The terrible summons lay on the table. Latimer took it up and read it. He was no longer the brilliant court-chaplain who charmed fashionable congregations by his eloquence; he was a poor country minister, forsaken by all. He was sorrowful. ‘I am surprised,’ he said, ‘that my lord of London, who has so large a diocese in which he ought to preach the Word in season and out of season,[194] should have leisure enough to come and trouble me in my little parish ... wretched me, who am quite a stranger to him.’ He appealed to his ordinary; but Bishop Stokesley did not intend to let him go, and being as able as he was violent, he prayed the archbishop, as primate of all England, to summon Latimer before his court, and to commission himself (the Bishop of London) to examine him. The chaplain’s friends were terrified, and entreated him to leave England; but he began his journey to London. [Sidenote: Attempt To Entrap Latimer.] On the 29th of January, 1532, a court composed of bishops and doctors of the canon law assembled, under the presidency of Primate Warham, in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Latimer having appeared, the Bishop of London presented him a paper, and ordered him to sign it. The reformer took the paper and read it through. There were sixteen articles on belief in purgatory, the invocation of saints, the merit of pilgrimages, and lastly on the power of the keys which (said the document) belonged to the bishops of Rome, ‘even should their lives be wicked,’[195] and other such topics. Latimer returned the paper to Stokesley, saying: ‘I cannot sign it.’ Three times in one week he had to appear before his judges, and each time the same scene was repeated: both sides were inflexible. The priests then changed their tactics: they began to tease and embarrass Latimer with innumerable questions. As soon as one had finished, another began with sophistry and plausibility, and interminable subterfuges. Latimer tried to make his adversaries keep within the circle from which they were straying, but they would not hear him. One day, as Latimer entered the hall, he noticed a change in the arrangement of the furniture. There was a chimney, in which there had been a fire before: on this day there was no fire, and the fireplace was invisible. Some tapestry hung down over it, and the table round which the judges sat was in the middle of the room. The accused was seated between the table and the chimney. ‘Master Latimer,’ said an aged bishop, whom he believed to be one of his friends, ‘pray speak a little louder: I am hard of hearing, as you know.’ Latimer, surprised at this remark, pricked up his ears, and fancied he heard in the fireplace the noise of a pen upon paper.[196] ‘Ho, ho!’ thought he, ‘they have hidden some one behind there to take down my answers.’ He replied cautiously to captious questions, much to the embarrassment of the judges.