Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/225

1546.] in the aisles of Lincoln Cathedral reading the Bible, with groups of priests, in twos and threes, approaching to reason with her, 'yet going their ways again without words spoken.' In March, 1545, she was first arrested, in London. She was examined before the Lord Mayor, and afterwards brought before the Bishop of London, Bonner, who had a certain kind of coarse good nature amidst his many faults, treated her with courtesy. The Mayor had sent in a collection of idle exaggerated charges against her. Some of them she denied; some of them she passed over and avoided, and the Bishop would not press upon her hardly. He said that he was sorry for her trouble. If her conscience was disturbed, he trusted that she would be open with him, and no advantage should be taken of anything which she might say. When she declined to accept him for her confessor, he was ready to assist her to escape from her position. He drew up an orthodox formula on the real presence, which he desired her to sign. She took a pen, and wrote at the foot of the paper that she believed all manner of things contained in the faith of the Church; and, although irritated by the palpable evasion, Bonner allowed it to pass. She was remanded to prison for a few days, and then dismissed upon bail; and the Bishop, with, perhaps, a kinder purpose than that which Foxe attributes to him, of calumniating a Protestant saint, entered in his register that Anne Ascue had appeared before him, and had made an adequate profession of her belief