Gerard, with About Thirty Others, Men as Well as Women

It is recorded* that in the year 1161, in the eighth year of Henry the Second, King of England, about thirty persons, men as well as women, natives of Germany, sailed over to England. [n403-1] The papists called them erring spirits and publicans, saying that they had sprung from an unknown author;** but others have called them Petrobrusians, Berengarians, Poor Men of Lyons, and so on, 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. [n403-2]

"There were more than thirty of them," says the papistic writer, "who, concealing their errors, had come peaceably into the land, in order to spread their belief. Their principal leader was one Gerard, whom they looked upon 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 remain concealed for long, since some made very diligent inquiries about them; and when it was found that they belonged to a strange sect, they were arrested."