Tracy. In his last testament he had bequeathed his soul to God through the mercies of Christ, declining the mediatorial offices of the saints, and leaving no money to be expended in masses.[1] Such notorious heresy could not be passed over with impunity, and the first step of the assembled clergy[2] was to issue a commission to raise the body and burn it. Their audacity displayed at once the power which they possessed, and the temper in which they were disposed to use it. The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have been responsible for this monstrous order, which unfortunately was carried into execution before Henry had time to interfere.[3] It was the last act of the kind, however, in which he was permitted to indulge, and the legislature made haste to take away such authority from hands so incompetent to use it. From their debates upon burning the dead Tracy, Convocation were proceeding to discuss the possibility of burning the living Latimer,[4] when they were recalled to their senses by a summons to prepare some more reasonable answer than that which the bishops had made for them on their privilege of making laws. Twenty more years of work were to be lived by Latimer before they were to burn him, and their own delinquencies were for the present of a more pressing nature. The House of Commons at the same time proceeded to
- ↑ Hall, p. 796.
- ↑ Burnet, vol. iii. p. 115.
- ↑ Warham was however fined 300l. for it.—Hall, 796. A letter of Richard Tracy, son of the dead man, is in the MS. State Paper Office, first series, vol. iv. He says the King's Majesty had committed the investigation of the matter to Cromwell.
- ↑ Latimer's Sermons, p. 46.
