Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/320

300 printing press; John Bale, the noisiest, the most profane, the most indecent of the movement party, had been pouring out pamphlets and plays. Gardiner wrote in protest to Somerset against the toleration by the Government of the insolence and brutality of him and others like him. He remonstrated also against the sudden alteration of doctrine contemplated in the homilies; and three weeks before the visitors were coming to Winchester, he was invited, at his own earnest request, to state his views to the council. 'If he could have written with the blood of his heart,' he told the Protector, 'he would have done it, to have stayed the thing till it had been more maturely digested.' The whole proceedings on the visitation, he said, were illegal. No royal commission could have place against an Act of Parliament; and even in the late King's