[441] Latimer alludes to the story with no disapproval of the execution of these men--as we should not have disapproved of it, if we had lived then, unless we had been Anabaptists ourselves. A brave death, Latimer says, is no proof of a good cause. "This is no good argument, my friends; this is a deceivable argument: he went to his death boldly--ergo, he standeth in a just quarrel. The Anabaptists that were burnt here in divers towns in England (as I heard of credible men--I saw them not myself), went to their death intrepide, as you will say; without any fear in the world--cheerfully: well, let them go. There was in the old times another kind of poisoned heretics that were called Donatists; and these heretics went to their execution as they should have gone to some jolly recreation or banquet."--Latimer's _Sermons_, p. 160. [442] He wrote to the king on the 14th of June, in consequence of an examination at the Tower; but that letter could not have been spoken of on the trial of the Carthusians.--See _State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 431. [443] "I had the confessor alone in very secret communication concerning certain letters of Mr. Fisher's, of which Father Reynolds made mention in his examination; which the said Fisher promised the King's Grace that he never showed to any other man, neither would. The said confessor hath confessed to me that the said Fisher sent to him, to the said Reynolds, and to one other brother of them, the copy of his said letters directed to the King's Grace, and the copy of the king's answer also. He hath knowledged to me also that the said Fisher sent unto them with the said copies a book of his, made in defence of the King's Grace's first marriage, and also Abel's book, and one other book made by the emperour's ambassador, as I suppose."--Bedyll to Cromwell: _Suppression of the Monasteries_, pp. 45, 46. [444] The accounts are consistent on this subject with a single exception. A letter is extant from Fisher, in which he complained of suffering from the cold and from want of clothes. This must have been an accident. More was evidently treated well (see More's _Life of More_); and all the circumstances imply that they were allowed to communicate freely with their friends, and to receive whatever comforts their friends were pleased to send them. The official statements on this subject are too positive and too minute to admit of a doubt. Cromwell writes thus to Cassalis: "Carceribus mancipati tractabantur humanius atque mitius quam par fuisset pro eorum demeritis; per Regem illis licebat proximorum colloquio et consuetudine frui. Ii fuerant illis appositi præscriptique ministri quos a vinclis immunes antea fidos charosque habebant; id cibi genus eaque condimenta et vestitus eis concedebantur quæ eorum habitudini ac tuendæ sanitati, ipsi consanguinei, nepotes atque affines et amici judicabant esse magis accommoda."--_State Papers_, Vol. VII. p. 634. [445] More's _Life of More_.