When the service was over, the brilliant congregation left the chapel, and each as he went out asked what was the man’s name. ‘Fryth’ was the reply, and loud were the exclamations on hearing it. The blow took effect, the scholastic prejudices of the king were revived, and he sent for Cromwell and Cranmer. ‘I am very much surprised,’ he said, ‘that John Fryth has been kept so long in the Tower without examination. I desire his trial to take place without delay; and if he does not retract, let him suffer the penalty he deserves.’ He then nominated six of the chief spiritual and temporal peers of England to examine him: they were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London and Winchester, the lord chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, and the Earl of Wiltshire. This demonstrated the importance which Henry attached to the affair. Until now, all the martyrs had fallen beneath the blows either of the bishops or of More; but in this case it was the king himself who stretched out his strong hand against the servant of God. Henry’s order plunged Cranmer into the cruellest anxiety. On the one hand, Fryth was in his eyes a disciple of the Gospel; but on the other, he attacked a doctrine which the archbishop then held to be Christian; for, like Luther and Osiander, he still believed in consubstantiation. ‘Alas!’ he wrote to Archdeacon Hawkins, ‘he professes the doctrine of Œcolampadius.’[317] He resolved, however, to do everything in his power to save Fryth. The best friends of the young reformer saw that a pile was being raised to consume the most faithful Christian in England. ‘Dearly beloved,’ wrote Tyndale from Antwerp, ‘fear not men that threat, nor trust men that speak fair. Your cause is Christ’s Gospel, a light that must be fed with the blood of faith. The lamp must be trimmed daily, that the light go not out.’[318] There was no lack of examples to confirm these words. ‘Two have suffered in Antwerp unto the great glory of the Gospel; four at Ryselles in Flanders. At Rouen in France they persecute, and at Paris are five doctors taken for the Gospel. See, you are not alone: follow the example of all your other dear brethren, who choose to suffer in hope of a better resurrection. Bear the image of Christ in your mortal body, and keep your conscience pure and undefiled.... _Una salus victis, nullam sperare salutem_: the only safety of the conquered is to look for none. If you could but write and tell us how you are.’ In this letter from a martyr to a martyr there was one sentence honorable to a Christian woman: ‘Your wife is well content with the will of God, and would not for her sake have the glory of God hindered.’ [Sidenote: Cranmer Would Save Fryth.]