An English Garner: Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (8 of 8)
History
An English Garner: Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (8 of 8)
English literature
And then was there a chair set in the chamber something beneath the
Altar, wherein the said CAMPION did sit down; and there made
a Sermon very nigh an hour long: the effect of his text being, as I
remember, "That Christ wept over Jerusalem, &c." And so applied the
same to this our country of England for that the Pope his authority and
doctrine did not so flourish here as the same CAMPION desired.
At the end of which Sermon, I gat down unto the said JENKINS
so soon as I could. For during the time that the Masses and the Sermon
were made, JENKINS remained still beneath in the buttery or
hall; not knowing of any such matter until I gave him some intelligence
[of] what I had seen.
And so we departed, with as convenient expedition as we might, and
came to one Master FETTIPLACE, a Justice of the Peace in the
said country [_County_]: whom we made privy of our doings therein; and
required him that, according to the tenour of our Commission, he would
take sufficient Power and with us thither.
Whereupon the said Justice of Peace, within one quarter of an hour, put
himself in a readiness, with forty or fifty men very well weaponed: who
went, in great haste, together with the said Master FETTIPLACE
and us, to the said Master YATE his house.
Where, at our coming upon the sudden, being about one of the clock in
the afternoon of the same day, before we knocked at the gates which
were then (as before they were continually accustomed to be) fast
shut (the house being moated round about; within which moat was great
store of fruit trees and other trees, with thick hedge rows: so that
the danger for fear of losing of the said CAMPION and his
associates was the more doubted); we beset the house with our men round
about the moat in the best sort we could devise: and then knocked at
the gates, and were presently heard and espied; but kept out by the
space of half an hour.
In which time, as it seemeth, they had hidden CAMPION and the
other two Priests in a very secret place within the said house; and had
made reasonable purveyance for him as hereafter is mentioned: and then
they let us into the house.
[Sidenote: One Nun got away in country maid's apparel.]
[Sidenote: Mistress YATE proferred us a good sum of money to
have given over the search.]
Where came presently to our sight, Mrs YATE, the good wife
of the house; five Gentlemen, one Gentlewoman, and three Nuns: the
Nuns being then disguised in Gentlewomen's apparel, not like unto that
they heard Mass in. All which I well remembered to have seen, the same
morning, at the Masses and Sermon aforesaid: yet every one of them a
great while denied it. And especially the said Mistress YATE;
who could not be content only to make a plain denial of the said Masses
and the Priests: but, with great and horrible oaths, forsware the same,
betaking herself to the Devil if any such there were; in such sort as,
if I had not seen them with mine own eyes, I should have believed her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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