Full of love for him, Cranmer desired to save him. Four times during the course of the examination he sent for Fryth and conversed with him privately,[325] always asserting the Lutheran opinion. Fryth offered to maintain his doctrine in a public discussion against any one who was willing to attack it, but nobody accepted his challenge.[326] Cranmer, distressed at seeing all his efforts useless, found there was nothing more for him to do; the cause was transferred to the ordinary, the Bishop of London, and on the 17th of June the prisoner was once more committed to the Tower. The bishop selected as his assessors for the trial, Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester: there were no severer judges to be found on the episcopal bench. At Cambridge, Fryth had been the most distinguished pupil of the clever and ambitious Gardiner; but this, instead of exciting the compassion of that hard man, did but increase his anger. ‘Fryth and his friends,’ he said, ‘are villains, blasphemers, and limbs of the devil.’[327] [Sidenote: Fryth Sentenced To Death.] On the 20th of June, Fryth was taken to St. Paul’s before the three bishops, and though of a humble disposition and almost timid character, he answered boldly. A clerk took down all his replies, and Fryth, snatching up the pen, wrote: ‘I, Fryth think thus. Thus have I spoken, written, defended, affirmed, and published in my writings.’[328] The bishops having asked him if he would retract his errors, Fryth replied: ‘Let justice have its course and the sentence be pronounced.’ Stokesley did not keep him waiting long. ‘Not willing that thou, Fryth, who art wicked,’ he said, ‘shouldst become more wicked, and infect the Lord’s flock with thy heresies, we declare thee excommunicate and cast out from the Church, and leave thee unto the secular powers, most earnestly requiring them in the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ that thy execution and punishment be not too extreme, _nor yet the gentleness too much mitigated_.’[329]