ARD by a crystal fountain,

ORIANA the bright, lay down a sleeping.

The birds they finely chirped, the winds were stilled Sweetly with these accenting, the air was filled, This is that Fair whose head a crown deserveth,

Which heaven for her reserveth.

Leave, shepherds, your lambs' keeping upon the barien

mountain!

And Nymphs attend on her, and leave your bowers!
For She, the shepherd's life maintains, and yours.
Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of DIANA,
Long live fair ORIANA !

EDWARD JOHNSON.

OME, blessed bird, and with thy sugared relish,
Help our declining quire now to embellish :
For BONNY-BOOTES that so aloft would fetch it,
O he is dead! and none of us can reach it.
Then tune to us, sweet bird! thy shrill recorder,
For fault of better, will serve in the chorus!
Begin, and we will follow thee in order!
Then sang the wood-born Minstrel of DIANA,
Long live fair ORIANA !

of Master William Thorpe, priest, of heresy, before Thomas Arundell, Archbishop of Canterbury, the year of our Lord, M.CCCC. and seven.

I The Examination

of the honourable Knight, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, burnt by the said Archbishop,* in the first year of King Henry the Fifth.

Be no more ashamed to hear it, than ye were and be, to do it.

[* This is incorrect, Archbishop ARUNDELL condemned Sir JOHN OLDCASTLE on September 25th, 1413, who was then sent to the Tower, see pp. 125, 132: from which he escaped; and being recaptured in Wales in 1417, was burnt on the 14th December of that year. But in the meantime, Archbishop ARUNDELL had died on the 14th February, 1414; and HENRY CHICHELEY had become Archbishop.]

Unto the Christian Reader.

RACE and peace in our Lord JESUS CHRIST. Read here with judgement, good Reader! the Examination of the blessed Man of GOD, and there thou shalt easily perceive wherefore our Holy Church (as the most unholy sort of all the people will be called) make all their examinations in darkness; all the lay people clean excluded from

their counsels.

For if their lies had been openly confuted, and also that the Accused of Heresy might as well have been admitted to reason their Articles with Counsel, whether they were heresy or no[t], as the Accused of Treason against the King is admitted to his Council to confute his cause and Articles, whether they be treason or not, they should never have murdered nor prisoned so many good Christian men as they have done.

For their cloaked lies could never have continued so long in the light, as they have done in corners. They, good men! when they come in the pulpit, and preach against the Truth, cry, “If their learning [i.e., of the Protestants] were good and true, they would never go in corners; but speak it openly !"

Whereunto I answer, that besides that CHRIST and his Apostles were compelled (for because of the furiousness of their fathers, the Bishops and Priests, which only, that time also, would be called Holy Church) oftentimes for to walk secretly, and absent themselves, and give place to their malice. Yet we have daily examples, of more than one or two, that have not spared nor feared for to speak, and also [to] preach openly the Truth; which have been taken of them, prisoned, and brent: besides others that for fear of death, have abjured and carried faggots. Of whose Articles and Examination there is no layman that can shew a word.

Who can tell wherefore, not many years past, there were Seven

44 DEATHS OF SEVEN AT COVENTRY, &c. [W. Tindale.

1530.

burnt in Coventry on one day? Who can tell wherefore that good priest and holy martyr, Sir [the reverend] THOMAS HITTON was brent, now this year, at Maidstone in Kent? I am sure, no man! For this is their cast [contrivance] ever when they have put to death or punished any man: after their secret Examinations, to slander him of such things as he never thought; as they may do well enough, seeing there is no man to contrary them.

Wherefore I exhort thee, good brother! whosoever thou be that readest this treatise, mark it well, and consider it seriously! and there thou shalt find, not only what the Church is, their doctrine of the Sacrament, the Worshipping of Images, Pilgrimage, Confession, Swearing, and Paying of Tithes: but also thou mayest see what strong and substantial arguments of Scripture and Doctors, and what clerkly reasons my Lord the head and Primate of the Holy Church in England (as he will be taken) bringeth against this poor, foolish, simple, and mad losell, knave, and heretic, as he calleth him. And also the very cause wherefore all their Examinations are made in darkness.

And the Lord of all Light shall lighten thee with the candle of His grace, for to see the Truth! Amen.

This I have corrected and put forth in the English that
now is used in England, for our Southern men;
nothing thereto adding, ne yet therefrom
minishing. And I intend hereafter,

with the help of GOD to put it

forth in his own old English,

which shall well serve, I

doubt not, both for the

Northern men and
the faithful
brethren

of Scot

land.