the clergy to undertake it; while in the most notorious of the men themselves, in Tyndal and in Frith, he had more than once expressed an anxious interest.[491] But the convictions of his early years were long in yielding.  His feeling, though genuine, extended no further than to pity, to a desire to recover estimable heretics out of errors which he would endeavour to pardon.  They knew, and all the “brethren” knew, that if they persisted, they must look for the worst from the king and from every earthly power; they knew it, and they made their account with it.  An informer deposed to the council, that he had asked one of the society “how the King’s Grace did take the matter against the sacrament; which answered, the King’s Highness was extreme against their opinions, and would punish them grievously; also that my Lords of Norfolk and Suffolk, my Lord Marquis of Exeter, with divers other great lords, were very extreme against them.  Then he (the informer) asked him how he and his fellows would do seeing this, the which answered they had two thousand books out against the Blessed Sacrament, in the commons’ hands; and if it were once in the commons’ heads, they would have no further care."[492]

Tyndal then being at work at Antwerp, and the society for the dispersion of his books thus preparing itself in England, the authorities were not slow in taking the alarm.  The isolated discontent which had prevailed hitherto had been left to the ordinary tribunals; the present danger called for measures of more systematic coercion.  This duty naturally devolved on Wolsey, and the office of Grand Inquisitor, which he now assumed, could not have fallen into more competent hands.

Wolsey was not cruel.  There is no instance, I believe, in which he of his special motion sent a victim to the stake;—­it would be well if the same praise could be allowed to Cranmer.  There was this difference between the cardinal and other bishops, that while they seemed to desire to punish, Wolsey was contented to silence; while they, in their conduct of trials, made escape as difficult as possible, Wolsey sought rather to make submission easy.  He was too wise to suppose that he could cauterise heresy, while the causes of it, in the corruption of the clergy, remained unremoved; and the remedy to which he trusted, was the infusing new vigour into the constitution of the church.[493] Nevertheless, he was determined to repress, as far as outward measures could repress it, the spread of the contagion; and he set himself to accomplish his task with the full energy of his nature, backed by the whole power, spiritual and secular, of the kingdom.  The country was covered 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.[494] 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,[495] and there was an attempt to arrest Tyndal at Brussels, from which, for that time, he happily escaped.[496]