“Holy Church has never forbidden it,” said John Clarke, with a very intent look upon his thoughtful, scholar’s face.

A young man who stood with his elbow on the mantelshelf, his eye fixed eagerly on the speaker’s face, here broke in with a quick impetuosity of manner, which seemed in keeping with his restless, mobile features, his flashing dark eyes, and the nervous motion of his hands, which were never still long together.

“How do you mean?  Never forbidden it!  Why, then, is all this coil which has set London aflame and lighted the fires of Paul’s Yard for the destruction of those very books?”

“I did not say that men had never forbidden the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue by the unlettered.  I said that Holy Church herself had never issued such a mandate.”

“Not by her Popes?” questioned the younger man hastily.

“A papal bull is not the voice of the Holy Catholic Church,” spoke Clarke, slowly and earnestly.  “A Pope is not an apostle; though, as a bishop, and a Bishop of Rome, he must be listened to with all reverence.  Apostles are not of man or by man, but sent direct by God.  Popes elected by cardinals (and too often amid flagrant abuses) cannot truly be said to hold apostolic office direct from the Lord.  No, I cannot see that point as others do.  But let that pass.  What I do maintain, and will hold to with certainty, is that in this land the Catholic Church has never forbidden men to read the Scriptures for themselves in any tongue that pleases them.  I have searched statutes and records without end, and held disputations with many learned men, and never have I been proven to be in the wrong.”

“I trow you are right there, John Clarke,” spoke a deep voice from out the shadows of the room at the far end, away from the long, mullioned window.  “I have ever maintained that our Mother the Holy Church is a far more merciful and gentle and tolerant mother than those who seek to uphold her authority, and who use her name as a cloak for much maliciousness and much ignorance.”

Clarke turned swiftly upon the speaker, whose white head could be plainly distinguished in the shadows of the panelled room.  The features, too, being finely cut, and of a clear, pallid tint, stood out against the dark leather of the chair in which the speaker sat.  He was habited, although in his own house, in the academic gown to which his long residence in Oxford had accustomed him.  But it was as a Doctor of the Faculty of Medicine that he had distinguished himself; and although of late years he had done little in practising amongst the sick, and spent his time mainly in the study of his beloved Greek authors, yet his skill as a physician was held in high repute, and there were many among the heads of colleges who, when illness threatened them, invariably besought the help of Dr. Langton in preference to that of any other leech in the place.  Moreover, there were many poor scholars and students, as well as indigent townsfolk, who had good cause to bless his name; whilst the faces of his two beautiful daughters were well known in many a crowded lane and alley of the city, and they often went by the sobriquet of “The two saints of Oxford.”

This was in part, perhaps, due to their names.  They were twin girls, the only children of Dr. Langton, whose wife had died within a year of their birth.  He had called the one Frideswyde, after the patron saint of Oxford, at whose shrine so many reputed miracles had been wrought; and the other he named Magdalen, possibly because he had been married in the church of St. Mary Magdalen, just without the North Gate.

To their friends the twin sisters were known as Freda and Magda, and they lived with their father in a quaint riverside house by Miltham Bridge, where it crossed the Cherwell.  This house was a fragment of some ecclesiastical building now no longer in existence, and although not extensive, was ample enough for the needs of a small household, whilst the old garden and fish ponds, the nut walk and sunny green lawn with its ancient sundial, were a constant delight to the two girls, who were proud of the flowers they could grow through the summer months, and were wont to declare that their roses and lilies were the finest that could be seen in all the neighbourhood of Oxford.

The room in which the little company was gathered together this clear, bright April evening was the fragment of the old refectory, and its groined and vaulted roof was beautifully traced, whilst the long, mullioned window, on the wide cushioned seat on which the sisters sat with arms entwined, listening breathlessly to the talk of their elders, looked southward and westward over green meadowlands and gleaming water channels to the low hills and woodlands beyond.

Oxford in the sixteenth century was a notoriously unhealthy place, swept by constant pestilences, which militated greatly against its growth as a university; but no one could deny the peculiar charm of its situation during the summer months, set in a zone of verdure, amid waterways fringed with alder and willow, and gemmed by water plants and masses of fritillary.

Besides the two sisters, their learned father, and the two young men in the garb of students who had already spoken, there was a third youth present, who looked slightly younger than the dark faced, impetuous Anthony Dalaber, and he sat on the window seat beside the daughters of the house, with the look of one who has the right to claim intimacy.  As a matter of fact, Hugh Fitzjames was the cousin of these girls, and for many years had been a member of Dr. Langton’s household.  Now he was living at St. Alban Hall, and Dalaber was his most intimate friend and comrade, sharing the same double chamber with him.  It was this intimacy which bad first brought Anthony Dalaber to the Bridge House; and having once come, he came again and yet again, till he was regarded in the light of a friend and comrade.

There was a very strong tie asserting itself amongst certain men of varying ages and academic rank at Oxford at this time.  Certain publications of Martin Luther had found their way into the country, despite the efforts of those in authority to cheek their introduction and circulation.  And with these books came also portions of the Scriptures translated into English, which were as eagerly bought and perused by vast numbers of persons.

Martin Luther was no timid writer.  He denounced the corruptions he had noted in the existing ordinances of the church with no uncertain note.  He exposed the abuses of pardons, pilgrimages, and indulgences in language so scathing that it set on fire the hearts of his readers.  It seemed to show beyond dispute that in the prevailing corruption, which had gradually sapped so much of the true life and light from the Church Catholic, money was the ruling power.  Money could purchase masses to win souls from purgatory; money could buy indulgences for sins committed; money could even place unfit men of loose life in high ecclesiastical places.  Money was what the great ones of the church sought ­money, not holiness, not righteousness, not purity.

This was the teaching of Martin Luther; and many of those who read had no means of knowing wherein he went too far, wherein he did injustice to the leaven of righteousness still at work in the midst of so much corruption, or to the holy lives of hundreds and thousands of those he unsparingly condemned, who deplored the corruption which prevailed only less earnestly than he did himself.  It was small wonder, then, that those in authority in this and other lands sought by every means in their power to put down the circulation of books which might have such mischievous results.  And as one of Martin Luther’s main arguments was that if men only read and studied the Scriptures for themselves in their own mother tongue, whatever that tongue might be, they would have power to judge for themselves how far the practice of the church differed from apostolic precept and from the teachings of Christ, it was thought equally advisable to keep out of the hands of the people the translated Scriptures, which might produce such heterodox changes in their minds; and all efforts were made in many quarters to stamp out the spreading flames of heresy in the land.

Above all things, it was hoped that the leaven of these new and dangerous opinions would not penetrate to the twin seats of learning, the sister universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Cardinal Wolsey had of late years been busy and enthusiastic over his munificent gift of a new and larger college to Oxford than any it had possessed before.  To be sure, he did not find all the funds for it out of his private purse.  He swept away the small priory of St. Frideswyde, finding homes for the prior and few monks, and confiscating the revenues to his scheme; and other small religious communities were treated in like manner, in order to contribute to the expenses of the great undertaking.  Now a fair building stood upon the ancient site of the priory; and two years before, the first canons of Cardinal College (as Christ Church used to be called) were brought thither, and established in their new and most commodious quarters.  And amongst the first of these so-called Canons or Senior Fellows of the Foundation was Master John Clarke, a Master of Arts at Cambridge, who was also a student of divinity, and qualifying for the priesthood.  Wolsey had made a selection of eight Cambridge students, of good repute for both learning and good conduct, and had brought them to Oxford to number amongst his senior fellows or canons; and so it had come about that Clarke and several intimate associates of his had been translated from Cambridge to Oxford, and were receiving the allowance and benefits which accrued to all who were elected to the fellowships of Cardinal College.

But though Wolsey had made all due inquiries as to the scholarship and purity of life and conduct of those graduates selected for the honour done them, he had shown himself somewhat careless perhaps in the matter of their orthodoxy, or else he had taken it too much for granted.  For so it was that of the eight Cambridge men thus removed to Oxford, six were distinctly “tainted” by the new opinions so fast gaining ground in the country, and though still deeply attached to the Holy Catholic Church, were beginning to revolt against many of the abuses of the Papacy which had grown up within that church, and were doing much to weaken her authority and bring her into disrepute with thinking laymen ­if not, indeed, with her own more independent-minded priests.

John Clarke was a leading spirit amongst his fellows at Cardinal College, as he had been at Cambridge amongst the graduates there.  It was not that he sought popularity, or made efforts to sway the minds of those about him, but there was something in the personality of the man which seemed magnetic in its properties; and as a Regent Master in Arts, his lectures had attracted large numbers of students, and whenever he had disputed in the schools, even as quite a young man, there had always been an eager crowd to listen to him.

Last summer an unwonted outbreak of sickness in Oxford had driven many students away from the city to adjacent localities, where they had pursued their studies as best they might; and at Poghley, where some scholars had been staying, John Clarke had both preached and held lectures which attracted much attention, and aroused considerable excitement and speculation.

Dr. Langton had taken his two daughters to Poghley to be out of the area of infection, and there the family had bettered their previous slight acquaintance with Clarke and some of his friends.  They had Anthony Dalaber and Hugh Fitzjames in the same house where they were lodging; and Clarke would come and go at will, therein growing in intimacy with the learned physician, who delighted in the deep scholarship and the original habit of thought which distinguished the young man.

“If he live,” he once said to his daughters, after a long evening, in which the two had sat discoursing of men and books and the topics of the day ­“if he live, John Clarke will make a mark in the university, if not in the world.  I have seldom met a finer intellect, seldom a man of such singleness of mind and purity of spirit.  Small wonder that students flock to his lectures and desire to be taught of him.  Heaven protect him from the perils which too often threaten those who think too much for themselves, and who overleap the barriers by which some would fence our souls about.  There are dangers as well as prizes for those about whom the world speaks aloud.”

Now the students had returned to Oxford, the sickness had abated, and Dr. Langton had brought his daughters back to their beloved home.  But the visits of John Clarke still continued to be frequent.  It was but a short walk through the meadows from Cardinal College to the Bridge House.  On many a pleasant evening, his work being done, the young master would sally forth to see his friends; and one pair of soft eyes had learned to glow and sparkle at sight of him, as his tall, slight figure in its dark gown was to be seen approaching.  Magdalen Langton, at least, never wearied of any discussion which might take place in her presence, if John Clarke were one of the disputants.

And, indeed, the beautiful sisters were themselves able to follow, if not to take part in, most of the learned disquisitions which took place at their home.  Their father had educated them with the greatest care, consoling himself for the early loss of his wife and the lack of sons by superintending the education of his twin daughters, and instructing them not only in such elementary matters as reading and writing (often thought more than sufficient for a woman’s whole stock in trade of learning), but in the higher branches of knowledge ­in grammar, mathematics, and astronomy, as well as in the Latin and French languages, and in that favourite study of his, the Greek language, which had fallen so long into disrepute in Oxford, and had only been revived with some difficulty and no small opposition a few years previously.

But just latterly the talk at the Bridge House had concerned itself less with learned matters of Greek and Roman lore, or the problems of the heavenly bodies, than with those more personal and burning questions of the day, which had set so many thinking men to work to inquire of their own consciences how far they could approve the action of church and state in refusing to allow men to think and read for themselves, where their own salvation (as many argued) was at stake.

It was not the first time that a little group of earnest thinkers had been gathered together at Dr. Langton’s house.  The physician was a person held in high esteem in Oxford.  He took no open part now in her counsels, he gave no lectures; he lived the life of a recluse, highly esteemed and respected.  He would have been a bold man who would have spoken ill of him or his household, and therefore it seemed to him that he could very well afford to take the risk of receiving young men here, who desired to speak freely amongst themselves and one another in places not so liable to be dominated by listening ears as the rooms of the colleges and halls whence they came.

Dr. Langton himself, being a man of liberal views and sound piety, would very gladly have welcomed some reforms within the church, which he, in common with all the early Reformers, loved and venerated far more than modern-day Protestants fully understand.  They could not bear the thought that their Holy Mother was to be despoiled, and the Body of Christ rent in pieces amongst them.  No; their earnest and ardent wish was that this purging of abuses, this much-needed reformation, should come from within, should be carried out by her own priests, headed up, if possible, by the Pope himself.  Such was the dream of many and many a devout and earnest man at this time; and John Clarke’s voice always softened with a tender reverence as he spoke of the Holy Catholic Church.

So now his eyes lighted with a quick, responsive fire, as he turned them upon his host.

“That is just what I am ever striving to maintain ­that it is not the church which is in fault, but those who use her name to enforce edicts which she knows nothing of.  ’Search the scriptures, for in them ye have life,’ spoke our Lord.  ’Blessed is he that readeth the words of the prophecy of this book,’ wrote St. John in the latter days.  All men know that the Word of God is a lamp to the feet and a light to the path.  How shall we walk without that light to guide us?”

“The church gives us the light,” spoke Hugh Fitzjames softly.

Clarke turned upon him with a brilliant smile.

“She does, she does.  She provides in her services that we shall be enlightened by that light, that we shall be instructed and fed.  We have little or nothing to complain of in that respect.  But there are others ­hundreds and thousands ­who cannot share our privileges, who do not understand the words they hear when they are able to come to public worship.  What is to be done for such?  Are their needs sufficiently considered?  Who feeds those sheep and lambs who have gone astray, or who are not able to approach to the shepherd daily to be fed?”

“Many of such could not read the Scriptures, even were they placed in their hands,” remarked Fitzjames.

“True; and many might read them with blinded eyes, and interpret them in ignorant fashion, and so the truth might become perverted.  Those are dangers which the church has seen, and has striven against.  I will not say that the danger may not be great.  Holy things are sometimes defiled by becoming too common.  But has the peril become so great that men are forced to use such methods as those which London is shortly to witness?”

There was a glow in Clarke’s eyes which the gathering gloom could not hide.  Magdalen seemed about to speak, but Dalaber was before her.

“They say that the Tyndale translations are full of glaring errors, and errors which feed the hérésies of the Lollards, and are directed against the Holy Church.”

“That charge is not wholly without foundation,” answered Clarke at once, who as a scholar of the Greek language was well qualified to give an opinion on that point.  “And deeply do I grieve that such things should be, for the errors cannot all have been through accident or ignorance, but must have been inserted with a purpose; and I hold that no man is guiltless who dares to tamper with the Word of God, even though he think he may be doing God service thereby.  The Holy Spirit who inspired the sacred writers may be trusted so to direct men’s hearts and spirits that they may read aright what He has written; and it is folly and presumption to think that man may improve upon the Word of God.”

“But there are errors in all versions of the Scriptures, are there not ­in all translations from the original tongue?”

Magdalen was now the speaker, and she looked earnestly at Clarke, as though his words were words of the deepest wisdom, from which there was no appeal.

“Errors in all ­yes; but our Latin version is marvellously true to the original, and when Wycliffe translated into English he was far more correct than Tyndale has been.  But it is the Tyndale Testaments which have had so wide a sale of late in this country, and which have set London in commotion ­these and the writings of Martin Luther, which the men from the Stillyard have brought up the river in great quantities.  But be the errors never so great, I call it a shameful and a sinful thing, one that the Holy Church of olden days would never have sanctioned ­that the Word of God should be publicly burnt, as an unholy and polluted thing, in presence of the highest ecclesiastics of the land.  In truth, I hold it a crime and a sin.  I would that such a scene might even now be averted.”

“I should well like to see it!” spoke Dalaber, with that eager impetuosity which characterized his movements.  “I hate the thing myself, yet I would fain see it, too.  It would be something to remember, something to speak of in future days, when, perchance, the folly of it will be made manifest.

“Clarke, let us to London tomorrow!  Easter is nigh at hand, and your lectures have ceased for the present.  Come with me, and let us see this sight, and bring back word to our friends here how they regard this matter in London.  What do you say?”

Clarke’s face was grave and thoughtful.

“I have some thoughts of visiting London myself during the next week, but I had not thought to go to see the burning of books at Paul’s Cross.”

“But that is what I wish to see!” cried Dalaber.  “So, whether you accompany me thither or not, at least let us travel to London together, and quickly.  It will be a thing to remember in days to come; for verily I believe that the church will awaken soon, and like a giant refreshed with wine will show what is in her, and will gather her children about her as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and will feed them, and care for them, and be as she has been before to them, and that we shall see an end of the darkness and indifference which has fallen like a pall upon this land.”

Clarke rose with a smile, for the twilight was falling, and he spoke his farewells to one after another of the doctor’s family.

Magdalen’s eyes looked longest into his, as his dwelt with a dreamy softness upon her face.

“Are you really going to London?  Will it be safe?”

“As safe as Oxford, sweet mistress.  I apprehend no peril either there or here.  But at least I am a stranger there, whilst here any man who asks may know the thing I believe.  I am not afraid or ashamed to speak the truth I hold.”

Clarke and Dalaber went out together, and Magdalen turned anxiously upon her father.

“What did he mean?”

Dr. Langton smiled, but he also sighed a little.

“Do not be fearful, my children; we know of no peril in the present.  But we may not hide our faces from the fact that in past days this peril has threatened those who dare to speak and think the thing they hold to be truth, when that opinion is not shared by those in high places.  Yet let us be thankful in that, for the present time, no peril threatens either John Clarke and his friends or Anthony Dalaber, their pupil.”