Duke of Anjou's agent, for his wisdom and discretion, whom some had loaded with calumnies and slanders. She also advertised the people that the said book was nothing else but a fiction of some traitors, to raise envy abroad, and sedition at home; and commanded it to be burnt before the magistrate's face. From this time forward she began to be a little more incensed against the puritans, or innovators, from whom she easily believed these kind of things proceeded: and indeed, within a few days after, John Stubbs of Lincoln's Inn, a furious hot-headed professor of religion, (whose sister, Thomas Cartwright, a ringleader amongst the Puritans, had married) the author of this book, William Page, who dispersed the copies, and Singleton the printer, were apprehended; against whom sentence was given, that their right hands should be cut off, according to an Act of Philip and Mary, against the authors and publishers of seditious writings. Though some lawyers muttered that the sentence was erroneous and void by reason of the false noting of the time wherein the law was made; and that that Act was only temporary, and died with Queen Mary. Of this number was Dalton, who often bawled it out openly, and was committed to the Tower; and Monson, a judge in the Court of Common Pleas, was so sharply reprehended, that he resigned his place, forasmuch as Wray, Lord Chief Justice of England, made it appear that there was no mistake in noting the time; and proved by the words of the Act, that the Act was made against those who should abuse the King by seditious writings, and that the King of England never dieth; yea that that Act was renewed Anno primo Elizabethæ, to be in force during the life of her and the heirs of her body. Hereupon Stubbs and Page had their right hands cut off with a cleaver, driven through the wrist by the force of a mallet, upon a scaffold in the market place at Westminster. The printer was pardoned. I remember (being there present) that Stubbs, after his right hand was cut off, put off his hat with his left, and said with a loud voice "God save the Queen." The multitude standing about was deeply silent; either out of an horror of this new and unwonted kind of punishment, or else out of commiseration towards the man, as being of an honest and unblamable repute; or else out of hatred of the marriage, which most men presaged would be the overthrow of religion. On October 5th, 1579, a circular was prepared from the Council to the bishops, to give notice to the clergy and others that the seditious suggestions set forth in Stubbs's book were without foundation, and that special noted preachers should declare the same to the people. Eleven copies of this circular are in the Public Record Office unfinished, some signed, others not fully signed, and some not signed at all; from which it would appear that none were sent, and that the matter dropped. 14.