Holinshed, Stow and Strype all tell a story of a fraud, perpetrated by the Queen’s enemies. Strange sounds were heard to issue from a house in Aldersgate Street, interspersed with obscure words, perfectly incomprehensible, until they were interpreted by certain persons who were in the secret. These told the crowds assembled in front of the house, that what they heard was the voice of the Holy Ghost, warning a wicked and perverse generation. It inveighed, they said, against the Queen’s marriage, and the impiety of the Mass; and the citizens were threatened with war, famine, pestilence and earthquakes. The tumult became so great, that the magistrates ordered the front wall of the house to be demolished, when a young woman, named Elizabeth Crofts, crept out of a hiding place, and confessed that she had been hired to commit the fraud. She was put in the pillory, but afterwards pardoned and sent home.[514] The way in which religion was purposely confused with political grievances, real or supposed, was the cause of more than half the difficulty. The Council were still for prosecuting the criminals for heresy, the Emperor for ever maintained that they should be tried for treason. The Venetian ambassador notifies a slight insurrection in Essex, whereupon Bonner received an order from the Privy Council to send “certain discreet and learned preachers to reduce the people who hath been of late seduced by sundry lewd persons named ministers there”.[515] The state of affairs is thus seen to have entered into a vicious circle. The lawlessness of the sectaries prompted severe reprisals, and the punishments inflicted did but aggravate the evil instead of suppressing it. “I have never,” said Renard, “seen the people so disturbed and discontented as now.” For six months, he had not ceased urging that Elizabeth, who was, he considered, the cause of all the troubles, should be sent abroad.