Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/269

1535.] before Cromwell with an entreaty to be excused the submission. For answer to their petition they were sent to the Tower, where they were soon after joined by Father Reynolds, one of the recalcitrant monks of Sion. These four were brought on the 26th of April before a committee of the privy council, of which Cromwell was one. The Act of Supremacy was laid before them, and they were required to signify their acceptance of it. They refused, and two days after Wednesday, they were brought to trial before a special commission. They pleaded all 'not guilty.' They had of course broken the Act; but they would not acknowledge that guilt could be involved in disobedience to a law which was itself unlawful. Their words in the Tower to the privy council formed the matter of the charge against them. It appears from the record that on their examination, 'they, treacherously machinating and desiring to deprive the King our sovereign lord of his title of supreme Head of the Church of England, did openly declare, and say, the King our sovereign lord is not supreme Head on earth of the Church of England.'

But their conduct on the trial, or at least the conduct of Haughton spared all difficulty in securing a conviction. The judges pressed the prior 'not to show so little wisdom as to maintain his own opinion against the consent of the realm.' He replied, that he had resolved originally to imitate the example of his Master