John Badby was an inhabitant of Evesham, in the diocese of Worcester, and by trade a tailor. He was charged before the bishop with heresy, and was condemned in the diocesan court. The point on which alone his persecutors charged him, was his denial of transubstantiation. His trial took place on the 2nd of January, 1409, and he was subsequently brought before the Archbishop and his court in London, as a heretic convict. His examination began on Saturday, the 1st of March 1410, at the close of which the court resolved that he should be kept a close prisoner till the next Wednesday, in the house of the Preaching Friars, where the proceedings were carried on. The Archbishop, for greater caution, said that he would himself keep possession of (p. 340) the key. When the Wednesday arrived, the Archbishop took, as his advisers and assistants, so great a number of the bishops and nobles of the land, that (in the words of his own record) it would be a task to enumerate them: among others, however, the names of Edmund Duke of York, John Earl of Westmoreland, Thomas Beaufort Chancellor of England, and Lord Beaumond, are recorded.[261] Prince Henry, though present in London, and actively engaged with some of the same noblemen as members of the council, was not present at Badby's examination, either on the Saturday or on the Wednesday.[262] In all his examinations Badby seems to have conducted himself throughout with great firmness and self-possession, and, at the same time, with much respect towards those who were then his judges. Looking to the circumstances in which he was placed, it is almost impossible for any one not to be struck by the weight and pointedness of his answers. He openly professed his belief in the ever blessed Trinity, "one omnipotent God in Trinity;" and when pressed as to his belief in the sacrament of the altar, he declared that, after consecration, (p. 341) the elements were signs of Christ's body, but he could not believe that they were changed into the substance of his flesh and blood. "If," he said, "a priest can by his word make God, there will be twenty thousand Gods in England at one time. Moreover, I cannot conceive how, when Christ at his last supper broke one piece of bread, and gave a portion to each of his disciples, the piece of bread could remain whole and entire as before, or that he then held his own body in his hand." At his last appearance before the large assemblage of the hierarchy and the temporality, when asked as to the nature of the elements, he said, that "in the sight of God, the Duke of York, or any child of Adam, was of higher value than the sacrament of the altar." The Archbishop declared openly to the accused that, if he would live according to the doctrine of Christ, he would pledge his soul for him at the last judgment day.