wed the said Nun, that as King Saul, abjected from his
kingdom by God, yet continued king in the sight of the world, so her
said revelations might be taken. And therefore the said Nun, upon this
information, forged another revelation, that her words should be
understanded to mean that the King's Grace should not be king in the
reputation or acceptation of God, not one month or one hour after that
he married the Queen's Grace that now is. The first revelation had moved
a great number of the king's subjects, both high and low, to grudge
against the said marriage before it was concluded and perfected; and
also induced such as were stiffly bent against that marriage, daily to
look for the destruction of the King's Grace within a month after he
married the Queen's Grace that now is. And when they were deluded in
that expectation, the second revelation was devised not only as an
interpretation of the former, but to the intent to induce the king's
subjects to believe that God took the King's Grace for no king of this
realm; and that they should likewise take him for no righteous king, and
themselves not bounden to be his subjects; which might have put the King
and the Queen's Grace in jeopardy of their crown and of their issue, and
the people of this realm in great danger of destruction."[196]

[Sidenote: The prophecies in extensive secret circulation in a written
form.]

[Sidenote: The Friars Mendicant.]

It was no light matter to pronounce the king to be in the position of
Saul after his rejection; and read by the light of the impending
excommunication, the Nun's words could mean nothing but treason. The
speaker herself was in correspondence with the pope; she had attested
her divine commission by miracles, and had been recognised as a saint by
an Archbishop of Canterbury; the regular orders of the clergy throughout
the realm were known to regard her as inspired; and when the commission
recollected that the king was threatened further with dying "a villain's
death"; and that these and similar prophecies were carefully written
out, and were in private circulation through the country, the matter
assumed a dangerous complexion: it became at once essential to ascertain
how far, and among what classes of the state, these things had
penetrated. The Friars Mendicant were discovered to be in league with
her, and these itinerants were ready-made missionaries of sedition. They
had privilege of vagrancy without check or limit; and ow