The work of reformation was now about to be taken seriously in hand. Something, it is true, had been done in this direction under Henry, but in _dilettante_ fashion. The ceremony connected with the boy-bishop, which even Colet had thought worthy to be perpetuated in his school,(1269) had been abolished by order of the mayor in 1538.(1270) The ruthless destruction of the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, and the erasure of his name from service-books, had been followed in the city by an order (1539) for a new common seal on which the arms of the city were substituted for the original effigy of the saint.(1271) Henry himself only coquetted with Protestantism; his chief object, if not the only one, was to get rid of the papal supremacy; but among the bourgeois class of the city there was an earnest desire to see an improvement made in the doctrine and discipline of the Church.(1272) Whilst the statute of the Six Articles was still unrepealed, the sacrament of the mass frequently provoked open hostility in the city. Thus, in August, 1538, Robert Reynold, a stationer, was declared upon the oath of five independent witnesses to have been heard to say "that the masse was nawght, and the memento was Bawdrye, and after the consecracioun of the masse yt was idolatrye." He was further charged with having said that it were better for him to confess and be houseled by a temporal rather than a spiritual man.(1273) Again, in February, 1543, Hugh Eton, a hosier of London, was convicted of disguising himself "in fonde fassyon," and of irreverently walking up and down in St. Bride’s Church before the sacrament, disturbing the priests at mass and creating a tumult. By way of punishment for his offence he was set in the cage in Fleet Street, "disguised" as he was, with a paper on his head setting forth his offence. He there remained until four o’clock in the afternoon, when he was removed to the compter and condemned to stay there a prisoner until he found sureties for good behaviour.(1274) After the repeal of the statute by Edward’s first parliament, the opposition to the "sacrament of the altar," as the mass was called, became greater than ever.(1275) A boy was ordered to be whipt naked in the church of St. Mary Woolnoth for throwing his cap at the host at the time of elevation.(1276) In February, 1548, information was given to the Court of Aldermen of preachers having used "certain words" touching the mass in the churches of St. Dunstan in the east and St. Martin Orgar.(1277) On the 5th May, 1548, the mayor and aldermen resolved to appear the next day before the Lord Protector Somerset and the council, and explain the nature of the misdemeanours of certain preachers, concerning which the mayor had already had some communication with the Archbishop of Canterbury.(1278)