erties of the city; it was necessary,
therefore, to commit him to the county gaol, and he was sent to Ilchester.
"Master Wilkyns offered himself to be bound to the said justice in three
hundred pounds to discharge him of the said Garret, and to see him surely
to Master Proctor's of Oxford; yet could he not have him, for the justice
said that the order of the law would not so serve."[525] The fortunate
captor had therefore to content himself with the consciousness of his
exploit, and the favourable report of his conduct which was sent to the
bishops; and Garret went first to Ilchester, and thence was taken by
special writ, and surrendered to Wolsey.

Thus unkind had fortune shown herself to the chief criminal, guilty of the
unpardonable offence of selling Testaments at Oxford, and therefore hunted
down as a mad dog, and a common enemy of mankind. He escaped for the
present the heaviest consequences, for Wolsey persuaded him to abjure. A
few years later we shall again meet him, when he had recovered his better
nature, and would not abjure, and died as a brave man should die. In the
meantime we return to the university, where the authorities were busy
trampling out the remains of the conflagration.

Two days after his letter respecting the astrologer, the Warden of New
College wrote again to the Diocesan, with an account of his further
proceedings. He was an efficient inquisitor, and the secrets of the poor
undergraduates had been unravelled to the last thread. Some of "the
brethren" had confessed; all were in prison; and the doctor desired
instructions as to what should be done with them. It must be said for Dr.
London, that he was anxious that they should be treated leniently. Dalaber
described him as a roaring lion, and he was a bad man, and came at last to
a bad end. But it is pleasant to find that even he, a mere blustering
arrogant official, was not wholly without redeeming points of character;
and as little good will be said for him hereafter, the following passage in
his second letter may be placed to the credit side of his account. The tone
in which he wrote was at least humane, and must pass for more than an
expression of natural kindness, when it is remembered that he was
addressing a person with whom tenderness for heresy was a crime.

"These youths," he said, "have not been long conversant with Master Garret,
nor have greatly perused his mischievous books; and long before Master
Garret was taken, divers of th