Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/344

330 With a singular inconsistence, whilst thus burning these individuals at the stake, a host of foreign divines and preachers were not only tolerated but patronised by Cranmer and his clerical coadjutors, though they held a variety of unorthodox opinions. French, Italian, German, Swiss, Polish, and Scotch reformers, of differing creeds, and many of them promulgating the most decided Calvinism, were received by the primate, and even furnished with a sojourn under his own roof. He procured for them livings in the Church, and favour at Court, believing them to be efficient ministers of the reforms and opinions that he wished to establish. Amongst these the great Scottish reformer, John Knox, was appointed chaplain to the king, and itinerant preacher throughout the kingdom. Utenhoff and Pierre Alexandre were fixed at Canterbury; Faggio, Tremelio, and Cavalier read lectures on Hebrew in Cambridge; Peter Martyr and Bucer taught Protestantism in the two universities; and Joannes à Lasco, Valerandus Pollanus, and Angelo Florio were licensed as superintendents and preachers of the foreign congregations in London and Glastonbury.



These strangers were not too daring in the expression of opinions which might injure their interest with the heads of the new Church; but the celebrated John Hooper, who had been nominated by the king to the bishopric of Gloucester, was far more sturdy in the avowal of his faith, and the denunciation of tenets and ceremonies that he did not approve. Hooper had imbibed those stern and uncompromising sentiments from the foreign and Calvinistic divines, which afterwards became known as Puritanism. He refused to receive consecration in the canonical habits. He asked how he could honestly swear obedience to the metropolitan, when he believed that he owed no obedience, except to God and the Bible? How he could conscientiously assume the episcopal habit, which he had so often pronounced to be the livery of the harlot of Babylon? Cranmer, Ridley, Bucer, and Martyr entreated him to look upon the mere habit as a non-essential, and of no consequence where the life and the doctrine were sound. On the other hand, the Swiss divines applauded his consistent firmness; and the king, to put an end to the controversy, instead of admitting Hooper to his see, sent him to the Fleet prison. The solitude of the prison tamed him to the extent that he yielded to a compromise, consenting to wear the canonical habit when called to preach before the king, or in his own cathedral; but on all other