“When they were all gone, then came into my remembrance the worthy forewarning and godly declaration of that most constant martyr of God, Master John Clark, who, well nigh two years before that, when I did earnestly desire him to grant me to be his scholar, said unto me after this sort:  ’Dalaber, you desire you wot not what, and that which you are, I fear, unable to take upon you; for though now my preaching be sweet and pleasant to you, because there is no persecution laid on you for it, yet the time will come, and that, peradventure, shortly, if ye continue to live godly therein, that God will lay on you the cross of persecution, to try you whether you can as pure gold abide the fire.  You shall be called and judged a heretic; you shall be abhorred of the world; your own friends and kinsfolk will forsake you, and also hate you; you shall be cast into prison, and none shall dare to help you; you shall be accused before bishops, to your reproach and shame, to the great sorrow of all your friends and kinsfolk.  Then will ye wish ye had never known this doctrine; then will ye curse Clark, and wish that ye had never known him because he hath brought you to all these troubles.’

“At which words, I was so grieved that I fell down on my knees at his feet, and with tears and sighs besought him that, for the tender mercy of God, he would not refuse me; saying that I trusted, verily, that he which had begun this in me would not forsake me, but would give me grace to continue therein to the end.  When he heard me say so, he came to me, took me in his arms and kissed me, the tears trickling from his eyes; and said unto me:  ’The Lord God Almighty grant you so to do; and from henceforth for ever, take me for your father, and I will take you for my son in Christ.’”

In these meditations the long Sunday morning wore away.  A little before noon the commissary came again to see if his prisoner was more amenable; finding him, however, still obstinate, he offered him some dinner—­a promise which we will hope he fulfilled, for here Dalaber’s own narrative abruptly forsakes us,[518] leaving uncompleted, at this point, the most vivid picture which remains to us of a fraction of English life in the reign of Henry VIII.  If the curtain fell finally on the little group of students, this narrative alone would furnish us with rare insight into the circumstances under which the Protestants fought their way.  The story, however, can be carried something further, and the strangest incident connected with it remains to be told.

Dalaber breaks off on Sunday at noon.  The same day, or early the following morning, he was submitted once more to examination:  this time, for the discovery of his own offences, and to induce him to give up his confederates.  With respect to the latter he proved “marvellous obstinate.”  “All that was gotten of him was with much difficulty;” nor would he confess to any names as connected with heresy or heretics except that of Clark, which was already known.  About himself he was more open.  He wrote his “book of heresy,” that is, his confession of faith, “with his own hand”—­his evening’s occupation, perhaps, in the stocks in the rector of Lincoln’s house; and the next day he was transferred to prison.[519]