"We find him, on the 18th of April, in the presence of these
commissioners, declining to dispute. He pleaded that he
was an old man, and that he had not, during these twenty
years, much used the Latin tongue. " Then replied to
him Master Smith of Oriel College ; Doctor Cartwright,
Master Harpsfield, and divers others, had snatches at him,
and gave him bitter taunts. He did not escape hisses and
scornful laughing. He was very faint, and desired that he
might not long tarry." 1 It is a miserable spectacle: inso-
lence and brutality on the one side, and weakness and old
age on the other. If we could wonder at any disgrace
perpetrated in the name of religion, we might wonder at
the singular debasement which could prompt such conduct
on the part of learned men towards one who, amidst the
widest differences of opinion, had such claims upon their
sympathy and respect. The disputation, as in all such
cases, lestd to nothing. Latimer was permitted to give in a
lengthened protestation of his faith, upon which there fol-
lowed some discussion, terminating in a curiously emphatic
denunciation of the Protestants by Dr. Weston, who took>
the lead in the argument on behalf of the commissioners :
"A sort of fling-brains and light-heads," he said they were,
" which were never constant in any one thing ; as it was to
be seen in the turning of the table, where, like a sort of
apes, they could not tell which way to turn their tails, look-
ing one day west, and another day east — one that way,
and another this way." 2

1 Foxe, Remains, p. 250. a Remains, p. 277.
