Doctor London’s intercession, if timid, was generous; he obviously wished to suggest that the matter should be hushed up, and that the offending parties should be dismissed with a reprimand.  If the decision had rested with Wolsey, it is likely that this view would have been readily acted upon.  But the Bishop of Lincoln was a person in whom the spirit of humanity had been long exorcised by the spirit of an ecclesiastic.  He was staggering along the last years of a life against which his own register[527] bears dreadful witness, and he would not burden his conscience with mercy to heretics.  He would not mar the completeness of his barbarous career.  He singled out three of the prisoners—­Garret, Clark, and Ferrars[528]—­and especially entreated that they should be punished.  “They be three perilous men,” he wrote to Wolsey, “and have been the occasion of the corruption of youth.  They have done much mischief, and for the love of God let them be handled thereafter."[529]

Wolsey had Garret in his own keeping, and declined to surrender him.  Ferrars had been taken at the Black Friars, in London,[530] and making his submission, was respited and escaped with abjuration.  But Clark was at Oxford, in the bishop’s power, and the wicked old man was allowed to work his will upon him.  A bill of heresy was drawn, which the prisoner was required to sign.  He refused, and must have been sent to the stake, had he not escaped by dying prematurely of the treatment which he had received in prison.[531] His last words only are recorded.  He was refused the communion, not perhaps as a special act of cruelty, but because the laws of the church would not allow the holy thing to be profaned by the touch of a heretic.  When he was told that it would not be suffered, he said “crede et manducasti”—­“faith is the communion;” and so passed away; a very noble person, so far as the surviving features of his character will let us judge; one who, if his manhood had fulfilled the promise of his youth, would have taken no common part in the Reformation.

The remaining brethren were then dispersed.  Some were sent home to their friends—­others, Anthony Dalaber among them, were placed on their trial, and being terrified at their position, recanted, and were sentenced to do penance.  Ferrars was brought to Oxford for the occasion, and we discern indistinctly (for the mere fact is all which survives) a great fire at Carfax; a crowd of spectators, and a procession of students marching up High Street with fagots on their shoulders, the solemn beadles leading them with gowns and maces.  The ceremony was repeated to which Dr. Barnes had been submitted at St. Paul’s.  They were taken three times round the fire, throwing in each first their fagot, and then some one of the offending books, in token that they repented and renounced their errors.

Thus was Oxford purged of heresy.  The state of innocence which Dr. London pathetically lamented[532] was restored, and the heads of houses had peace till their rest was broken by a ruder storm.