Page:History of england froude.djvu/540

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518
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
[ch. 6.

with, his secret police, arresting suspected persons and searching for books. In London the scrutiny was so strict that at one time there was a general flight and panic; suspected butchers, tailors, and carpenters, hiding themselves in the holds of vessels in the river, and escaping across the Channel.[1] Even there they were not safe. Heretics were outlawed by a common consent of the European Governments. Special offenders were hunted through France by the English emissaries with the permission and countenance of the Court,[2] and there was an attempt to arrest Tyndal at Brussels, from which, for that time, he happily escaped.[3]

Simultaneously the English Universities fell under examination, in consequence of the appearance of dangerous symptoms among the younger students. Dr Barnes, returning from the continent, had used violent language in a pulpit at Cambridge; and Latimer, then a neophyte in heresy, had grown suspect, and had alarmed the heads of houses. Complaints against both of them were forwarded to Wolsey, and they were summoned to London to answer for themselves.

Latimer, for some cause, found favour with the Cardinal, and was dismissed, with a hope on the part of his judge that his accusers might prove as honest as he appeared to be, and even with a general license to preach.[4]

  1. Particulars of Persons who had dispersed Anabaptist and Lutheran Tracts: Rolls House MS.
  2. Dr Taylor to Wolsey: Rolls House MS. Clark to Wolsey: State Papers, vol. vii. pp. 80, 8l.
  3. Ellis, third series, vol. ii. p. 189.
  4. Memoirs of Latimer prefixed to Sermons, pp. 3, 4: and see Strype's Memorials, vol. i.