and detestable treasons against the King’s Highness, where, in very deed, the persons so accused never spake nor committed any such offence; by reason whereof divers of the king’s true, faithful, and loving subjects have been put in fear and dread of their lives and of the loss and forfeiture of their lands and chattels—­for reformation hereof, be it enacted, that if any person or persons, of what estate, degree, or condition he or they shall be, shall at any time hereafter devise, make, or write, or cause to be made any manner of writing comprising that any person has spoken, committed, or done any offence or offences which now by the laws of this realm be made treason, or that hereafter shall be made treason, and do not subscribe, or cause to be subscribed, his true name to the said writing, and within twelve days next after ensuing do not personally come before the king or his council, and affirm the contents of the said writings to be true, and do as much as in him shall be for the approvement of the same, that then all and every person or persons offending as aforesaid, shall be deemed and adjudged a felon or felons; and being lawfully convicted of such offence, after the laws of the realm, shall suffer pains of death and loss and forfeiture of lands, goods, and chattels, without benefit of clergy or privilege of sanctuary to be admitted or allowed in that behalf.”

[366] Accusation brought by Robert Wodehouse, Prior of Whitby, against the Abbot, for slanderous words against Anne Boleyn:  Rolls House MS.

[367] Deposition of Robert Legate concerning the Language of the Monks of Furness:  Rolls House MS.

[368] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 254.

[369] Father Forest hath laboured divers manner of ways to expulse Father Laurence out of the convent, and his chief cause is, because he knoweth that Father Laurence will preach the king’s matter whensoever it shall please his Grace to command him.—­Ibid. p. 250.

[370] Ibid. p. 251.

[371] Lyst to Cromwell.  Ibid. p. 255.  STRYPE, Eccles.  Memor., vol. i.  Appendix, No. 47.

[372] STOW’S Annals, p. 562.  This expression passed into a proverb, although the words were first spoken by a poor friar; they were the last which the good Sir Humfrey Gilbert was heard to utter before his ship went down.

[373] Vaughan to Cromwell:  State Papers, vol. vii. p. 489-90.  “I learn that this book was first drawn by the Bishop of Rochester, and so being drawn, was by the said bishop afterwards delivered in England to two Spaniards, being secular and laymen.  They receiving his first draught, either by themselves or some other Spaniards, altered and perfinished the same into the form that it now is; Peto and one Friar Elstowe of Canterbury, being the only men that have and do take upon themselves to be conveyers of the same books into England, and conveyers of all other things into and out of England.