This offender being thus disposed of, and strict secrecy being observed to prevent the spread of alarm, a rapid search was set on foot for books in all suspected quarters.  The fear of the authorities was that “the infect persons would flee,” and “convey” their poison “away with them."[520] The officials, once on the scent of heresy, were skilful in running down the game.  No time was lost, and by Monday evening many of “the brethren” had been arrested, their rooms examined, and their forbidden treasures discovered and rifled.  Dalaber’s store was found “hid with marvellous secresy;” and in one student’s desk a duplicate of Garret’s list—­the titles of the volumes with which the first “Religious Tract Society” set themselves to convert England.

Information of all this was conveyed in haste by Dr. London to the Bishop of Lincoln, as the ordinary of the university; and the warden told his story with much self-congratulation.  On one point, however, the news which he had to communicate was less satisfactory.  Garret himself was gone—­utterly gone.  Dalaber was obstinate, and no clue to the track of the fugitive could be discovered.  The police were at fault; neither bribes nor threats could elicit anything; and in these desperate circumstances, as he told the bishop, the three heads of houses conceived that they might strain a point of propriety for so good a purpose as to prevent the escape of a heretic.  Accordingly, after a full report of the points of their success, Doctor London went on to relate the following remarkable proceeding: 

“After Master Garret escaped, the commissary being in extreme pensiveness, knew no other remedy but this extraordinary, and caused a figure to be made by one expert in astronomy—­and his judjment doth continually persist upon this, that he fled in a tawny coat south-eastward, and is in the middle of London, and will shortly to the sea side.  He was curate unto the parson of Honey Lane.[521] It is likely he is privily cloaked there.  Wherefore, as soon as I knew the judgment of this astronomer, I thought it expedient and my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises; that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of London.  It will be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works, which he carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul, opening of many privy heresies, and extinction of the same."[522]

We might much desire to know what the bishop’s sensations were in reading this letter—­to know whether it occurred to him that in this naive acknowledgment, the Oxford heresy hunters were themselves confessing to an act of heresy; and that by the law of the church, which they were so eager to administer, they were liable to the same death which they were so zealous to secure for the poor vendors of Testaments.  So indeed they really were.  Consulting the stars had been ruled from immemorial time to be dealing with the devil; the penalty of it was the same as for witchcraft; yet here was a reverend warden of a college considering it his duty to write eagerly of a discovery obtained by these forbidden means, to his own diocesan, begging him to communicate with the Cardinal of York and the Bishop of London, that three of the highest church authorities in England might become participes criminis, by acting on this diabolical information.