But surprisingly numerous as are the evidences of the spread of Lutheranism in these early years, naturally it as yet had few prominent adherents.
When Erasmus wrote Luther that he had well-wishers {282} [Sidenote: May, 1519] in England, and those of the greatest, he was exaggerating or misinformed.

At most he may have been thinking of John Colet, whose death in September, 1519, came before he could take any part in the religious controversy.
At an early date the government took its stand against the heresy.
Luther's books were examined by a committee of the University of Cambridge, [Sidenote: 1520] condemned and burnt by them, and soon afterwards by the government.

At St.Paul's in London, [Sidenote: May 12, 1521] in the presence of many high dignitaries and a crowd of thirty thousand spectators Luther's books were burnt and his doctrine "reprobated" in addresses by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Cardinal Wolsey.

A little later it was forbidden to read, import or keep such works, and measures were taken to enforce this law.
Commissions searched for the said pamphlets; stationers and merchants were put under bond not to trade in them; and the German merchants of the Steelyard were examined.

When it was discovered [Sidenote: 1526] that these foreigners had stopped "the mass of the body of Christ," commonly celebrated by them in All Hallows' Church the Great, at London, they were haled before Wolsey's legatine court, forced to acknowledge its jurisdiction, and dealt with.
With one accord the leading Englishmen declared against Luther.
Cuthbert Tunstall, a mathematician and diplomatist, and later Bishop of London, wrote Wolsey from Worms of the devotion of the Germans to their leader, and sent to him _The Babylonian Captivity_ with the comment, "there is much strange opinion in it near to the opinions of Boheme; I pray God keep that book out of England." [Sidenote: January 21, 1521] Wolsey himself, biassed perhaps by his ambition for the tiara, labored to suppress the heresy.