Archbishop Grindal and some other prelates endeavoured to regulate the “prophesyings,” by enjoining the observance of strict order, and by confining them to the conforming clergy. {62b} But this renewed the displeasure of the despotic woman in whose hand, by a fundamental and fatal error, had been placed the supremacy of the church of England. “By means of these assemblies,” her Majesty observes, writing to the bishop of London, “great numbers of our people, especially of the _vulgar sort_, meet to be otherwise occupied with some honest labour for their living, are brought to idleness, seduced, and in manners schismatically divided among themselves into a variety of dangerous opinions.” She commanded that these “exercises” should be forthwith put down, adding an order for the imprisonment of such as should refuse compliance, with a threat of severer punishment, and closing her communication by an insolent menace to the bishop himself. {63a} Meanwhile, continued oppression induced the ministers of Norfolk to present to the privy council a supplication, in which, after many expressions of loyalty to the queen, they add, “Yet we desire that her Majesty will not think us disobedient, seeing we suffer ourselves to be displaced, rather than yield to some things required. Our bodies and goods, and all we have, are in her Majesty’s hands; _only our souls we reserve to our God_, who alone is able to save us or condemn us.” {63b} Slaves could not have sued for less; but this was far too extensive a reservation to be allowed. The pacific Bishop Parkhurst having been succeeded by Dr. Freke, a man of very different spirit, seven ministers, in or near Norwich, were soon afterwards suspended. {63c} Subsequent years brought no mitigation. Besides other instances of ecclesiastical molestation in the East Anglian counties, Mathew Hammond, a poor plough-wright at Hethersett, was condemned by the bishop as a heretic, had his ears cut off, and after the lapse of a week, was committed, in the castle ditch at Norwich, to the more agonizing torment of the flames. {64a}