At length the Bishop of London believed that Latimer was in his power.  He had preached at St. Abb’s, in the city, “at the request of a company of merchants,"[570] in the beginning of the winter of 1531; and soon after his return to his living, he was informed that he was to be cited before Stokesley.  His friends in the neighbourhood wrote to him, evidently in great alarm, and more anxious that he might clear himself, than expecting that he would be able to do so;[571] he himself, indeed, had almost made up his mind that the end was coming.[572]

The citation was delayed for a few weeks.  It was issued at last, on the 10th of January, 1531-2,[573] and was served by Sir Walter Hungerford, of Farley.[574] The offences with which he was charged were certain “excesses and irregularities” not specially defined; and the practice of the bishops in such cases was not to confine the prosecution to the acts committed; but to draw up a series of articles, on which it was presumed that the orthodoxy of the accused person was open to suspicion, and to question him separately upon each.  Latimer was first examined by Stokesley; subsequently at various times by the bishops collectively; and finally, when certain formulas had been submitted to him, which he refused to sign, his case was transferred to convocation.  The convocation, as we know, were then in difficulty with their premunire; they had consoled themselves in their sorrow with burning the body of Tracy; and they would gladly have taken further comfort by burning Latimer.[575] He was submitted to the closest cross-questionings, in the hope that he would commit himself.  They felt that he was the most dangerous person to them in the kingdom, and they laboured with unusual patience to ensure his conviction.[576] With a common person they would have rapidly succeeded.  But Latimer was in no haste to be a martyr; he would be martyred patiently when the time was come for martyrdom; but he felt that no one ought “to consent to die,” as long as he could honestly live;[577] and he baffled the episcopal inquisitors with their own weapons.  He has left a most curious account of one of his interviews with them.

“I was once in examination,” he says,[578] “before five or six bishops, where I had much turmoiling.  Every week, thrice, I came to examination, and many snares and traps were laid to get something.  Now, God knoweth, I was ignorant of the law; but that God gave me answer and wisdom what I should speak.  It was God indeed, for else I had never escaped them.  At the last, I was brought forth to be examined into a chamber hanged with arras, where I was before wont to be examined, but now, at this time, the chamber was somewhat altered:  for whereas before there was wont ever to be a fire in the chimney,[579] now the fire was taken away, and an arras hanging hanged over the chimney; and the table stood near the chimney’s end, so that I stood between the table and the chimney’s end.  There was among these bishops that examined