ainst pilgrimages.
To harbor the persecuted preachers, to neglect the fasts of the church,
to declaim against the vices of the clergy, were capital offences. One
Thomas Bilney, a priest, who had embraced the new doctrine, had been
terrified into an abjuration; but was so haunted by remorse, that his
friends dreaded some fatal effects of his despair. At last, his mind
seemed to be more relieved; but this appearing calm proceeded only from
the resolution which he had taken of expiating his past offence by
an open confession of the truth, and by dying a martyr to it. He went
through Norfolk, teaching the people to beware of idolatry, and of
trusting for their salvation either to pilgrimages, or to the cowl of
St. Francis, to the prayers of the saints, or to images. He was soon
seized, tried in the bishop's court, and condemned as a relapsed
heretic; and the writ was sent down to burn him. When brought to the
stake, he discovered such patience, fortitude, and devotion, that the
spectators were much affected with the horrors of his punishment; and
some mendicant friars who were present, fearing that his martyrdom would
be imputed to them, and make them lose those alms which they received
from the charity of the people, desired him publicly to acquit them[*]
of having any hand in his death. He willingly complied; and by this
meekness gained the more on the sympathy of the people.

* Burnet, vol. i. p. 164.

Another person, still more heroic, being brought to the stake for
denying the real presence, seemed almost in a transport of joy; and he
tenderly embraced the fagots which were to be the instruments of his
punishment, as the means of procuring him eternal rest. In short, the
tide turning towards the new doctrine, those severe executions, which,
in another disposition of men's minds, would have sufficed to suppress
it, now served only to diffuse it the more among the people, and to
inspire them with horror against the unrelenting persecutors.

But though Henry neglected not to punish the Protestant doctrine, which
he deemed heresy, his most formidable enemies, he knew, were the zealous
adherents to the ancient religion, chiefly the monks, who, having their
immediate dependence on the Roman pontiff, apprehended their own ruin
to be the certain consequence of abolishing his authority in England.
Peyto, a friar, preaching before the king, had the assurance to tell
him, "that many lying prophets had deceived him; but he,