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 licence to preach.[497] Barnes was less fortunate; he was far inferior to Latimer; a noisy, unwise man, without reticence or prudence.  In addition to his offences in matters of doctrine, he had attacked Wolsey himself with somewhat vulgar personality; and it was thought well to single him out for a public, though not a very terrible admonition.  His house had been searched for books, which he was suspected, and justly suspected, of having brought with him from abroad.  These, however, through a timely warning of the danger, had been happily secreted,[498] or it might have gone harder with him.  As it was, he was committed to the Fleet on the charge of having used heretical language.  An abjuration was drawn up by Wolsey, which he signed; and while he remained in prison preparations were made for a ceremony, in which he was to bear a part, in St. Paul’s church, by which the Catholic authorities hoped to produce some salutary effect on the disaffected spirits of London.

Vast quantities of Tyndal’s publications had been collected by the police.  The bishops, also, had subscribed among themselves[499] to buy up the copies of the New Testament before they left Antwerp;—­an unpromising method, like an attempt to extinguish fire by pouring oil upon it; they had been successful, however, in obtaining a large immediate harvest, and a pyramid of offending volumes was ready to be consumed in a solemn auto da fe.

In the morning of Shrove Sunday, then, 1527, we are to picture to ourselves a procession moving along London streets from the Fleet prison to St. Paul’s Cathedral.  The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight marshal, and the tipstaffs, and “all the company they could make,” “with bills and glaives;” and in the midst of these armed officials, six men marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds’ weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy, was remitted.  One of these was Barnes; the other five were “Stillyard men,” undistinguishable by any other name, but detected members of the brotherhood.