comparable for learning, dialectical capacity, and intellectual acumen with the three Bishops whose doctrines already stood condemned; and, when the other Reformers learnt that they were to be called upon to face a similar ordeal, they anticipated such a requirement by an intimation that they would not consent to engage in a formal disputation but were willing to set forth their views and defend them in writing.
They also explained what their leading tenets were:—the acceptance of the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone, the repudiation of the doctrines of Purgatory and transubstantiation, together with the adoration of the Host, clerical celibacy, and Latin services. They, however, professed unqualified loyalty to the Queen and deprecated all conspiracies against her authority. With respect to this manifesto no action appears to have been taken; but the petitioners were still detained in captivity, and before the year closed Parliament enacted afresh the ancient laws against Lollardism, including Archbishop Arundel's notorious statute de haeretico comburendo, all of which had been abolished by Somerset. Conscious of the net which was being drawn around them, and that their heresy was becoming a question of life or death, the captives instructed John Bradford to draw up in their name a new Declaration, couched however in far from conciliatory terms. As against the newly enacted laws of Richard II and his two successors, they appealed to Parliament to re-enact the " many godly laws touching the true religion of Christ " set forth in the two preceding reigns " by two most noble Kings"; laws which, they affirmed, had been passed only after much discussion among the doctors of Cambridge and Oxford, and with the cordial and full assent of the whole realm. Not a single parish in England, they declared, was desirous of a return to "the Romish superstitions and vain service" which had recently been introduced. They maintained that the homilies and services adopted during King Edward's reign were truly Catholic, and were ready to prove them so; or, if they failed in this, to give their bodies to be burned as the Lollard laws prescribed.
The Parliament to which the petitioners appealed gave no response to their supplication, although a spirit of reaction is distinctly discernible in the Commons during this session. That body had shown a marked disinclination to re-enact the laws against Lollardism; and although it had consented to annul the ecclesiastical legislation of Henry VIII, so far as this affected the papal prerogatives and authority, it had confirmed institutions and individuals alike in their possession of the property which Henry had wrested from the Church. In the event, again, of the royal marriage being blessed with offspring, Philip had been appointed Regent, should he survive his consort; but his regency was to last only so long as the minority of their child, and was to carry with it the obligation to reside in England. And finally, it was decided that the articles of the marriage treaty were to continue in full
