Islip’s first connection with such matters appears to have been in 1526, when Wolsey appointed him to search for heretics among the Hanseatic merchants in London. The search was apparently successful, for he presided together with the Bishop of Bath and Wells at the trial of one Hans Ellerdope, the main accusation against whom was the possession of one of Luther’s prohibited treatises. The trial took place probably in the Chapter House of the Abbey, for the Prior, the Archdeacon, and another monk were all present. Ellerdope protested that he could neither speak nor understand Latin. He had not therefore read a single page of the book but had refrained from burning it because it was not his own property. He had found it in the chamber of one of his master’s agents on whose death he had taken possession of it. The issue of the trial does not appear but it seems probable that Ellerdope was acquitted. In 1527 the Chapter House was definitely the scene of a trial. On this occasion Wolsey, attended by a long array of bishops, lawyers and others, presided there at the trial of one Thomas Bilney for heretical pronouncements. Bilney is only of interest as being, according to Foxe, “a Cambridge man and the first Framer of that University in the knowledge of Christ.” More interesting would it be to have heard the talk of the monastery upon the trial which was taking place in its very centre. In the last two years of his life Islip was connected with two more such trials, both of which were held in the Consistory Court in St. Paul’s Cathedral and were presided over by the Bishop of London. One of these was that of Richard Bayfield, a renegade monk of Bury, against whom thirteen articles of offence were alleged. The more important items in the indictment were the importation of the works of Luther and of divers other heretics, and the holding of opinions contrary to Holy Church. The Abbots of Westminster and Waltham together with certain of the nobility and others assisted the Bishop at the trial. Bayfield was found guilty and handed over to the Mayor and Sheriffs of London. In due course he suffered at the stake. The second trial was that of a leather-seller, John Tewkesbury, who came to the same end, but in this case Islip seems only to have been present at the first hearing. But if this aspect of Islip’s public life is little calculated to attract the sympathies of more tolerant times still less perhaps is the part which he played in the matter of the King’s divorce. It was but a minor part, but there can be little doubt as to Islip’s views in the case. No sadder fate fell to any woman in English history than came to Katharine of Arragon. Yet sympathy is apt to outrun judgment, and the easily formed verdict of all but the student dwells on the pathos of her story, makes much of the King’s sensual inclinations, and is entirely uninterested in and impatient of the problems and niceties of ecclesiastical law.