Alarm of the Clergy--The Two Days--Thomas Man's Preaching--True real Presence--Persecutions at Coventry--Standish preaches at St. Paul's--His Petition to the King and Queen--His Arguments and Defeat--Wolsey's Ambition--First Overtures--Henry and Francis Candidates for the Empire--Conference between Francis I and Sir T. Boleyn--The Tiara promised to Wolsey--The Cardinal's Intrigues with Charles and Francis. [Sidenote: ALARM OF THE CLERGY.] This revival caused great alarm throughout the Roman hierarchy. Content with the baptism they administered, they feared the baptism of the Holy Ghost perfected by faith in the word of God. Some of the clergy, who were full of zeal, but of zeal without knowledge, prepared for the struggle, and the cries raised by the prelates were repeated by all the inferior orders. The first blows did not fall on the members of the universities, but on those humble Christians, the relics of Wickliffe's ministry, to whom the reform movement among the learned had imparted a new life. The awakening of the fourteenth century was about to be succeeded by that of the sixteenth, and the last gleams of the closing day were almost lost in the first rays of that which was commencing. The young doctors of Oxford and Cambridge aroused the attention of the alarmed hierarchy, and attracted their eyes to the humble Lollards, who here and there still recalled the days of Wickliffe. [Sidenote: THE COVENTRY MARTYRS.] An artisan named Thomas Man, sometimes called Doctor Man, from his knowledge of Holy Scripture, had been imprisoned for his faith in the priory of Frideswide at Oxford (1511 A. D.) Tormented by the remembrance of a recantation which had been extorted from him, he had escaped from this monastery and fled into the eastern parts of England, where he had preached the Word, supplying his daily wants by the labour of his hands.[328] This "champion of God" afterwards drew near the capital, and assisted by his wife, the new Priscilla of this new Aquila, he proclaimed the doctrine of Christ to the crowd collected around him in some "upper chamber" of London, or in some lonely meadow watered by the Thames, or under the aged oaks of Windsor Forest. He thought with Chrysostom of old, that "all priests are not saints, but all saints are priests."[329] "He that receiveth the word of God," said he, "receiveth God himself, that is the true _real presence_. The vendors of masses are not the high-priests of this mystery;[330] but the men whom God hath _anointed with his Spirit_ to be kings and priests." From six to seven hundred persons were converted by his preaching.[331] [328] Work thereby to sustain his poor life. Foxe, Acts, iv, p. 209. [329] Chrysostom, 43 Homily on Matth. [330] He called them _pilled knaves_. Foxe. iv, p. 209. [331] Ibid. p. 211.