7.  Whom do you know or have heard hath counselled, procured, aided, comforted, or conferred with any such offender?  When, where, and in what manner was the same?

8.  Do you know or have heard of any of those offenders to affirm all such that were not of their opinions touching the premises, to be schismatics and in error.  And whom do you know hath so affirmed?  And when and where was it spoken?

9.  What can you say more of any of the premises, or whom have you known or heard can give any notice of the same?  And speak all your knowledge therein.

Hereupon follows the report of the Royal Commissioners on the depositions of witnesses examined by them with the above formulary:—­

“Examinations taken at Cearne, co.  Dorset, 21 March, 36 Eliz., before us, Tho.  Lord Howard, Viscount Howard of Bindon, Sir Ralph Horsey, knt., Francis James, Chancellor, John Williams, and Francis Hawley, esquires, by virtue of a commission to us and others, directed from some of her Majesty’s High Commissioners in causes ecclesiastical."*

* On the last page is written:  “These examinations are the trew copies taken at Cearne, 21 March 1593.”

From the two first witnesses examined, John Hancock, parson of South Parrot, and Richard Bagage, churchwarden of Lo, no information was obtained.  The third witness, John Jesopp, minister, of Gillingham, “said nothing of his own knowledge, but had heard that one Herryott, of Sir Walter Rawleigh his house, had brought the Godhead in question, and the whole course of the Scriptures, but of whom he so heard it he did not remember. (Thomas Harriot was an acknowledged deist, and Raleigh had taken him into his house to study mathematics with him.] He heard his brother, Dr. Jesopp, say that Mr. Carew Rawleigh, reasoning with Mr. Parry and Mr. Archdeacon about the Godhead [as he conjectureth], his said brother, thinking that Mr. Archdeacon and Mr. Parry would take offence at that argument, desired the Lord Bishop of Worcester [then being there] that he might argue with the said Mr. Rawleigh, for, said he, your Lordship shall hear him argue as like a pagan as ever you heard any.  But the matter was so shut up, as this examinate heard his brother say, and proceeded not to argument, and further he saith that he hath heard one Allen, now of Portland Castle, suspected of atheism, but of whom he heard it he remembereth not.”

William Hussey, churchwarden of Gillingham, corroborated the report of Sir Walter Raleigh’s suspected atheism.

John Davis, curate of Motcomb, “to the first interrogatory saith that he knoweth of no such person directly, but he hath heard Sir Walter Raleigh, by general report, hath had some reasoning against the deity of God and His omnipotence; and hath heard the like of Mr. Carew Raleigh, but not so directly.  Also he saith he heard the like report of one, Mr. Thinn, of Wiltshire, which he heard from a barber in Warminster, dwelling in a by-lane there, who told this deponent he did marvel that a gentleman of his condition should deliver words to so mean a man as himself, tending to this sense, as though God’s Providence did not reach over all creatures, or to like effect.