Page:A Supplication for the Beggars.djvu/18

x ¶ And this is by the reason that the chief instrument of youre lawe ye[a] the chief of your counsell and he whiche hath your swerde in his hond to whome also all the other instrumentes are obedient is alweys a spirituell man.

After that the Clergye of England, and especially the Cardinall, vnderstoode these bookes of the Beggars supplication aforesayd, to be strawne abroade in the streetes of London, and also before the kyng. The sayd Cardinall caused not onely his seruauntes diligently to attend to gather them vp, that they should not come into the kynges handes, but also when he vnderstode, that the king had receaued one or two of them, he came vnto the kynges Maiesty saying: "If it shall please your grace, here are diuers seditious persons which haue scattered abroad books conteyning manifest errours and heresies" desiryng his grace to beware of them. Whereupon the kyng putting his hand in his bosome, tooke out one of the bookes and deliuered it vnto the Cardinall. Then the Cardinall, together with the Byshops, consulted &c. Eccles. Hist. &c., p. 900. Ed. 1576.

the tyme of M[aster]. Bilney, and the fall of the Cardinall, I should haue placed the story of Symon Fish with the booke called the Supplication of Beggars, declaryng how and by what meanes it came to the kynges