ess, and then upon the proof and trial thereof be
not able to prove and verify the said accusation and testimony against the
party accused, then the person so accused is for the more part without any
remedy for his charges and wrongful vexation to be towards him adjudged and
recovered.

"XII. Also upon the examination of the said accusation, if heresy be
ordinarily laid unto the charge of the parties so accused, then the said
ordinaries or their ministers use to put to them such subtle
interrogatories concerning the high mysteries of our faith, as are able
quickly to trap a simple unlearned, or yet a well-witted layman without
learning, and bring them by such sinister introductions soon to their own
confusion. And further, if there chance any heresy to be by such subtle
policy, by any person confessed in words, and yet never committed neither
in thought nor deed, then put they, without further favour, the said person
either to make his purgation, and so thereby to lose his honesty and
credence for ever; or else as some simple silly soul [may do], the said
person may stand precisely to the testimony of his own well-known
conscience, rather than confess his innocent truth in that behalf [to be
other than he knows it to be], and so be utterly destroyed. And if it
fortune the said party so accused to deny the said accusation, and to put
his adversaries to prove the same as being untrue, forged and imagined
against him, then for the most part such witnesses as are brought forth for
the same, be they but two in number, never so sore diffamed, of little
truth or credence, they shall be allowed and enabled, only by discretion of
the said ordinaries, their commissaries or substitutes; and thereupon
sufficient cause be found to proceed to judgment, to deliver the party so
accused either to secular hands, after abjuration,[225] without remedy; or
afore if he submit himself, as best happeneth, he shall have to make his
purgation and bear a faggot, to his extreme shame and undoing.

"In consideration of all these things, most gracious Sovereign Lord, and
forasmuch as there is at this present time, and by a few years past hath
been outrageous violence on the one part and much default and lack of
patient sufferance, charity, and good will on the other part; and
consequently a marvellous disorder [hath ensued] of the godly quiet, peace,
and tranquillity in which this your Realm heretofore, ever hitherto, has
been through your politic w