superstitious and false doctrines of any earthly usurper of God's
laws--will, therefore, and command you, that whensoever ye shall hear of
any such seditious persons, ye indelayedly do take and apprehend them,
or cause them to be apprehended and taken, and so committed to ward,
there to remain without bail or mainprize, until, upon your
advertisement thereof to us and to our council, ye shall know our
further pleasure.

HENRY R."

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Carthusians are called upon to acknowledge the royal
supremacy.]

[Sidenote: The reason for the conduct of the government.]

In obvious connexion with the issue of this publication, the monks of
the Charterhouse were at length informed that they would be questioned
on the supremacy. The great body of the religious houses had volunteered
an outward submission. The London Carthusians, with other affiliated
establishments, had remained passive, and had thus furnished an open
encouragement to disobedience. We are instinctively inclined to censure
an interference with persons who at worst were but dreamers of the
cloister; and whose innocence of outward offences we imagine might have
served them for a shield. Unhappily, behind the screenwork of these poor
saints a whole Irish insurrection was blazing in madness and fury; and
in the northern English counties were some sixty thousand persons ready
to rise in arms. In these great struggles men are formidable in
proportion to their virtues. The noblest Protestants were chosen by the
Catholics for the stake. The fagots were already growing which were to
burn Tyndal, the translator of the Bible. It was the habit of the time,
as it is the habit of all times of real danger, to spare the multitude
but to strike the leaders, to make responsibility the shadow of power,
to choose for punishment the most efficacious representatives of the
spirit which it was necessary to subdue.

The influence of the Carthusians, with that of the two great men who
were following the same road to the same goal, determined multitudes in
the attitude which they would assume, and in the duty which they would
choose. The Carthusians, therefore, were to be made to bend; or if they
could not be bent, to be made examples in their punishment, as they had
made themselves examples in their resistance. They were noble and good;
but there were others in England good and noble as they, who were not of
their fold; and whose v