goodly night" in
February, with hard frost and a clear full moon, ten miles across the
wolds, to the church.

The door was open as the legend declared; but nothing daunted, they entered
bravely, and lifting down the "idol" from its shrine, with its coat and
shoes, and the store of tapers which were kept for the services, they
carried it on their shoulders for a quarter of a mile from the place where
it had stood, "without any resistance of the said idol." There setting it
on the ground, they struck a light, fastened the tapers to the body, and
with the help of them, sacrilegiously burnt the image down to a heap of
ashes; the old dry wood "blazing so brimly," that it lighted them a full
mile on their way home.[556]

For this night's performance, which, if the devil is the father of lies,
was a stroke of honest work against him and his family, the world rewarded
these men after the usual fashion. One of them, Robert Gardiner, escaped
the search which was made, and disappeared till better times; the remaining
three were swinging in chains six months later on the scene of their
exploit. Their fate was perhaps inevitable. Men who dare to be the first in
great movements are ever self-immolated victims. But I suppose that it was
better for them to be bleaching on their gibbets, than crawling at the feet
of a wooden rood, and believing it to be God.

* * * * *

These were the first Paladins of the Reformation; the knights who slew the
dragons and the enchanters, and made the earth habitable for common flesh
and blood. They were rarely, as we have said, men of great ability, still
more rarely men of "wealth and station;" but men rather of clear senses and
honest hearts. Tyndal was a remarkable person, and so Clark and Frith
promised to become; but the two last were cut off before they had found
scope to show themselves; and Tyndal remaining abroad, lay outside the
battle which was being fought in England, doing noble work, indeed, and
ending as the rest ended, with earning a martyr's crown; but taking no part
in the actual struggle except with his pen. As yet but two men of the
highest order of power were on the side of Protestantism--Latimer and
Cromwell. Of them we have already said something; but the time was now fast
coming when they were to step forward, pressed by circumstances which could
no longer dispense with them, into scenes of far wider activity; and the
present seems a fitting occa