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