with him from abroad. These, however, through a timely warning of
the danger, had been happily secreted,[498] or it might have gone harder
with him. As it was, he was committed to the Fleet on the charge of having
used heretical language. An abjuration was drawn up by Wolsey, which he
signed; and while he remained in prison preparations were made for a
ceremony, in which he was to bear a part, in St. Paul's church, by which
the Catholic authorities hoped to produce some salutary effect on the
disaffected spirits of London.

Vast quantities of Tyndal's publications had been collected by the police.
The bishops, also, had subscribed among themselves[499] to buy up the
copies of the New Testament before they left Antwerp;--an unpromising
method, like an attempt to extinguish fire by pouring oil upon it; they had
been successful, however, in obtaining a large immediate harvest, and a
pyramid of offending volumes was ready to be consumed in a solemn _auto da
fe_.

In the morning of Shrove Sunday, then, 1527, we are to picture to ourselves
a procession moving along London streets from the Fleet prison to St.
Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight
marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with
bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men
marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds'
weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the
fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy,
was remitted. One of these was Barnes; the other five were "Stillyard men,"
undistinguishable by any other name, but detected members of the
brotherhood.

It was eight o'clock when they arrived at St. Paul's. The people had
flocked in crowds before them. The public seats and benches were filled.
All London had hurried to the spectacle. A platform was erected in the
centre of the nave, on the top of which, enthroned in pomp of purple and
gold and splendour, sate the great cardinal, supported on each side with
eighteen bishops, mitred abbots, and priors--six-and-thirty in all; his
chaplains and "spiritual doctors" sitting also where they could find place,
"in gowns of damask and satin." Opposite the platform, over the north door
of the cathedral, was a great crucifix--a famous image, in those days
called the Rood of Northen; and at the foot of it, inside a rail, a fire
was burning, with the s