Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/232

212 told the Bishop I would pray for the Pope as the chief and Papal head of Christ's Church. And the Bishop told me it was the King's pleasure that I should not. I said unto him I would do it; and Chough I did it not openly, yet would I do it secretly. And he said I might pray for him secretly, but in any wise do it not openly.'

Trifles of this kind may seem unimportant; but at the time they were of moment, for their weight was cumulative; and we can only now recover but a few out of many. Such as they are, however, they show the spirit in which the injunctions were received by a section at least of the English clergy. Nor was this the worst. We find language reported, which shows that many among the monks were watching for symptoms of the promised Imperial invasion, and the progress of the Irish insurgents. A Doctor Maitland, of the order of Black Friars in London, had been 'heard divers times to say, he trusted to see every man's head that was of the new learning, and the maintainers of them, to stand upon a stake, and Cranmer's to be one of them. The King,' he hoped, might suffer 'a violent and shameful death;' and 'the Queen, that mischievous whore, might be brent.' 'He said further, that he knew by his science, which was nigromancy, that all men of the new learning should be suppressed and suffer death, and the people of the old learning should be set up again by the