were disposed to meet the measures of the Government.
'Robert Legate, friar of Furness, deposeth that the monks had a prophecy among them, that 'in England shall be slain the decorate rose in his mother's belly,' and this they interpret of his Majesty, saying that his Majesty shall die by the hands of priests; for the Church is the mother, and the Church shall slay his Grace. The said Robert maintaineth that he hath heard the monks often say this. Also, it is said among them that the King's Grace was not the right heir to the crown; for that his Grace's father came in by no line, but by the sword. Also, that no secular knave should be head of the Church; also that the abbot did know of these treasons, and had made no report thereof.'[1]
Nor was it only in the remote abbeys of the North that such dangerous language was ventured. The pulpit of St Paul's rang Sunday after Sunday with the polemics of the divorce; and if 'the holy water of the court' made the higher clergy cringing and cowardly, the rank and file, even in London itself, showed a bold English front, and spoke out their thoughts with entire recklessness. Among the preachers on Catherine's side, Father Forest, famous afterward in Catholic martyrologies, began to distinguish himself. Forest wa s warden of a convent of Observants at Greenwich attached to the royal chapel, and having been Catherine's confessor, remained, with the majority of the friars, faithful to her
- ↑ Deposition of Robert Legate concerning the Language of the Monks of Furness: Rolls House MS.
