them about so rapidly, that every voice for good or evil has thenceforth obtained universal hearing and examination.

So runs the tale; but printing was too wonderful a step in the history of the world, too remarkable a revelation, ordained in its own time by God's Providence, for its origin not to be the subject of curious and conflicting myths, even of men whose names stand in the registers of grave old business-like cities, and in the title-pages of their own printed books. The first of these stories comes from Haarlem, and tells of a good old burgher named Laurentz Koster, in Latin Custos, a keeper, either of the cathedral or the town records, who, walking in an avenue of beech trees without the town to recreate himself after dinner, was wont to amuse his grandchildren by cutting out letters on bits of birch bark, filling them up with ink, and taking the impression off on vellum or paper. Then came the idea of using more glutinous ink, and casting the letters in metal moulds, then in separate types, and gluing the printed sheets together to form pages. One manuscript might thus be copied a hundred fold; and the old Custos was on the point of giving his invention to the world, when one Christmas Eve, when all the household were at church, his faithless apprentice Johann Fust ran away with all his types, and baulked him of his fame. So affirmed, years on years after, Cornelius, the fellow apprentice, who could never speak of Fust's treachery and his master's disappointment without tears of indignation, as he bound the books that others printed by the secret stolen from old Laurentz.

So says Haarlem; but Mentz, where Fust assuredly reappeared and printed, has a different story. Fust, it there is said, was a burgher of the place, and a wealthy goldsmith, who, in conjunction with Johann Gutenberg, devised the invention. It is possible that Fust may really have been an apprentice on his travels, since in Germany all artificers, of whatever wealth, were bound to spend a year in studying their craft in other cities, so that the two stories may be consistent.

Gutenberg has his own legend. He is said to have been on the verge of the invention, when he beheld in a dream an angel standing on either side of his bed, each bearing a scroll. That on one side bade him persevere, and all should read and hear. That on the other was a grave warning against that which should set the world on fire, and overturn faith, piety, and obedience. Between the two he must choose-whether to continue the art that should diffuse knowledge for good or evil, or leave it unwrought out, that Wisdom might continue to contend with ignorance.

Gutenberg's choice led him into continued experiments and achievements with Fust, and another partner named Schaffer, and they do not appear to have treated him very well, but to have used his skill and wealth without due acknowledgement. Books from time to time came forth-alphabets, psalters, Bibles; and excited such amazement, that Fust, or Faustus as he Latinized his name, was suspected of dealings with Satan. Thereupon, just as when Bacon discovered gunpowder—a popular

tale grew up of Doctor Faustus and his bargain with the devil-a story which became the more notable as the source of one of the most weird and wonderful of metaphysical dramas ever produced.

The real Fust, whether honest or not, was an ingenious hard working man, who sent forth his Bibles and Psalters, until he died of the plague at Paris in 1466, having left his secret to many who rapidly carried on the work.

These Bibles were all in Latin, but translations of portions were scattered among the people, and no inconsiderable knowledge of Scripture narrative was conveyed in vernacular rhyming versions, both of the Bible and of the legends of the saints.

Bishop Pecock translated sundry portions of the Scripture, and this has led to his being regarded as a Lollard, though he seems to have held as little to their side as to that of anyone else. He was a wonderfully clever man, who delighted to upset and overthrow ordinary arguments, even when he believed in what they proved; and in the ten years following his sermon at St. Paul's Cross, he wrote a book called the Repressor, defending episcopacy against the Lollards, but not on the ground that the whole band of Apostles were divinely appointed, but that St. Peter was, and that the Pope was like the high priests of the Jews-one, and the fountain head of all authority among his subordinates. All this was of course most distasteful to the English prelates, and was rendered still more so by the ironical manner in which their quick-witted Welsh brother made game of their tardier arguments and lack of research.

At last, in 1457, matters came to a crisis. At a Council held before Henry VI. the lords temporal refused to proceed to business in the presence of the Bishop of Chichester, and called in some doctors of divinity, who demanded copies of his works that they might examine into them.

Pecock agreed, provided the books written within the last three years should be considered to represent his opinions; and Archbishop Bouchier summoned him to appear at his court in Lambeth chapel on the 11th of November, bringing his books with him. Meantime, the Archbishop silenced the clergy, who were preaching against the accused, and selected as his assessors or fellow judges, Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, and the Bishops of Lincoln and Rochester. Before these Pecock appeared with nine volumes of his books, which were given to twenty-four doctors of divinity to report upon.

Thereupon the bishop demanded to be tried according to English law by his peers.

'Of course,' was the reply.

"Then,' he said, turning a keen glance and satirical look upon the bishops and doctors, in whose hands his cause lay, 'he had a right to require that his judges should be his equals in understanding and learning!'

Whether earnest or jest, this did not dispose the doctors to pass over anything in his works capable of bearing a heretical sense. Treason there certainly was in his exaltation of the Pope and contravention of

the acts that bound the clergy to loyalty to the King instead of the Pope; but the bishops knew that a sentence on such a ground could not be carried out in the teeth of Rome under so ineffective and scrupulous a king as Henry; when, moreover, Pecock had deserted the Yorkist party for poor Suffolk, Henry's friend. So heresy was diligently sought for, and a sentence was found that might bear the sense that it was not necessary to believe that our Lord descended into hell, and also lessening the authority of the Holy Catholic Church and the Communion of Saints, which of course he had done in his zeal for the Pope, by declaring that a General Council was not infallible, but that the Pope was.

On the 28th of November then the court met again, and Archbishop Bouchier addressed him, without once mentioning the name of the Pope, but explaining the heresy charged on him respecting the descent into Hades, and the negation of the Divine authority given to the Holy Catholic Church universally, and then gave him his choice of either abjuring his errors, or being degraded and handed over to the secular arm. Pecock sat silent for a time; then rose and said he was in a strait. If he defended himself he should be burnt; if he did not, he should be a gazing-stock; but he had rather suffer reproach than desert the law of faith and suffer eternal punishment, and he therefore chose to abjure.

It was rather the language of a man who felt that his enemies had found a pretext for his condemnation in his unguarded language, than that of one who had a great cause to defend; and he no doubt believed that it would be expedient to bend to the fierce Yorkist spirits, and give time for tidings of his persecution to reach the Pope, for whom he was suffering.

So on the 4th of December there was a great concourse at St. Paul's Cathedral; Archbishop Bouchier appeared with his cross borne before him, and accompanied by the Bishop of Chichester, and those of London and Durham, late his judges, but not by the Bishop of Winchester, who apparently did not approve of this extreme severity, in a matter that was really rather of opinion than faith, and that had more to do with Church government than Church doctrine.

Twenty thousand people surrounded the Cathedral and the Cross where they had once listened to Reginald Pecock's famous sermon, and which had since been repaired and beautified by the intervening Archbishop Kemp. A fire was burning before it, and the Primate and his bishops slowly came forth in full robes, with their mitres on their heads, and seated themselves beneath the Cross; after which Pecock rose, threw himself at the Archbishop's feet and renounced his errors, in a voice inaudible to the populace. Then he rose and stood by the fire, while eleven quarto and three folio books of his own writing were one by one placed in his hands, and resigned by him to the executioner, who threw them into the flames.

'My pride and presumption have brought on me these troubles and reproaches,' he said, as he watched the ascending fire-and trouble and reproach indeed was around him, for the multitude clamoured, and hooted

him; and as they worked up their fury against the traitor Bishop, who they fancied wanted to give them over to the Pope, they rushed upon him to throw him into the pile that was consuming his books.

His brother prelates rescued him from this violence, but he was sent as a prisoner first to Cambridge and then to Maidstone, while it was ruled that as these condemned writings dated before his consecration as bishop, that consecration was therefore null and void, and the See of Chichester was vacant.

On this Pecock appealed to Rome, as well he might, being a sufferer in her cause; and Calixtus III. sent three bulls, vindicating Bishop Reginald, and enjoining his restoration. But this did but make his case worse. Thomas Bouchier, with Plantagenet blood in his veins, was no man to submit to papal dictation; indeed, in so doing he would have been committing the very act for which Reginald Pecock had been condemned.

So he refused to receive the bulls, as contrary to English law, and at the same time called on Pecock to resign his see. But this the Bishop refused. 'If you degrade me, you insult the Pope,' he said. 'I leave the battle to be fought between you and him.'

Thereupon Bouchier ordered the recusant into closer custody at Thorney Abbey in the Isle of Ely. He was to have a room with a chimney, so situated that he could see an Altar where Mass was said without leaving his chamber, only one 'sad and well-disposed' attendant, no books save a portuous, a Mass book, Psalter, Legend, and Bible, and no writing materials, but plenty of fuel, and such provisions as were served to a brother of the Abbey dining apart, somewhat better after the first quarter.

No doubt the spirited champion of the Pope expected freedom long before this improvement in his diet could take place.

But in the meantime Calixtus III. died, in the August of 1458; and the new Pope, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, called Pius II., the same who wrote the account of Bâle, and who was one of the best and most singleminded men who ever sat on the chair of St. Peter, was wholly and solely bent on collecting Christendom to stem the fearful progress of the Turks, and had no heart nor thought to spare for the details of Church government in the far west.

So Reginald Pecock was left to fret his ardent spirit, or to bewail his presumption, in his chamber at Thorney, apart from the encounter of wits, and deprived of the ironical weapons he loved so well. A good and pious man he evidently was; and it may be hoped he bore his mortification in a humble spirit, though whether he felt himself a martyr for the visible head of the Church, or whether he repented of his bitterness and vanity, we know not. He knew, at least, that his works had not really perished in the flames at St. Paul's Cross, since copies of them remained, and are to this day considered as wonderful specimens of deep learning and close reasoning; they are moreover VOL. 8.

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PART 43.

written in English; and indeed it was one of the accusations against him that he had degraded holy things by writing of them in the vernacular.

This, as well as the fact of his having translated portions of the Bible, and been condemned for heresy by his fellow bishops, has led to his having been chosen as a hero by Protestant writers, and supposed to have been a Lollard, whereas nothing could have been more alien than he to their doctrines. He was a Papist in contradistinction to a Catholic, and his so-called heresy was nothing akin to Protestantism, but was merely an unguarded use of arguments to exalt the Pope at the expense of the Church.

He died in his captivity, neglected alike by all parties. Some report that foul means were used; but solitude, mortification, imprisonment, and the air of the fens, were surely enough to account for the death of the fiery, disputatious, and active minded Welshman.

There were probably political as well as ecclesiastical grounds for his having been so universally hated and neglected. He had deserted the Nevil and York party, without having joined the Beauforts long enough to be regarded as one of themselves; but his history is a curious episode in this stormy reign, and a feeble parody of the course of Anselm and Becket. They had Church rights to stand out for; he had but those of the Pope.

And the Pope was striving to collect Europe to aid the Christians of Greece, and drive the Turks back from Europe. Six years of hard struggling were his portion, striving vainly to recall Burgundy and France from their personal struggles to a sense of the common danger of the blight of Mahometan conquest. He would fain have led a crusade in his own person, declaring that though he could not fight, he could pray like Moses for the success of the Christian arms, but the effort of the struggle and the disappointments it involved wore him out; and just as he had succeeded in obtaining a fleet from the Venetians, he died at Ancona in 1464, carrying away with him the last spark of the old crusading spirit.

Old eras were closing, and new fast beginning; while scholars read Greek and sought after old classic curiosities in Italy; while kings and bishops founded colleges and schools in England, and while that mysterious printing-mould at Mentz continued to send forth its vellum volumes. If convents continued to absorb wealth from among the more ignorant; if friars circulated among the people with gross impositions, and the secular clergy were constantly fretted by the assumptions of the regulars-a spirit of resistance was gradually growing up, and inquiry was becoming awakened; so that though the clash of arms deferred the crisis for some time, a reaction was slowly and surely preparing.

(To be continued.)