[Footnote 103: Christ Church, Oxford.] [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XX. The Fleet was, evidently, a handy prison, elastic enough to suit all cases, for on Aug. 19, 1553, at the Star Chamber, "Roger Erthe, alias Kinge, servaunt to Therle of Pembroke, and William Ferror, servaunt to the Lord Sturton, were, for making of a Fraye, committed to the Charge of Warden of the Fleete." In September, 1553, the Fleet received a prisoner whose name is historical wherever the English language is read, for the Privy Council being held at Richmond, on the 1st of Sept. "This day appered before the Lordes, John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, and Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exon. And the said Hooper, for Considerations the Councell moving, was sent to the Fleete." Turning from Mary's reign to that of Elizabeth, we find equal religious intolerance, for we read in Strype's "Annals of the Reformation, A.D. 1582," that Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, sent a letter to the Lord Treasurer, informing him that one Osborn, a priest and Franciscan friar, had been examined, and confessed that "_in crastino Epiphaniæ_, he said Mass in the Fleet (where many recusants were committed) in the Lord Vaux's Chamber, (to whom he was related) before that Lord, Mr. Tresham, Mr. Tyrwhit, and others," which three, at the London Sessions, in Guildhall, were convicted on Osborn's evidence. Fleet parsons were evidently an institution in the sixteenth century, for besides the above-mentioned Osborn, there was another committed to the Fleet, on May 27, 1584, one Sir R. Stapleton. His fault seems to have been that he had preached against the Archbishop of York, for which he was arraigned in the Star Chamber, and was, with others, ordered to read an apology--which he did--but in such a contemptuous manner, that he was sent to the Fleet. In the seventeenth century, many Puritans were incarcerated here, especially after the Restoration, when their gloomy fanaticism ill accorded with the ideas of the age. The bow had been strung too tightly during the Commonwealth, and when it was unstrung the reaction was great. So many were put into prison for conscience' sake. Even in Elizabeth's reign there were many in prison, and we can hardly wonder at it when we consider it was an age of religious intolerance, and the religion professed by these devotees was of a most unattractive character. Strype, writing of A.D. 1588, says of them: "In the Summer Time they meet together in the Fields, a Mile or more.[104] There they sit down upon a Bank. And divers of them expound out of the Bible, so long as they are there assembled.