rified by the cold merciless eyes of his judge, he
gave way, not about his friends, but about himself: he abjured, and was
dismissed heartbroken. This was on the seventeenth of February. He was
only able to endure his wretchedness for a month. At the end of it, he
appeared at a secret meeting of the Christian Brothers, in "a warehouse
in Bow Lane," where he asked forgiveness of God and all the world for
what he had done; and then went out to take again upon his shoulders the
heavy burden of the cross.

[Sidenote: He recovers his courage,]

The following Sunday, at the church of St. Augustine, he rose in his
seat with the fatal English Testament in his hand, and "declared openly,
before all the people, with weeping tears, that he had denied God,"
praying them all to forgive him, and beware of his weakness; "for if I
should not return to the truth," he said, "this Word of God would damn
me, body and soul, at the day of judgment." And then he prayed
"everybody rather to die than to do as he did, for he would not feel
such a hell again as he did feel for all the world's good."[103]

[Sidenote: And is arrested again.]

Of course but one event was to be looked for: he knew it, and himself
wrote to the bishop, telling him what he had done. No mercy was
possible: he looked for none, and he found none.

[Sidenote: The mercy of the church authorities.]

Yet perhaps he found what the wise authorities thought to be some act of
mercy. They could not grant him pardon in this world upon any terms; but
they would not kill him till they had made an effort for his soul. He
was taken to the Bishop of London's coal-cellar at Fulham, the favourite
episcopal penance-chamber, where he was ironed and put in the stocks;
and there was left for many days, in the chill March weather, to bethink
himself. This failing to work conviction, he was carried to Sir Thomas
More's house at Chelsea, where for two nights he was chained to a post
and whipped; thence, again, he was taken back to Fulham for another week
of torture; and finally to the Tower, for a further fortnight, again
with ineffectual whippings.

[Sidenote: He is burnt April 20, 1532.]

The demands of charity were thus satisfied. The pious bishop and the
learned chancellor had exhausted their means of conversion; they had
discharged their consciences; and the law was allowed to take its
course. The prisoner was brought to trial on the 20th of April, as a
relapsed heretic. Sentence fo