It was a terrible temptation! If he gave a false name, the strong probability was that they would pass on, and he would very likely get safe away. It was Johnson of whom they were thinking, not himself. But that would enable them to reach Johnson’s cottage a minute sooner, and it would be a cowardly lie. No! Robert Purcas had not so learned Christ. He gave his name honestly.
“Robert Purcas! If that’s not on my list—” said the Bailiff, feeling in his pocket. “Ay, here it is—stay! William, Purcas, of Booking, fuller, aged twenty, single; is that you?”
“My name is Robert, not William,” said the young man.
“But thou art a fuller? and single? and aged twenty?”
“Ay, all that is so.”
“Dost thou believe the bread of the sacred host to be transmuted after consecration into the body of Christ, so that no substance of bread is left there at all?”
“I do not. I cannot, for I see the bread.”
“He’s a heretic!” cried Simnel. “Robert or William, it is all one. Take the heretic!”
And so Robert Purcas was seized, and carried to the Moot Hall in Colchester—a fate from which one word of falsehood would have freed him, but it would have cost him his Father’s smile.
The Moot Hall of Colchester was probably the oldest municipal building in England. It was erected soon after the Conquest, and its low circular arches and piers ornamented the High Street until 1843, when the town Vandals were pleased to destroy it because it impeded the traffic. Robert was taken into the dungeon, and the great door slammed to behind him. He could not see for a few minutes, coming fresh from the light of day: and before he was able to make anything out clearly, an old lady’s voice accosted him.