4. That it is lawful for a Christian man to take an oth. And further that I confess that the whole doctrine and religion established and published in this realme of England, as also that which is received and preached in the Dutch Church, from henceforth utterlie abandoning and forsaking all and every anabaptistical error. This is my faith now, in the which I doo purpose and trust to stand firme and stedfast to the end. And that I may soo doo, I beseech you all to praie with me, and for me, to God the heavenlie father, in the name of his son our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Before this, one man and ten women were tried in the Consistory of St. Paul’s and sentenced to be burned, but one woman having been converted, they resolved on banishing the rest, who were Dutch. Accordingly the nine women were led by the sheriff, and the man was tied to a cart tail and whipped all the way from Newgate to the river, where they were shipped. And there was a certain sect called the Family of Love, which gave some trouble through their obstinacy. In the year 1575 five of them recanted; in 1580 the sect were thought of sufficient importance to justify a proclamation against them. The tenets of the people do not appear, but they were accused of holding it laudable to deny their connection with their own sect, which made it impossible to convict them by their own confession. The case of Matthew Hamont, plough-wright, may conclude these cases of strange hallucinations and the conclusions of a disordered brain. He was a common man of no education, who took to thinking and reading about doctrines which he could not understand. He finally arrived at the conclusion that the New Testament, with the Gospels, is but an invention of man, that Christ was a mere man, and so on, shrinking from nothing. This poor lunatic they gravely tried, and because he had spoken words against the Queen, they first cut off both his ears, and then, after giving him a week of pain from his wounds, they burned him for a heretic. CHAPTER III SUPERSTITION After Religion stalks her caricature, Superstition. Now the credulities of London in the Elizabethan age were many and wonderful. Everybody, for instance, at that time believed in _witchcraft_. Yet there was not wanting an occasional protest.