"Pardon me, my lord abbot, but I believe I have already said, that the writ has been recalled. The messenger, indeed, came with a prohibitory writ respecting the prisoner; but when, within a few miles of Gloucester, a royal pursuivant, expressly from the king, overtook him, and to him the writ was delivered."
The calm dignity of Skipwith's reply produced some effect upon the abbot; for in a tone less abrupt than before, he replied—
"My lord judge, that writ of prohibition has not been recalled. This monk," pointing with his staff towards father John, "left London two days subsequent to the messenger, and there was not then the least intimation of the royal mind being changed."
"My lord," returned Skipwith, with a slight smile, "know you so little of Edward as to imagine that no change could pass in his royal mind without the monk being privy to it?"
"But," returned Horton, losing his temper at such scepticism, "this monk was lodged in the palace of his Grace of Canterbury; and, at the very hour of his departure, his Grace spoke as if the surrender of the woman were already accomplished. Would he have spoken thus had the writ been recalled?"
"Probably his Grace was ignorant that the prohibition was recalled?"
"Simon Islip ignorant! However, you admit that a writ was sent?"
Skipwith bowed.
"Then as readily may you believe that it had been kept back through fraud and malice, and that you have brought this woman before a tribunal incompetent to judge of matters relating to witchcraft. But now, my lord judge, repair the wrong done, by delivering her up to a dignitary of holy church."
"Abbot Horton," returned the chief justice, gravely, "the poisoning has been satisfactorily proved, and a strong presumption of witchcraft created in my mind, from the mysterious behaviour of the prisoner when the drug was delivered to the nurse. But even were the witchcraft a more prominent feature of the case, I do consider the king's courts are empowered by the late act, which provides that all felonies may be heard and determined by the king's justices, to take cognizance of this crime. Witchcraft is a felony at common law."