GERARD, WITH ABOUT THIRTY OTHERS, MEN AS WELL AS WOMEN, FOR MAINTAINING THE APOSTOLICAL DOCTRINE, AT OXFORD, IN ENGLAND, ARE BRANDED IN THE FOREHEAD, SCOURGED OUT OF THE CITY, AND MISERABLY PERISH WITH COLD, A. D. 1161.

It is recorded159 that A. D. 1161, in the eighth year of Henry II., King of England, about thirty persons, men as well as women, natives of Germany, sailed over to England. The papists called them erring spirits and publicans, saying that they had sprung from an unknown author;160 but others have called them Petro-brusians, Berengarians, Poor Men of Lyons, etc., because they, it appears, had their views against infant baptism, transubstantiation, and other errors of the Roman church, in common with Peter Bruis, Berengarius, and the Poor Men of Lyons.

“There were upwards of thirty of them,” says the papistic writer, “who, concealing their errors, had peaceably come into the land, in order to propagate their belief. Their principal leader was one Gerard, upon whom they looked as their lord and master; for he alone had a little learning, while all the rest were illiterate idiots, a very low and boorish class of people, and of the German nation and language. But they could not long remain concealed, since some made very diligent inquiries regarding them; and when it was found that they belonged to a strange sect, they were apprehended.”