pread over the country
at large. They found their way at once to the universities, where the
intellectual impulse given by the New Learning was quickening religious
speculation.

Cambridge had already won a name for heresy; Barnes, one of its foremost
scholars, had to carry his fagot before Wolsey at St. Paul's; two other
Cambridge teachers, Bilney and Latimer, were already known as
"Lutherans." The Cambridge scholars whom Wolsey introduced into Cardinal
College, which he was founding, spread the contagion through Oxford. A
group of "brethren" was formed in Cardinal College for the secret
reading and discussion of the Epistles; and this soon included the more
intelligent and learned scholars of the university. It was in vain that
Clark, the centre of this group, strove to dissuade fresh members from
joining it by warnings of the impending dangers. "I fell down on my
knees at his feet," says one of them, Anthony Dalaber, "and with tears
and sighs besought him that for the tender mercy of God he should not
refuse me, saying that I trusted verily that he who had begun this on me
would not forsake me, but would give me grace to continue therein to the
end. When he heard me say so, he came to me, took me in his arms, and
kissed me, saying, 'The Lord God Almighty grant you so to do, and from
henceforth ever take me for your father, and I will take you for my son
in Christ.'"

In 1528 the excitement which followed on this rapid diffusion of
Tyndale's works forced Wolsey to more vigorous action; many of the
Oxford Brethren were thrown into prison and their books seized. But in
spite of the panic of the Protestants, some of whom fled over sea,
little severity was really exercised. Henry's chief anxiety, indeed, was
lest in the outburst against heresy the interest of the New Learning
should suffer harm. This was remarkably shown in the protection he
extended to one who was destined to eclipse even the fame of Colet as a
popular preacher. Hugh Latimer was the son of a Leicestershire yeoman,
whose armor the boy had buckled on in the days of Henry VII, ere he set
out to meet the Cornish insurgents at Blackheath Field. Latimer has
himself described the soldierly training of his youth.

"My father was delighted to teach me to shoot with the bow. He taught
me how to draw, how to lay my body to the bow, not to draw with strength
of arm as other nations do, but with the strength of the body."

At fourteen he was at Cambridge, flingin