In the year 1549, Joan Bocher was condemned for some enthusiastical opinions about Christ, and delivered over to the secular power. The sentence being returned to the council, King Edward VI. was moved to sign a warrant for her being burnt, but could not be prevailed with to do it. Cranmer endeavoured to persuade him by such arguments, as rather silenced than satisfied the young king: so he set his hand to the warrant with tears in his eyes, saying to the archbishop, that if he did wrong, since it was in submission to his authority, he should answer for it to God. Though this struck Cranmer with horror, yet he at last put the sentence in execution against her. About two years after one George Van Pare, a Dutchman, was accused, for saying, “That God the Father was only God, and that Christ was not very God.” And though he was a person of a very holy life, yet because he would not abjure, he was condemned for heresy, and burnt in Smithfield. The Archbishop himself was afterwards burnt for heresy; which, as Fox observed, many looked on as a just retaliation from the providence of God, for the cruel severeties he had used towards others. The controversy about the Popish habits was one of the first that arose amongst the English reformers. Cranmer and Ridley were zealous for the use of them, whilst other very pious and learned Divines were for laying them aside, as the badges of idolatry and antichrist. Amongst these was Dr. Hooper, nominated to the bishoprick of Gloucester; but because he refused to be consecrated in the old vestments, he was by order of council first silenced, and then confined to his own house; and afterwards, by Cranmer’s means, committed to the Fleet prison, where he continued several months.