When Tyndale heard of this escape, he knew what it indicated; but he was not overwhelmed, and almost at the foot of the scaffold, he bravely fought many a tough battle. The Louvain doctors undertook to make him abjure his faith, and represented to him that he was condemned by the Church. 'The authority of Jesus Christ,' answered Tyndale, 'is independent of the authority of the Church.' They called upon him to make submission to the successor of the Apostle Peter. 'Holy Scripture,' he said, 'is the first of the Apostles, and the _ruler_ in the kingdom of Christ.'[454] The Romish doctors ineffectually attacked him in his prison: he showed them that they were entangled in vain traditions and miserable superstitions, and overthrew all their pretences.
During this time Poyntz was working with all his might in England to ward off the blow by which his friend was about to be struck. John assisted Thomas, but all was useless. Henry just at that time was making great efforts to arrest some of his subjects, whom their devotion to the pope had driven out of England. 'Cover all the roads with spies, in order to catch them,' he wrote to the German magistrates;[455] but there was not a word about Tyndale. The king cared very little for these evangelicals. His religion consisted in rejecting the Roman pontiff and making himself pope; as for those reformers, let them be burnt in Brabant, it will save him the trouble.
All hope was not, however, lost. They had confidence in the vicegerent, the _hammer_ of the monks. On the 13th of April Vaughan wrote to Cromwell from Antwerp: 'If you will send me a letter for the privy-council, I can still save Tyndale from the stake; only make haste, for if you are slack about it, it will be too late.'[456] But there were cases in which Cromwell could do nothing without the king, and Henry was deaf. He had special motives at that time for sacrificing Tyndale: the discontent which broke out in the North of England made him desirous of conciliating the Low Countries. Charles V. also, who was vigorously attacked by Francis I., prayed _his very good brother_ (Henry VIII.) to unite with him _for the public good of Christendom_.[457] Queen Mary, regent of the Netherlands, wrote from Brussels to her uncle, entreating him to yield to this prayer, and the king was quite ready to abandon Tyndale to such powerful allies. Mary, a woman of upright heart but feeble character, easily yielded to outward impressions, and had at that time bad counsellors about her. 'Those animals (the monks) are all powerful at the Court of Brussels,' said Erasmus. 'Mary is only a puppet placed there by our nation; Montigny is the plaything of the Franciscans; the cardinal-archbishop of Liège is a domineering person, and full of violence; and as for the archbishop of Palermo, he is a mere giver of words and nothing else.'[458]