her still clung to his followers were ready to fling away. Carlstadt
was denouncing the reformer of Wittemberg as fiercely as Luther himself
had denounced the Pope, and meanwhile the religious excitement was
kindling wild dreams of social revolution, and men stood aghast at the
horrors of a Peasant-War which broke out in Southern Germany. It was not
therefore as a mere translation of the Bible that Tyndale's work reached
England. It came as a part of the Lutheran movement, and it bore the
Lutheran stamp in its version of ecclesiastical words. "Church" became
"congregation," "priest" was changed into "elder." It came too in company
with Luther's bitter invectives and reprints of the tracts of Wyclif,
which the German traders of the Steelyard were importing in large numbers.
We can hardly wonder that More denounced the book as heretical, or that
Warham ordered it to be given up by all who possessed it.

[Sidenote: Wolsey and Lutheranism]

Wolsey took little heed of religious matters, but his policy was one of
political adhesion to Rome, and he presided over a solemn penance to which
some Steelyard men submitted in St. Paul's. "With six and thirty abbots,
mitred priors, and bishops, and he in his whole pomp mitred" the Cardinal
looked on while "great baskets full of books ... were commanded after the
great fire was made before the Rood of Northen," the crucifix by the great
north door of the cathedral, "thus to be burned, and those heretics to go
thrice about the fire and to cast in their fagots." But scenes and
denunciations such as these were vain in the presence of an enthusiasm
which grew every hour. "Englishmen," says a scholar of the time, "were so
eager for the gospel as to affirm that they would buy a New Testament even
if they had to give a hundred thousand pieces of money for it." Bibles and
pamphlets were smuggled over to England and circulated among the poorer
and trading classes through the agency of an association of "Christian
Brethren," consisting principally of London tradesmen and citizens, but
whose missionaries spread over the country at large. They found their way
at once to the Universities, where the intellectual impulse given by the
New Learning was quickening religious speculation. Cambridge had already
won a name for heresy; Barnes, one of its foremost scholars, had to carry
his fagot before Wolsey at St. Paul's; two other Cambridge teachers,
Bilney and Latimer, were already known as "Lutherans."