Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/359

1548.] of the towns and parishes, exempted from the operation of the statute. The sacrament of the altar was called the sacrament of the halter. Hocus pocus, the modern conjuror's catchword, was the jesting corruption of the hoc est corpus in the canon of the mass. With pleasantry of this kind, acting as an additional stimulant on the visitation, the preachers provoked a rising in Cornwall in the summer of 1548, and a royal commissioner, named William Body, was murdered in a church. But a priest, who had been concerned in it, was hanged and quartered in Smithfield; twenty-eight other persons were put to death in different parts of the country; and the riot was appeased. The malcontents were chiefly among the people. Spoliation and reformation were going hand in hand; the nobles and gentlemen were well contented for the time to overthrow, bind, and strip the haughty Church which had trampled on them for centuries; and they let pass, not without remonstrance, but without determined opposition, the outrages upon the creed which in the recoil of feeling would provoke so fearful a retribution. Among the leading Protestant