Then we stumble over the threshold of the chamber where Friars Bacon and Bungay are sleeping, while stupid Miles is watching the Brazen Head whose brief solemn words were spoken in vain; going forward just a few paces until we come to the death-beds of Bungay and Vandermast, and Friar Bacon's clever cheating of the Devil at last. But we are still on the outskirts of legendary land, and must go on to the middle of the fourteenth century before we get a firm hold. About this time the subject of witchcraft occupied much of the attention and thought of the Church, but the priests had not yet quite closed their fingers round it; for in 1371 a man was arrested for sorcery, and "brought before the justices of the King's Bench, by whom he was acquitted for want of evidence, which shows that it was still looked upon merely as an offence against common law."[95] It was only when it became the superstition which some men are pleased to call "religion" that it got stained with its deepest dyes. Early in 1406 Henry IV. gave instructions to the Bishop of Norwich to search for the sorcerers, witches, and necromancers reported to be rather rife in that respectable diocese, and if he could not convert them from the evil of their ways, he was to bring them to speedy punishment; and in 1432 the Privy Council ordered to be seized and examined a Franciscan friar of Worcester, by name Thomas Northfield; another friar, John Ashwell; John Virley "a clerk;" and Margery Jourdemaine--the same Margery generally called the Witch of Eye, who, nine years later, was burnt at Smithfield for her complicity in the treasonable practices of Dame Eleanor of Gloucester. In 1441 Dame Eleanor herself was arrested, and "put in holt, for she was suspecte of treason;" and with her the Witch of Eye, who was burnt; and Roger, a clerk "longing to her," who was placed on a high scaffold against St. Paul's Cross on the Sunday, and there "arraied like as he should never thrive in his garnementys;" while heaped up round about were all his instruments taken with him, to be showed among the people, and create a proper fear and horror in their mind. The end of poor Roger the clerk was, that he was dragged from the Tower to Tyburn, there hanged, beheaded, and quartered; his head set on London Bridge, and his four quarters sent--one to Hereford, and one to Oxenford, another to York, and the fourth to Cambrigge. As for Dame Eleanor, that proud, dark, unscrupulous heroine of romance, every one knows the story of her disgrace and shame; how she came from London to Westminster, and walked through the streets of the city barefooted and bareheaded, carrying the waxen taper of two pounds' weight, and doing penance before all the crowd of citizens assembled to see her "on her foot and hoodles;" and how she offered up her taper on the high altar of "Poules;" and when all was done, was sent to Chester prison, "there to byde while she lyveth."