here he at once acknowledged his identity.

[Sidenote: Saturday, Feb. 28.]

[Sidenote: Master Wilkyns's triumph, hopes, and disappointment.]

[Sidenote: Garret is sent to Ilchester, and thence to London,]

With such happy success were the good chapman's efforts rewarded. Yet in
this world there is no light without shadow; no pleasure without its
alloy. In imagination, Master Wilkyns had thought of himself conducting
the prisoner in triumph into the streets of Oxford, the hero of the
hour. The sour formality of the law condemned him to ill-merited
disappointment. Garret had been taken beyond the liberties of the city;
it was necessary, therefore, to commit him to the county gaol, and he
was sent to Ilchester. "Master Wilkyns offered himself to be bound to
the said justice in three hundred pounds to discharge him of the said
Garret, and to see him surely to Master Proctor's of Oxford; yet could
he not have him, for the justice said that the order of the law would
not so serve."[77] The fortunate captor had therefore to content himself
with the consciousness of his exploit, and the favourable report of his
conduct which was sent to the bishops; and Garret went first to
Ilchester, and thence was taken by special writ, and surrendered to
Wolsey.

[Sidenote: Where he abjures.]

Thus unkind had fortune shown herself to the chief criminal, guilty of
the unpardonable offence of selling Testaments at Oxford, and therefore
hunted down as a mad dog, and a common enemy of mankind. He escaped for
the present the heaviest consequences, for Wolsey persuaded him to
abjure. A few years later we shall again meet him, when he had recovered
his better nature, and would not abjure, and died as a brave man should
die. In the mean time we return to the university, where the authorities
were busy trampling out the remains of the conflagration.

[Sidenote: The investigation at Oxford continues.]

Two days after his letter respecting the astrologer, the Warden of New
College wrote again to the Diocesan, with an account of his further
proceedings. He was an efficient inquisitor, and the secrets of the poor
undergraduates had been unravelled to the last thread. Some of "the
brethren" had confessed; all were in prison; and the doctor desired
instructions as to what should be done with them. It must be said for
Dr. London, that he was anxious that they should be treated leniently.
Dalaber described him as a roaring lion, and he was a bad man,