, there I heard a pen walking in the chimney,
behind the cloth. They had appointed one there to write all mine answers;
for they made sure work that I should not start from them: there was no
starting from them: God was my good Lord, and gave me answer; I could never
else have escaped it. The question was this: 'Master Latimer, do you not
think, on your conscience, that you have been suspected of heresy?'--a
subtle question--a very subtle question. There was no holding of peace
would serve. To hold my peace had been to grant myself faulty. To answer
was every way full of danger. But God, which hath always given rile answer,
helped me, or else I could never have escaped it. _Ostendite mihi numisma_
_census_. Shew me, said he, a penny of the tribute money. They laid snares
to destroy him, but he overturneth them in their own traps."[580]

The bishops, however, were not men who were nice in their adherence to the
laws; and it would have gone ill with Latimer, notwithstanding his
dialectic ability. He was excommunicated and imprisoned, and would soon
have fallen into worse extremities; but at the last moment he appealed to
the king, and the king, who knew his value, would not allow him to be
sacrificed. He had refused to subscribe the articles proposed to him.[581]
Henry intimated to the convocation that it was not his pleasure that the
matter should be pressed further; they were to content themselves with a
general submission, which should be made to the archbishop, without
exacting more special acknowledgments. This was the reward to Latimer for
his noble letter. He was absolved, and returned to his parish, though
snatched as a brand out of the fire.

Soon after, the tide turned, and the Reformation entered into a new phase.

Such is a brief sketch of the life of Hugh Latimer, to the time when it
blended with the broad stream of English history. With respect to the other
very great man whom the exigencies of the state called to power
simultaneously with him, our information is far less satisfactory. Though
our knowledge of Latimer's early story comes to us in fragments only, yet
there are certain marks in it by which the outline can be determined with
certainty. A cloud rests over the youth and early manhood of Thomas
Cromwell, through which, only at intervals, we catch glimpses of authentic
facts; and these few fragments of reality seem rather to belong to a
romance than to the actual life of a man.

Cromwell, the mall