the instant to the Queen. It was no sooner gone than he recalled it, and then vacillating again, he drew a second, in slightly altered words, which he signed and did not recall. There had been a struggle in which the weaker nature had prevailed, and the orthodox leaders made haste to improve their triumph. The first step being over, confessions far more humiliating could now be extorted. Bonner came to his cell, and obtained from him a promise in writing, 'to submit to the King and Queen in all their laws and ordinances, as well touching the Pope's supremacy, as in all other things;' with an engagement further 'to move and stir all others to do the like,' and to live in quietness and obedience, without murmur or grudging; his book on the Sacrament he would submit to the next general council.
These three submissions must have followed one another rapidly. On the 16th of February, two days only after his trial, he made a fourth, and yielding the point which he had reserved, he declared that he believed all the articles of the Christian religion as the Catholic Church believed. But so far he had spoken generally, and the Court required particulars. In a fifth and longer submission,[1] he was made to anathematize
- ↑ Of this fifth submission there is a contemporary copy among the MSS. at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. It was the only one known to Foxe; and this, with, the fact of its being found in a separate form, gives a colour of probability to Mr Southey's suspicion that the rest were forgeries. The whole collection was published by Bonner, who injured his claims to credit by printing with the others a seventh recantation, which was never made, and by concealing the real truth.
England so far as God's laws and the customs of this realm will permit.
Thomas Cranmer.
