‘And he said, if so be that St. Thomas were a devil in hell, if the Church had canonized him, we ought to worship him, for you ought to believe us prelates though we preach false.’
Further he did not pray for the King as head of the Church, nor for the Queen. As the result of this charge, Arthur was thrown into prison by Cromwell’s orders, and an Observant, ‘his mortal enemy,’ was made his keeper, while another friar was appointed warden. Fearing to be starved, Arthur escaped to France, and wrote letters from Dieppe to a servant of Cromwell, and to Browne, the Provincial Prior of the Austin Friars, praying for his own recall and urging the punishment of his enemies[1852]. He appears to have returned, if the dates in the Calendars are correct, and to have been again arrested on Aug. 21, 1537 at Cromwell’s command by ‘Cardemaker[1853].’
=John Baccheler= was vice-warden or sub-warden of Grey Friars in 1529 and in 1534. At the latter date he became one of the sureties for Friar Robert Puller. In June, 1533, supplicated for B.D., after studying twelve years: the grace was conceded on condition of his preaching at St. Mary’s and Paul’s Cross, but it does not appear whether the friar took advantage of it[1854].
=Gregory Based=, or =Basset=, B.D., was at one time suspected of heretical leanings and subjected to persecution.
‘For in Bristol (writes Foxe, referring to John Hooker as his authority) he lay in prison long, and was almost famished, for having a book of Martin Luther, called his Questions, which he a long time privily had studied, and for the teaching youth a certain catechism[1855].’
He afterwards abjured, and, to prove his orthodoxy, took a prominent part in the examination and condemnation of Thomas Benet, who was burned at Exeter in 1533[1856]. On December 20, 1534 (?), he came forward as one of the sureties of Friar Robert Puller, for a debt of 25_s._, in the Chancellor’s Court at Oxford[1857]. He was still alive in Mary’s reign, and is mentioned by Foxe as ‘a rank papist,’ in connexion with the trial of Prest’s wife, a half-witted woman, who was burned as a heretic at Exeter in 1558[1858]. In 1561 a warrant was out for the arrest of ‘Friar Gregory, alias Gregory Basset, a common mass-sayer,’ who was lying hid, it was thought, in Herefordshire[1859].