"Words idly spoken," the murmurs of a petulant abbot, the ravings of a moon-struck nun, were, as the nobles cried passionately at his fall, "tortured into treason." The only chance of safety lay in silence.

"Friends who used to write and send me presents," Erasmus tells us, "now send neither letter nor gifts, nor receive any from any one, and this through fear." But even the refuge of silence was closed by a law more infamous than any that has ever blotted the Statute-book of England.

Not only was thought made treason, but men were forced to reveal their thoughts on pain of their very silence being punished with the penalties of treason.

All trust in the older bulwarks of liberty was destroyed by a policy as daring as it was unscrupulous.

The noblest institutions were degraded into instruments of terror.