”[38]

The greatest trials were reserved for the religious dissidents who dared to differ with the king. Henry was vain of his learning and of his polemical powers. No true follower of Luther, he was a Protestant by policy rather than conviction, and he still held many tenets of the Church he had disavowed. These were embodied and promulgated in the notorious Six Articles, otherwise “the whip with six tails,” or the Bloody Statute, so called from its sanguinary results. The doctrines enunciated were such that many could not possibly subscribe to them; the penalties were “strait and bloody,” and very soon they were widely inflicted. Foxe, in a dozen or more pages, recounts the various presentments against individuals, lay and clerical, for transgressing one or more of the principles of the Six Articles; and adds to “the aforesaid, Dr. Taylor, parson of St. Peter’s, in Cornhill; South, parish priest of Allhallows, in Lombard Street; Some, a priest; Giles, the king’s beerbrewer, at the Red Lion, in St. Katherine’s; Thomas Lancaster, priest; all which were imprisoned likewise for the Six Articles.” “To be short,” he adds, “such a number out of all parishes in London, and out of Calais, and divers other quarters, were then apprehended through the said inquisition, that all prisons in London, including Newgate, were too little to hold them, insomuch that they were fain to lay them in the halls. At last, by the means of good Lord Audeley, such pardon was obtained of the king that the said Lord Audeley, then Lord Chancellor, being content that one should be bound for another, they were all discharged, being bound only to appear in the Star Chamber the next day after All Souls, there to answer if they were called; but neither was ther