Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/427

1549.] that matter,' he wrote again to Somerset, 'new laws for this, proclamations for another, one in another's neck, so thick that they be not set by among the people! Alas! sir, take pity of the King, of your wife, and of your children, and of the conservation and state of the realm, and put no more so many irons in the fire at once.' But remonstrances were vain as ever. The Oxford and Cambridge schools rang with their unprofitable jargon, and the victory, of course, was ruled to the innovators. The commissioners of religion called up suspected Anabaptists. Processions of abjured heretics carried faggots at St Paul's, and Joan Bocher, a Kentish woman, who had views on the incarnation which she refused to abjure, was left in prison waiting further sentence.

Commissions, arguments which ought to convince, and a prison for those who remained unsatisfied; these, without further trouble, were to establish religion and restore the suffering people to prosperity. The Protector had early notice that success would be less easy than he desired. In reply to his Heresy Commission, a man at St Ives took a dead cat which had been lying in the street for a week, 'and did hang it up upon a post in the open market, the hinder legs cross nailed, the fore legs spread abroad and nailed, the head hanging on the one side, and a paper over it.' The Princess Mary, when invited to receive the Prayer-book, replied that,