e heads of houses conceived that they might strain
a point of propriety for so good a purpose as to prevent the escape of a
heretic. Accordingly, after a full report of the points of their success,
Doctor London went on to relate the following remarkable proceeding:

"After Master Garret escaped, _the commissary being in extreme pensiveness,
knew no other remedy but this extraordinary, and caused a figure to be made
by one expert in astronomy--and his judjment doth continually persist upon
this, that he fled in a tawny coat south-eastward, and is in the middle of
London, and will shortly to the sea side_. He was curate unto the parson of
Honey Lane.[521] It is likely he is privily cloaked there. Wherefore, as
soon as I knew the judgment of this astronomer, I thought it expedient and
my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises;
that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of
London. It will be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works,
which he carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul,
opening of many privy heresies, and extinction of the same."[522]

We might much desire to know what the bishop's sensations were in reading
this letter--to know whether it occurred to him that in this naive
acknowledgment, the Oxford heresy hunters were themselves confessing to an
act of heresy; and that by the law of the church, which they were so eager
to administer, they were liable to the same death which they were so
zealous to secure for the poor vendors of Testaments. So indeed they really
were. Consulting the stars had been ruled from immemorial time to be
dealing with the devil; the penalty of it was the same as for witchcraft;
yet here was a reverend warden of a college considering it his duty to
write eagerly of a discovery obtained by these forbidden means, to his own
diocesan, begging him to communicate with the Cardinal of York and the
Bishop of London, that three of the highest church authorities in England
might become _participes criminis_, by acting on this diabolical
information.

Meanwhile, the commissary, not wholly relying on the astrologer, but
resolving prudently to make use of the more earthly resources which were at
his disposal, had sent information of Garret's escape to the corporations
of Dover, Rye, Winchester, Southampton, and Bristol, with descriptions of
the person of the fugitive; and this step was taken with so much