em were weary of these works, and delivered
them to Dalaber. I am marvellous sorry for the young men. If they be openly
called upon, although they appear not greatly infect, yet they shall never
avoid slander, because my Lord's Grace did send for Master Garret to be
taken. I suppose his Grace will know of your good lordship everything.
Nothing shall be hid, I assure your good lordship, an every one of them
were my brother; and I do only make this moan for these youths, for surely
they be of the most towardly young men in Oxford; and as far as I do yet
perceive, not greatly infect, but much to blame for reading any part of
these works."[526]

Doctor London's intercession, if timid, was generous; he obviously wished
to suggest that the matter should be hushed up, and that the offending
parties should be dismissed with a reprimand. If the decision had rested
with Wolsey, it is likely that this view would have been readily acted
upon. But the Bishop of Lincoln was a person in whom the spirit of humanity
had been long exorcised by the spirit of an ecclesiastic. He was staggering
along the last years of a life against which his own register[527] bears
dreadful witness, and he would not burden his conscience with mercy to
heretics. He would not mar the completeness of his barbarous career. He
singled out three of the prisoners--Garret, Clark, and Ferrars[528]--and
especially entreated that they should be punished. "They be three perilous
men," he wrote to Wolsey, "and have been the occasion of the corruption of
youth. They have done much mischief, and for the love of God let them be
handled thereafter."[529]

Wolsey had Garret in his own keeping, and declined to surrender him.
Ferrars had been taken at the Black Friars, in London,[530] and making his
submission, was respited and escaped with abjuration. But Clark was at
Oxford, in the bishop's power, and the wicked old man was allowed to work
his will upon him. A bill of heresy was drawn, which the prisoner was
required to sign. He refused, and must have been sent to the stake, had he
not escaped by dying prematurely of the treatment which he had received in
prison.[531] His last words only are recorded. He was refused the
communion, not perhaps as a special act of cruelty, but because the laws of
the church would not allow the holy thing to be profaned by the touch of a
heretic. When he was told that it would not be suffered, he said "_crede et
manducasti_"--"faith is the com