n through the country, the matter assumed a
dangerous complexion: it became at once essential to ascertain how far, and
among what classes of the state, these things had penetrated. The Friars
Mendicant were discovered to be in league with her, and these itinerants
were ready-made missionaries of sedition. They had privilege of vagrancy
without check or limit; and owing to their universal distribution and the
freemasonry among themselves, the secret disposition of every family in
England was intimately known to them. No movement, therefore, could be
securely over-looked in which these orders had a share; the country might
be undermined in secret; and the government might only learn their danger
at the moment of explosion.

No sooner, therefore, were the commissioners in possession of the general
facts, than the principal parties--that is to say, the Nun herself and five
of the monks of Christ Church at Canterbury--with whom her intercourse was
most constant, were sent to the Tower to be "examined"--the monks it is
likely by "torture," if they could not otherwise be brought to confession.
The Nun was certainly not tortured. On her first arrest, she was obstinate
in maintaining her prophetic character; and she was detected in sending
messages to her friends, "to animate them to adhere to her and to her
prophecies."[645] But her courage ebbed away under the hard reality of her
position. She soon made a full confession, in which her accomplices joined
her; and the half-completed web of conspiracy was ravelled out. They did
not attempt to conceal that they had intended, if possible, to create an
insurrection. The five monks--Father Bocking, Father Rich, Father Rysby,
Father Dering, and Father Goold--had assisted the Nun in inventing her
"Revelations;" and as apostles, they had travelled about the country to
communicate them in whatever quarters they were likely to be welcome. When
we remember that Archbishop Warham had been a dupe of this woman, and that
even Wolsey's experience and ability had not prevented him from believing
in her power, we are not surprised to find high names among those who were
implicated. Vast numbers of abbots and priors, and of regular and secular
clergy, had listened eagerly; country gentlemen also, and London merchants.
The Bishop of Rochester had "wept for joy" at the first utterances of the
inspired prophetess; and Sir Thomas More, "who at first did little regard
the said revelations, afterwards d