Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/362

342 who had flinched from the stake when Bilney was burnt, Shaxton, who subsequently relapsed under Mary, and became himself a Romanist persecutor, was now strutting in his new authority, and punishing, suspending, and inhibiting in behalf of Protestant doctrines which were not yet tolerated by the law. Barlow had been openly preaching that purgatory was a delusion; that a layman might be a bishop; that where two or three, it might be, 'cobblers or weavers,' 'were in company in the name of God, there was the Church of God.' Such ill-judged precipitancy was of darker omen to the Reformation than Papal excommunications or Imperial menaces, and would soon be dearly paid for in fresh martyr-fires. Latimer, too, notwithstanding his clear perception and gallant heart, looked with bitterness on the confiscation of establishments which his mind had pictured to him as garrisoned with a Reforming army, as nurseries of apostles of the truth. Like most fiery-natured men, he was ill-pleased to see the stream flowing in a channel other than that which he had marked for it; and the state of his feeling, and the state of the English world, with all its confused imaginings, in these months, is described with some distinctness in a letter written by a London curate to the Mayor of Plymouth, on the 13th of March, 1535–6, while the bill for the suppression of the abbeys was in progress through Parliament.