"My host had on hand a translation of a work of Father Jerome Platus, _On the Happiness of a Religious State_. He had just finished the second part, and had brought it with him to see me about it. When he was seized, these papers were seized too. Being asked what they were, he said it was a book of devotion. Now the heretics are wont to pry into any writings that they find, because they are afraid of anything being published against themselves and their false doctrine. Not having time to go on with the whole case, they were very earnest about his being answerable for those papers. He said that there was nothing contained in them against the State or against sound teaching; and offered on the spot to prove the goodness and holiness of everything that was there set down. In so doing, as he told me afterwards, he felt great comfort at having to answer for so good a book. He was thrown into prison, and kept in such close confinement that only one of his servants was allowed to go near him, and that was the traitor. Knowing that his master had no inkling of his bad faith, they hoped by his means to find out my retreat, and seize my person much sooner than they could otherwise have done."
The following is Mr. Wiseman's examination, taken before Sir Edward Coke and others, in which will be found the defence of Father Jerome Platus, which Father Gerard so accurately remembered, and embodied in his Narrative.
"The examination(50) of William Wiseman, of Wymbyshe, in the county of Essex, gentleman, taken the 19th day of March, in the thirty-sixth year of Her Majesty's reign [1594].
"He saith that he hath the murrey" [mulberry-coloured] "beads (showed unto him upon his examination) of a gentlewoman and friend of his, and that he will not tell her name, for that she is a Catholic, as he termeth her, and saith that he hath had these beads about a year and a quarter, and received the same at Wymbyshe aforesaid, at his house there, called Broadoaks, and saith now, upon better advertisement, that his sister, Bridget Wiseman, now being beyond sea, did get the said beads and string the same for him, this examinate, but where she had them he cannot tell. Being demanded whether he knew a book (showed to him upon his examination) called _Breviarium Romanum_, he denieth that he knoweth the book or whose it is. He supposeth that a letter showed unto him upon his examination, beginning, 'Dear son, this day,' &c. &c., and ending with 'Commendation to all my friends,' is his mother's own handwriting, and sent unto him, this examinate, to his house aforesaid to-morrow shall be a seven-night.