"Within three weeks it pleased God to set your bedeman on his feet, so that he might walk abroad. Whereof when Sir Thomas More heard (who went out of his chancellorship about the time your bedeman was carried out of prison), although he had neither word nor deed which he could ever truly lay to your bedeman's charge, yet made he such means by the Bishops of Winchester and London, as your bedeman heard say, to the Hon. Lord Thomas Duke of Norfolk, that he gave new commandment to the keeper of the Marshalsea to attach again your said bedeman; which thing was speedily done the Sunday three weeks after his deliverance. And so he continued in prison again until Saint Lawrence tide following; at which time money was given to the keeper, and some things he took which were not given, and then was your bedeman re-delivered through the king's goodness, under sureties bound in a certain sum, that he should appear the first day of the next term following, and then day by day until his dismission. And so hath your bedeman been at liberty now twelve months waiting daily from term to term, and nothing laid to his charge as before. "Wherefore, the premises tenderly considered, and also your said bedeman's great poverty, he most humbly beseecheth your goodness that he may now be clearly discharged; and if books, money, or other things seem to be taken or kept from him otherwise than justice would, eftsoons he beseecheth you that ye will command it to be restored. "As for his long imprisonment, with other griefs thereto appertaining, he looketh not to have recompense of man; but committeth his whole cause to God, to whom your bedeman shall daily pray, according as he is bound, that ye may so order and govern the realm that it may be to the honour of God and your heavenly and everlasting reward." I do not find the result of this petition, but as it appeared that Henry had interested himself in the story, it is likely to have been successful. We can form but an imperfect judgment on the merits of the case, for we have only the sufferer's _ex parte_ complaint, and More might probably have been able to make some counter-statement. But the illegal imprisonment cannot be explained away, and cannot be palliated; and when a judge permits himself to commit an act of arbitrary tyranny, we argue from the known to the unknown, and refuse reasonably to give him credit for equity where he was so little careful of law. [Sidenote: Contrast between Wolsey and More in the treatment of heretics.] [Sidenote: The Smithfield fires recommence.] [Sidenote: Troubles of Bilney.]