The Hallowed Spots of Ancient London Author:Eliza Meteyard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: For a time, in the quaint words of Fuller, " the ship of Christ had to lay poor and private," as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, was most furious and cruel... more » in detecting and suppressing all suspected of piety. But though he published a constitution forbidding the reading of any book of Scripture translated into English, either by John Wycliffe, or by others after his death,t the new doctrines only gathered strength and currency by this first of the Sinithfield martyrdoms. From time to time, as the century went by, other fires were lit, not only in Smithfield, but in the vicinity of the Tower as well as at St. Giles' in the Fields. The Smithfield martyrs of 1422 and 1431 were both priests, thus confirming in some degree our idea, that there was a general advance of opinions amongst the poorer priesthood, which enabled many of them to be the first to appreciate, and consequently promulgate, the doctrines of the great reformer. In 1494 occurred the martyrdom of Joan Broughton, an aged lady, who, as a disciple of 'VVyeliffe, was held in such sanctity, that during the night following her burning, " her ashes were had away by such as had a love unto the doctrines that she died for." J But amongst those who fed the fires of Smithfield between the reigns of Henry the Fourth and that of Queen Elizabeth, when former statutes relating to heresy were repealed, and its jurisdiction was left as it had formerly stood at common law, no case is more remarkable than that of Anne Askew. She was a Lincolnshire lady, and greatly in favour with Katherine Parr, the last of the wives of Henry the Eighth. Failing to involve his queen in a charge of heresy on the fatal point of the corporal presence, Henry, or those who easily worked on his diseased temper during the few last months of his life,...« less