Note 35 — Chapter III · THE LADY LATIMER

Robert Testwood was a chorister belonging, with Marbeck, to the Chapel Royal, Windsor. Parsons was a priest, and Henry Filmer was a tailor. Marbeck, who is said to have had a very fine voice, was a fairly well-educated man, who at the time of his arrest had made some progress with a translation of Calvin’s works. Testwood was a well-known ribald jester who had frequently turned the anthem into ridicule, and on more than one occasion had been caught singing lewd words while the rest of the congregation were chanting the right ones. He was arrested for smashing the nose of a statue of the Virgin; Parsons was condemned for blasphemy; and Filmer for speaking ill of the Host. He had said that if Transubstantiation were true, he had eaten “twenty Gods” in his time.