About the time of the king’s death there were great divisions among the Florentines. Some expected the king’s return, and very earnestly desired it, upon confidence in Friar Jerome’s assurance; and in that confidence they exhausted and ruined themselves in their expenses to promote the recovery of Pisa and the rest of the towns which they had delivered to the king; but Pisa remained in possession of the Venetians. Some of the citizens were for siding with the league and deserting our king; and these alleged that all was but folly and delusion, and that Friar Jerome was a heretic and a hypocrite, and that he ought to be put into a sack and thrown into the river; but he had friends in the town who protected him against that fate. The Pope and the Duke of Milan wrote often against him, assuring the Florentines that Pisa and the rest of their towns should be restored, if they would abandon our king and punish Friar Jerome. It accidentally happened, that at the time of the king’s death the Signory consisted chiefly of Friar Jerome’s enemies (for the Signory in that city is changed every two months), who suborned a Cordelier[508] to quarrel with him, and to proclaim him a heretic and an abuser of the people, in pretending to revelation, and to declare publicly that he had no such gift; and, to prove what he said, he challenged him to the ordeal of fire before the Signory. Friar Jerome had more wit than to accept this challenge; but one of his brethren[509] offered to do it for him, and another of the Cordeliers[510] volunteered to do as much on the other side; so that a day[511] was appointed when they were to come to their trial, and both of them presented themselves to enter the fire accompanied by all the friars of their orders. The Jacobite brought the Host in his hand, which the Signory and Cordeliers insisted he should lay by; but the Jacobite, being obstinate to the contrary, and resolved not to part with it, they returned all to their convents. Whereupon the people, encouraged by Friar Jerome’s enemies, and authorised by the Signory, went to his convent and fetched him and two more of his brethren[512] out, and tortured them most cruelly, killing the chief man in the city (called Francisco Vallori[513]), only for being his friend. The Pope sent them power and commission to make out process against him, and at last he and his two brethren were burnt.[514] The charge against him consisted only of two articles; that he created disorder in the city, and that he was an impostor; and that what he pretended to know by revelation he was told by his friends in the council. For my own part I will neither condemn nor excuse him, nor will I say they did ill or well in putting him to death; but I am sure he foretold several things which afterwards came to pass, and which all his friends in Florence could never have suggested. And as to our master and the evils with which he threatened him, they happened exactly as you have heard, first the death