Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley had remained in the Tower, where at first they had enjoyed considerable freedom, till March 1554. Ridley dined frequently at the Lieutenant’s table, and he and Cranmer were allowed the liberty of the Queen’s garden, Latimer being kept more straitly. But after Wyatt’s rebellion, the Tower being crowded with prisoners, the three bishops were put together in one room, and to them was added Ridley’s chaplain, John Bradford. In the spring of 1554, they were sent to Oxford, to take part in a theological discussion on the Mass. Ridley, the most learned of the three, was born in 1500 and was consequently fifty-four years old at the time of the disputation. He had adopted the principles of the German reformers in 1536, and renounced his belief in transubstantiation in the year of Henry’s death, after which he laboured strenuously to defend and spread the new doctrines. Cranmer acknowledged him his superior in controversy, and during the disputation it was said of the three bishops: “Latimer leaneth to Cranmer, Cranmer leaneth to Ridley and Ridley to the singularity of his own wit”. Nevertheless in arguing, he always referred to Cranmer’s book. Latimer joined to the Puritan sympathies of Hooper the weakness of character which signalised Cranmer. He had been so deeply imbued with the spirit of the German divines as to lose Henry’s favour, but as he ardently advocated the King’s first divorce, Anne Boleyn procured him a bishopric. He was however regarded with some suspicion, and was twice convented before Convocation, and required to subscribe to certain articles presented to him for his acceptance. He refused, was pronounced contumacious and excommunicated, until he retracted, and sued for forgiveness. He was ultimately pardoned, but relapsed into Protestantism, and was only saved from prosecution by a timely utterance in favour of the divorce, when he was made Bishop of Worcester. In 1536 he was called on to examine some Anabaptists for heresy, and saw no reason why they should not suffer the rigour of the law for their opinions. Later, he thus defended their execution: “This is a deceivable argument,” said Latimer “he went to his death boldly: ergo he standeth in a just quarrel. The Anabaptists that were burnt here in divers towns in England (as I heard of credible men, I saw them not myself) went to their death even intrepid, as ye will say, without any fear in the world, cheerfully. Well, let them go. There was in the old doctor’s time another kind of poisoned heretics that were called Donatists, and these heretics went to their execution as though they should have gone to some jolly recreation or banquet, to some belly-cheer or to a play.”[550]