He eyed the prior with a look as unbending as his own.
Then began a long harangue from the great man, in which the wiles of the devil in the pestilent doctrines of the heretics, so-called Lollards, were forcibly and not illogically pointed out.

When no man might give answer, when none might show where misrepresentation came in, where there was nothing given but the one side of the question, it was not difficult to make an excellent case against the accused.

The early heretics, mostly unlettered people, always marred the purity of the cause by falling into exaggeration and foolishness, by denouncing what was good as well as what was corrupt in a system against which they were revolting--thus laying themselves open to attack and confutation, and alienating from them many who would have striven to stand their friend and to have gently set them right had they been less headstrong and less prone to tear away and condemn every practice the meaning of which they were, through ignorance and want of comprehension, unable to enter into.
In the hands of the skilful prior their doctrines were indeed made to look vile and blasphemous and foolish in the extreme.

Many persons shuddered at hearing what words had been used by them with regard to the holy sacraments; and most of the persons brought to their trial were weeping and terrified at their own conduct before the prior's speech was half through.

Only the hunchback retained his bold front, and looked back with scorn into the face of the prelate as he made point after point in his scathing denunciation.
When the harangue ended, the prior made a sign to his servants, and immediately one of the most timorous and craven of the prisoners was brought up before him.