the second revelation was devised not only as an interpretation of the former, but to the intent to induce the king’s subjects to believe that God took the King’s Grace for no king of this realm, and that they should likewise take him for no righteous king, and themselves not bounden to be his subjects; which might have put the King and the Queen’s Grace in jeopardy of their crown and of their issue, and the people of this realm in great danger of destruction."[644]

It was no light matter to pronounce the king to be in the position of Saul after his rejection; and read by the light of the impending excommunication, the Nun’s words could mean nothing but treason.  The speaker herself was in correspondence with the pope; she had attested her divine commission by miracles, and had been recognised as a saint by an Archbishop of Canterbury; the regular orders of the clergy throughout the realm were known to regard her as inspired; and when the commission recollected that the king was threatened further with dying “a villain’s death;” and that these and similar prophecies were carefully written out, and were in private circulation through the country, the matter assumed a dangerous complexion:  it became at once essential to ascertain how far, and among what classes of the state, these things had penetrated.  The Friars Mendicant were discovered to be in league with her, and these itinerants were ready-made missionaries of sedition.  They had privilege of vagrancy without check or limit; and owing to their universal distribution and the freemasonry among themselves, the secret disposition of every family in England was intimately known to them.  No movement, therefore, could be securely over-looked in which these orders had a share; the country might be undermined in secret; and the government might only learn their danger at the moment of explosion.

No sooner, therefore, were the commissioners in possession of the general facts, than the principal parties—­that is to say, the Nun herself and five of the monks of Christ Church at Canterbury—­with whom her intercourse was most constant, were sent to the Tower to be “examined”—­the monks it is likely by “torture,” if they could not otherwise be brought to confession.  The Nun was certainly not tortured.  On her first arrest, she was obstinate in maintaining her prophetic character; and she was detected in sending messages to her friends, “to animate them to adhere to her and to her prophecies."[645] But her courage ebbed away under the hard reality of her position.  She soon made a full confession, in which her accomplices joined her; and the half-completed web of conspiracy was ravelled out.  They did not attempt to conceal that they had intended, if possible, to create an insurrection.  The five monks—­Father Bocking, Father Rich, Father Rysby, Father Dering, and Father Goold—­had assisted the Nun in inventing her “Revelations;” and as apostles, they had travelled about the country