[428] _State Papers_, i. p. 467. Dr. Lingard says that this expedition was named jestingly 'the Pilgrimage of Grace.' He is mistaken: the rebels themselves seriously call it by this name six times in their proclamation. [429] Stapleton's _Examination_. [430] October 17 and 18, 1536. Letters liv. to lviii. pp. 475-478, of the _State Papers_, vol. i. [431] _State Papers_, i. p. 478, 482. [432] Latimer, _Sermons_, p. 29. [433] This fact is mentioned in one of the depositions of the trial which followed the revolt. See Christopher Aske's Examination. [434] Lancaster Herald's Report.—_State Papers_, i. p. 485. [435] The herald added: 'They shall be constrained the next year to eat their own fingers.'—_State Papers_, i. p. 476. [436] 'To have all the vyle blood of his counsell put from him and all noble blood set up again.'—_Lancaster Herald's Report_, p. 486. [437] _State Papers_, i. p. 495. [438] These articles are more or less numerous according to the sources whence they are derived. [439] _State Papers_, i. p. 496. [440] _Ibid._ p. 497. CHAPTER XIV. THE DEATH OF THE GREAT REFORMER OF ENGLAND. (FROM 1535 TO OCTOBER 1536.) Most of the reformers, Luther, Zuingle, Calvin, Knox, and others have acquired that name by their preachings, their writings, their struggles, and their actions. It is not so with the principal reformer of England: all his activity was concentred in the Holy Scriptures. Tyndale was less prominent than the other instruments of God, who were awakened to upraise the Church. We might say, that knowing the weakness of man, he had retired and hidden himself to allow the Word from Heaven to act by itself. He had studied it, translated it, and sent it over the sea: it must now do its own work. Is it not written: _The field is the world, and the seed is the Word_? But there is another characteristic, or rather another fact, which distinguishes him from them, and this we have to describe. [Sidenote: TYNDALE'S CHARACTERISTIC.]