--in the nature of the changes which had taken place. A bishop was to
preach each Sunday at Paul's Cross, on the pope's usurpation. Every secular
priest was directed to preach on the same subject week after week, in his
parish church. Abbots and priors were to teach their convents; noblemen and
gentlemen their families and servants; mayors and aldermen the boroughs. In
town and country, in all houses, at all dinner-tables, the conduct of the
pope and the causes of the separation from Rome were to be the one subject
of conversation; that the whole nation might be informed accurately and
faithfully of the grounds on which the government had acted. No wiser
method could have been adopted. The imperial agents would be busy under the
surface; and the mendicant friars, and all the missionaries of
insurrection. The machinery of order was set in force to counteract the
machinery of sedition.

Further, every bishop, in addition to the oath of allegiance, had sworn
obedience to the king as Supreme Head of the Church;[722] and this was the
title under which he was to be spoken of in all churches of the realm. A
royal order had been issued, "that all manner of prayers, rubrics, canons
of Mass books, and all other books in the churches wherein the Bishop of
Rome was named, or his presumptuous and proud pomp and authority preferred,
should utterly be abolished, eradicated, and rased out, and his name and
me