Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/392

378 he said to Weston, the moderator, "I pray ye be good to an old man; ye may be once as old as I am: ye may come to this age and this debility."



But he appealed in vain, his judges and hearers were lost to all sense of what is due to truth and religion, of what is due to the age and spirit of a veteran servant checks, rebukes, and taunts, such as he had not felt the like in such an audience all his life long." The three insulted and unheard prisoners wrote to the queen that they had been silenced by the noise, not by the arguments of their opponents, and Cranmer in his letter said:—"I never knew nor heard of a more confused disputation in of God, whatever may have been his errors or failings. The rude students only laughed, hissed, clapped their hands, and mocked the old man the more. Seeing that all hopes of a hearing were vain, he told the rabble of his judges and spectators, for such they truly were, "that he had spoken before attentive kings for two and three hours at a time, but that he could not declare his mind there for a quarter of an hour for mockings, revilings, all my life; for albeit there was one appointed to dispute against me, yet every man spake his mind, and brought forth what him liked without order, and such haste was made, that no answer could be suffered to be given."

On the 28th of April, they were all three brought again into St. Mary's Church, and there asked by Weston whether they were willing to conform, and on replying in the negative, were condemned as obstinate heretics, and