In 1514 a London merchant was committed to the Lollards’ Tower for refusing to submit to an unjust exaction of mortuary;[99] and a few days after was found dead in his cell.  An inquest was held upon the body, when a verdict of wilful murder was returned against the chancellor of the Bishop of London; and so intense was the feeling of the city, that the bishop applied to Wolsey for a special jury to be chosen on the trial.  “For assured I am,” he said, “that if my chancellor be tried by any twelve men in London, they be so maliciously set in favorem haereticae pravitatis, that they will cast and condemn any clerk, though he were as innocent as Abel."[100] Fish’s famous pamphlet also shows the spirit which was seething; and though we may make some allowance for angry rhetoric, his words have the clear ring of honesty in them; and he spoke of what he had seen and knew.  The monks, he tells the king, “be they that have made a hundred thousand idle dissolute women in your realm, who would have gotten their living honestly in the sweat of their faces had not their superfluous riches allured them to lust and idleness.  These be they that when they have drawn men’s wives to such incontinency, spend away their husbands’ goods, make the women to run away from their husbands, bringing both man, wife, and children to idleness, theft, and beggary.  Yea, who is able to number the great broad bottomless ocean sea full of evils that this mischievous generation may bring upon us if unpunished?"[101]

Copies of this book were strewed about the London streets; Wolsey issued a prohibition against it, with the effect which such prohibitions usually have.  Means were found to bring it under the eyes of Henry himself; and the manner in which it was received by him is full of significance, and betrays that the facts of the age were already telling on his understanding.  He was always easy of access and easy of manner; and the story, although it rests on Foxe’s authority, has internal marks of authenticity.

“One Master Edmund Moddis, being with the king in talk of religion, and of the new books that were come from beyond the seas, said that if it might please his Highness to pardon him, and such as he would bring to his Grace, he should see such a book as it was a marvel to hear of.  The king demanded who they were?  He said ’Two of your merchants—­George Elliot and George Robinson.’  The king appointed a time to speak with them.  When they came before his presence in a privy closet, he demanded what they had to say or to shew him.  One of them said that there was a book come to their hands which they had there to shew his Grace.  When he saw it he demanded if any of them could read it.  ‘Yea,’ said George Elliot, ’if it please your Grace to hear it.’  ‘I thought so,’ said the king; ’if need were, thou couldst say it without book.’

“The whole book being read out, the king made a long pause, and then said, ’If a man should pull down an old stone wall, and should begin at the lower part, the upper part thereof might chance to fall upon his head.’  Then he took the book, and put it in his desk, and commanded them, on their allegiance, that they should not tell any man that he had seen it."[102]