Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/632

 Master Bernham and divers others, upon two other articles which he had confessed unto John Exeter, notary, and Thomas Gerusten, bachelor of divinity, and others. Whereof the first article was this: That the said Nicholas Canon, being of perfect mind and remembrance, confessed that he doubted whether, in the sacrament of the altar, there were the very body of Christ or no.—This article he confessed before the commissary to be true.

Item. That he, being of perfect mind and remembrance, believed that a man ought not to confess his sins to a priest.—This article he also confessed that he doubted upon.

Now remaineth to declare what these doctors aforesaid concluded upon the articles; whose answer unto the same was this:

First of all, as touching the first article, they said that the article in the same terms as it was propounded, is not simply a heresy, but an error.

Item, As touching the second article, the doctors agree as in the first.

Item, As touching the third article, they affirm that it is a heresy.

Unto the fourth article, they answered as unto the first and second.

Item, The doctors affirm the fifth article to be a heresy.

Item, As touching the sixth article, the doctors conclude, that if the said Nicholas, being of perfect mind and remembrance, did doubt whether the sacrament of the altar were the very perfect body of Christ or no, then the article is simply a heresy.

Whereupon the said commissary declared and pronounced the said Nicholas, declared upon the determination of the said doctors, to be a heretic; and thereupon forced the said Nicholas to abjure all the said articles. That done, he enjoined the said Nicholas penance for his offences: three disciplings about the cloister of the cathedral church of Norwich, before a solemn procession, bare-headed and bare-foot, carrying a taper of half a pound in his hand, going after the manner aforesaid, like a mere penitentiary: which his penance the judge commanded should be respited until the coming of the bishop into his diocese, and that in the mean time he should be kept in prison; to the end that he should not infect the flock with his venom and poison of errors and heresies.

Thus we have briefly discoursed unto you the great trouble and afflictions which happened in Norfolk and Suffolk by the space of those four years before mentioned, having drawn out briefly, for every year, certain notable examples sufficient for the declaration of all the rest, forasmuch as their opinions being nothing different, their penance and punishment did also nothing differ, otherwise than by those particular examples may be plainly seen.

And now to proceed as we have begun with our former stories, generally we find in Fabian's Chronicles, that in the same year of our Lord, 1431, Thomas Bagley, a priest, vicar of Monenden beside Malden, being a valiant disciple and adherent of Wickliff, was condemned by the bishops of heresy at London, about the middle of Lent, and was degraded and burned in Smithfield.

The same year also was Paul Craw, a Bohemian, taken at St. Andrew's, by the bishop Henry, and delivered over to the secular power to be burnt, for holding opinions contrary unto the church of