Page:History of england froude.djvu/604

582 there was no starting from them: God was my good Lord, and gave me answer; I could never else have escaped it. The question was this: 'Master Latimer, do you not think, on your conscience, that you have been suspected of heresy?'—a subtle question—a very subtle question. There was no holding of peace would serve. To hold my peace had been to grant myself faulty. To answer was every way full of danger. But God, which hath always given me answer, helped me, or else I could never have escaped it. Ostendite mihi numisma censús. Shew me, said he, a penny of the tribute money. They laid snares to destroy him, but he overturneth them in their own traps.'

The bishops, however, were not men who were nice in their adherence to the laws; and it would have gone ill with Latimer, notwithstanding his dialectic ability. He was excommunicated and imprisoned, and would soon have fallen into worse extremities; but at the last moment he appealed to the King, and the King, who knew his value, would not allow him to be sacrificed. He had refused to subscribe the Articles proposed to him. Henry intimated to the Convocation that it was not his pleasure that the matter should be pressed further; they were to content themselves with a general submission, which should be made to the Archbishop, without exacting more special acknowledgments. This was the