_Christencat._
In Day's edition of Tyndale's Works, Lond. 1573, at p. 476, Tyndale
says:--
"Had he" [Sir Thomas More] "not come begging for the clergy from
purgatory, with his _supplication of souls_--nor the poor soul and
proctor been there with his bloody bishop Christen catte, so far
conjured into his own Utopia."
I take the word to be _Christencat_; but its two parts are so divided by
the position of _Christen_ at the end of one line, and _catte_ at the
beginning of the next as to prevent it from being certain that they form
one word. But I would gladly learn from any of your correspondents,
whether the name of Christencat, or Christian-cat, is that of any bishop
personified in the _Old Moralities_, or known to have been the satirical
sobriquet for any bishop of Henry VIII's time. The text would suggest
the expectation of its occurring either in More's _Utopia_, or in his
_Supplication of Souls_, but I cannot find it in either of them.