Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/323

1547.] injustice in his turn at Cranmer's hand. But injustice it was; his arbitrary committal had no pretext of law for it; nor, it seems, were he and Bonner the only sufferers. On the return of the Protector from Scotland, the imprisoned Bishop appealed to him in language which was not the less just because it was used by one who, when in power, knew as little what justice meant.

'Whatever become of me,' he said, 'I would your Grace did well; men be mortal, and deeds revive: and methinketh my Lord of Canterbury doth well thus to entangle your Grace with this matter of religion, and to borrow of your authority the Fleet, the Marshalsea, and the King's Bench, with prisonment in his house, wherewith to cause men to agree to that it pleaseth him to call truth in religion, not stablished by any law in the realm. A law it is not yet, and before a law made I have not seen such an imprisonment as I sustain. Our late sovereign lord, whom God pardon, suffered every man to say his mind without imprisonment, till the matter was established by law. If my Lord of Canterbury hath the strength of God's Spirit, with such a learning in his laws, as to be able to overthrow with that breath all untruth, and establish truths, I would not desire the let of it by your Grace, nor the work of God's truth any way hindered; in which case it shall be easy to reprove me in the face of the world with the sword of God's Scriptures, which he should rather desire to do, than borrow the sword your