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578 a man. To have written at all in such a strain was as brave a step as was ever deliberately ventured. Like most brave acts, it did not go unrewarded; for Henry remained ever after, however widely divided from him in opinion, his unshaken friend.

In 1531, the King gave him the living of West Kingston, in Wiltshire, where for a time he now retired. Yet it was but a partial rest. He had a special license as a preacher from Cambridge, which continued to him (with the King's express sanction) the powers which he had received from Wolsey. He might preach in any diocese to which he was invited; and the repose of a country parish could not be long allowed in such stormy times to Latimer. He had bad health, being troubled with headache, pleurisy, coiic, stone; his bodily constitution meeting feebly the demands which he was forced to make upon it. But he struggled on, travelling up and down, to London, to Kent, to Bristol, wherever opportunity called him; marked for destruction by the bishops, if he was betrayed into an imprudent word, and himself living in constant expectation of death.

At length the Bishop of London believed that Latimer was in his power. He had preached at St Abb's, in the city, 'at the request of a company of merchants,' in the beginning of the winter of 1531; and soon after