Shakespeare's Changeling

Outside the Westminster tilt-yard, the hellish claws of a roaring fire tore at heaven. Shaxper and several others coughed at the smoke and stepped around the angry mob, which had been preached into a frenzy by a group of Puritan clergy. Men and women, their faces contorted with hate and prejudice, shrieked like demons as they furiously tore apart Catholic books and tossed them into the fire. Shaxper was certain that none of them could read the books they were intent on destroying. It then occurred to him that in all of his time in London, he had never seen a book burning before, and the mass hysteria of the violent rabble terrified him. Forgive them, he reasoned, for they know not what they do