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1525.] of the century with, accounts of prosecutions for heresy–with prosecutions, that is, of men and women to whom the masses, the pilgrimages, the indulgences, the pardons, the effete paraphernalia of the establishment, had become intolerable; who had risen up in blind resistance, and had declared, with passionate anger, that whatever was the truth, all this was falsehood. The bishops had not been idle; they had plied their busy tasks with stake and prison, and victim after victim had been executed with more than necessary cruelty. But it was all in vain: punishment only multiplied offenders, and 'the reek' of the martyrs, as was said when Patrick Hamilton was burnt at St Andrews, 'infected all that it did blow upon.'

There were no teachers, however, there were no books, no unity of conviction, only a confused refusal to believe in lies. Copies of Wycliffe's Bible remained, which parties here and there, under death penalties if detected, met to read; copies, also, of some of his tracts were extant; but they were imprinted transcripts, most rare and precious, which the watchfulness of the police made it impossible to multiply through the press, and