munion;" and so passed away; a very noble
person, so far as the surviving features of his character will let us
judge; one who, if his manhood had fulfilled the promise of his youth,
would have taken no common part in the Reformation.

The remaining brethren were then dispersed. Some were sent home to their
friends--others, Anthony Dalaber among them, were placed on their trial,
and being terrified at their position, recanted, and were sentenced to do
penance. Ferrars was brought to Oxford for the occasion, and we discern
indistinctly (for the mere fact is all which survives) a great fire at
Carfax; a crowd of spectators, and a procession of students marching up
High Street with fagots on their shoulders, the solemn beadles leading them
with gowns and maces. The ceremony was repeated to which Dr. Barnes had
been submitted at St. Paul's. They were taken three times round the fire,
throwing in each first their fagot, and then some one of the offending
books, in token that they repented and renounced their errors.

Thus was Oxford purged of heresy. The state of innocence which Dr. London
pathetically lamented[532] was restored, and the heads of houses had peace
till their rest was broken by a ruder storm.

In this single specimen we may see a complete image of Wolsey's
persecution, as with varying details it was carried out in every town and
village from the Tweed to the Land's End. I dwell on the stories of
individual suffering, not to colour the narrative, or to re-awaken feelings
of bitterness which may well rest now and sleep for ever; but because,
through the years in which it was struggling for recognition, the history
of Protestantism is the history of its martyrs. No rival theology, as I
have said, had as yet shaped itself into formulas. We have not to trace any
slow growing elaboration of opinion. Protestantism, before it became an
establishment, was a refusal to live any longer in a lie. It was a falling
back upon the undefined untheoretic rules of truth and piety which lay upon
the surface of the Bible, and a determination rather to die than to mock
with unreality any longer the Almighty Maker of the world. We do not look
in the dawning manifestations of such a spirit for subtleties of intellect.
Intellect, as it ever does, followed in the wake of the higher virtues of
manly honesty and truthfulness. And the evidences which were to effect the
world's conversion were so cunningly arranged syllogistic demonstratio