me one with whom I had been very familiar, and took him for my great friend, an aged man, and he sate next the table end.  Then, among all other questions, he put forth one, a very subtle and crafty one, and such one indeed as I could not think so great danger in.  And when I would make answer, ‘I pray you, Master Latimer,’ said he, ’speak out; I am very thick of hearing, and here be many that sit far off.’  I marvelled at this, that I was bidden to speak out, and began to misdeem, and gave an ear to the chimney; and, sir, there I heard a pen walking in the chimney, behind the cloth.  They had appointed one there to write all mine answers; for they made sure work that I should not start from them:  there was no starting from them:  God was my good Lord, and gave me answer; I could never else have escaped it.  The question was this:  ’Master Latimer, do you not think, on your conscience, that you have been suspected of heresy?’—­a subtle question—­a very subtle question.  There was no holding of peace would serve.  To hold my peace had been to grant myself faulty.  To answer was every way full of danger.  But God, which hath always given rile answer, helped me, or else I could never have escaped it. Ostendite mihi numisma census.  Shew me, said he, a penny of the tribute money.  They laid snares to destroy him, but he overturneth them in their own traps."[580]

The bishops, however, were not men who were nice in their adherence to the laws; and it would have gone ill with Latimer, notwithstanding his dialectic ability.  He was excommunicated and imprisoned, and would soon have fallen into worse extremities; but at the last moment he appealed to the king, and the king, who knew his value, would not allow him to be sacrificed.  He had refused to subscribe the articles proposed to him.[581] Henry intimated to the convocation that it was not his pleasure that the matter should be pressed further; they were to content themselves with a general submission, which should be made to the archbishop, without exacting more special acknowledgments.  This was the reward to Latimer for his noble letter.  He was absolved, and returned to his parish, though snatched as a brand out of the fire.

Soon after, the tide turned, and the Reformation entered into a new phase.

Such is a brief sketch of the life of Hugh Latimer, to the time when it blended with the broad stream of English history.  With respect to the other very great man whom the exigencies of the state called to power simultaneously with him, our information is far less satisfactory.  Though our knowledge of Latimer’s early story comes to us in fragments only, yet there are certain marks in it by which the outline can be determined with certainty.  A cloud rests over the youth and early manhood of Thomas Cromwell, through which, only at intervals, we catch glimpses of authentic facts; and these few fragments of reality seem rather to belong to a romance than to the actual life of a man.