“Yes, for the nonce, as closely hidden as the manner of his violent death.”
“Ah,” said Tabbard, his mind crowded with the thoughts of the existing religious persecutions, “did he espouse the cause of the Papists?”
“Nay, my good fellow, that was two hundred years ago, when the fury of the church, then in power, expended itself mainly in bulls of excommunication. The violence of these days did not exist; but still conflicting doctrines entertained by the clergy disturbed the serenity of Rome, and the chief heretic was Wycliffe, whom the young king protected. That priest sowed the most fruitful seeds of the Reformation; but none of the Brownists or Puritans appear to recognize, amid the tenets of their beliefs, the handwriting of that master husbandman.”
“And I suppose that he was burnt, was he not?”
“After death.”
“In hell’s everlasting fire, eh?”
“Nay, I do not mean that. He died a natural death; but many years after, his body was taken from its grave and publicly burned.”
“Little it disturbed him, I wot,” remarked Tabbard.
“So it seems that fanaticism rests not even with the death of the person on whom it would wreak its fury, and it burns even in the breasts of men as mild looking as yonder group of Puritans.”
He pointed to the middle of the road close before them where several men were slowly walking toward Houndsditch. The plainness of their dress, of the same color from head to foot, and of exactly similar cut, was in striking contrast with the apparel of the two men whom they were passing.