[445] State Papers, vol. i. p. 403.
[446] Cromwell had endeavoured to save Frith, or at least had been interested for him. Sir Edmund Walsingham, writing to him about the prisoners in the Tower, says:—"Two of them wear irons, and Frith weareth none. Although he lacketh irons, he lacketh not wit nor pleasant tongue. His learning passeth my judgment. Sir, as ye said, it were great pity to lose him if he may be reconciled."—Walsingham to Cromwell: M.S. State Paper Office, second series, vol. xlvi.
[447] ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 40.
[448] "The natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here, it being against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one time in more places than one." The argument and the words in which it is expressed were Frith's.—See FOXE, vol. v. p. 6.
[449] The origin of the word Lollards has been always a disputed question. I conceive it to be from Lolium. They were the "tares" in the corn of Catholicism.
[450] 35 Ed. I.; Statutes of Carlisle, cap. 1-4.
[451] Ibid.
[452] 25 Ed. III. stat. 4. A clause in the preamble of this act bears a significantly Erastian complexion: come seinte Eglise estoit founde en estat de prelacie deins le royaulme Dengleterre par le dit Roi et ses progenitours, et countes, barons, et nobles de ce Royaulme et lours ancestres, pour eux et le poeple enfourmer de la lei Dieu. If the Church of England was held to have been, founded not by the successors of the Apostles, but by the king and the nobles, the claim of Henry VIII. to the supremacy was precisely in the spirit of the constitution.
[453] 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 3 Ric. II. cap. 3; 12 Ric. II. cap. 15; 13 Ric. II. stat. 2. The first of these acts contains a paragraph which shifts the blame from the popes themselves to the officials of the Roman courts. The statute is said to have been enacted en eide et confort du pape qui moult sovent a estee trublez par tieles et semblables clamours et impetracions, et qui y meist voluntiers covenable remedie, si sa seyntetee estoit sur ces choses enfournee. I had regarded this passage as a fiction of courtesy like that of the Long Parliament who levied troops in the name of Charles I. The suspicious omission of the clause, however, in the translation of the statutes which was made in the later years of Henry VIII. justifies an interpretation more favourable to the intentions of the popes.
[454] The abbots and bishops decently protested. Their protest was read in parliament, and entered on the Rolls. Rot. Parl. iii. [264] quoted by Lingard, who has given a full account of these transactions.