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 inward man,' and early in 1538 was living, an old man of nearly seventy, at the Grey Friars in London. He had urged men who came to confess to him to remain steadfast in the ancient faith, and when brought before Cranmer confessed to certain 'articles of heresy' which he was ordered to abjure at Paul's Cross, When the appointed day came he stood 'stiff and proud in his malicious mind' and would not read his abjuration, and on 22 May 'he was hanged in chains by the middle and armholes all quick' over a fire and burnt to death. It is to be feared that the opinion of some Londoners was expressed in the doggerel set up over the gallows:—

On the other side the most prominent heretic of this period was John Nicholson alias Lambert, a London schoolmaster. The king argued the question of transubstantiation with him in the presence of a great assemblage, including several bishops and the lord mayor and aldermen, but he refused to recant and was burnt in Smithfield on 22 November. It would appear from Wriothesley's account that Lambert held other opinions akin to those of the Anabaptists, more of whom had come in from abroad since 1535. On I October the king appointed a commission including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, Dr. Crome, and Dr. Barnes, to proceed against them; three were condemned to death, one of them a woman, and on 29 November two were burnt in Smithfield and one at Colchester. On 24 November Bishop Hilsey showed at Paul's Cross the famous relic known as the Blood of Hailes, declaring that it had been proved not to be blood at all. At the same time four Anabaptists, three men and a woman, 'all Dutchmen born,' bore faggots as heretics, the others being ordered to 'avoid the realm.' In December a Whitechapel bricklayer named John Harrydaunce, who had been preaching to large audiences from a tub in his garden, bore a faggot at Paul's Cross with two other persons, one a priest, and two men are said to have been burnt at Smithfield.