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376 most sublime fortitude. Noailles, the French ambassador, who was a spectator, wrote to his own sovereign, who was equally persecuting the Protestants in his kingdom—"This day the confirmation of the alliance between the Pope and this kingdom has been made by a public and solemn sacrifice of a preaching doctor named Rogers, who has been burnt alive for being a Lutheran, but he has met his death persisting in his opinion; at which the greater part of the people here took such pleasure that they did not fear to give him many acclamations to comfort his courage: and even his children stood by consoling him in such a way, that he looked as if they were conducting him to a merry marriage."

Bishop Hooper, Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's, Dr. Rowland Taylor of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, and Lawrence Saunders, Rector of Allhallows, Coventry, were all condemned to the same death, and, like Rogers, offered their lives on recantation, which one and all refused. The treatment of the pious Bishop Hooper was a most glaring case of ingratitude. Decided Protestant as he was, and of the most primitive simplicity of faith, he had from the first manifested the most stanch loyalty to Mary. In his own account of himself, he says, "When Mary's fortunes were at the worst, I rode myself from place to place, as is well known, to win and stay the people to her party. And whereas, when another was proclaimed (Lady Jane Grey) I preferred our queen, notwithstanding the proclamations. I sent horses in both shires (Gloucestershire and Worcester) to serve her in great danger, as Sir John Talbot and William Lygon, Esq., can testify."

Hooper was sent down to Gloucester, his own diocese, to suffer, where he was burnt on the 9th of February, in a slow fire, to increase and prolong his agonies to the utmost. On the same day Dr. Taylor was burnt at Hadleigh. He had formerly been chaplain in the house of Cranmer, who gave him the living of Hadleigh. Taylor, an ancestor of the pious and eloquent Jeremy Taylor, was a man of a singular boldness and promptness in avowing his opinions. The change in the State religion soon manifested itself in his church. The rector of the neighbouring parish of Aldham, on Mary's accession, presented himself at Hadleigh Church to celebrate mass, because Taylor firmly refused to perform it himself. On hearing of his arrival, Taylor hastened to the church to prevent him, but found him clad in the vestments of a priest, already before a newly-erected altar, and preparing to say mass, defended by a number of men with drawn swords. "Thou devil!" exclaimed the plain-spoken Taylor; "who made thee so bold as to enter into this church of Christ?" "Thou traitor," retorted the Rector of Aldham, "what dost thou here to let the queen's proceedings?" "I am no traitor," replied Taylor, "but the shepherd whom God hath appointed to feed his flock in this place, and I command thee, thou Popish wolf, in the name of God, to avoid hence." The Rector of Aldham and his followers, however, pushed Taylor out of his own church, and fastened the door, whilst they proceeded with the service. The rector's parishioners, sympathising with their pastor, flung stones through the windows. Taylor was advised to hide himself from the certain vengeance of the Government; but he replied that he was too old for flight, and had already lived too long to witness such unhappy changes.

When brought before Gardiner, the undaunted man told the bishop to his face that it ill became him, who had so often sworn under Henry VIII. and Edward to maintain the new form of religion, to break his oaths and attempt to compel others to break them. He was committed to prison, on his own confession that he was a married man, and one who held the mass to be a vile idolatry. On the 4th of February, Bonner went to Taylor's prison to degrade him from the priesthood, and found him as courageous as ever. When Bonner was about to strike him on the head with the crosier, according to the formula on such occasions, his chaplain, alarmed, cried out, "My lord, strike him not, for he will surely strike again!" "Yea, by St. Peter, will I," said Taylor; "for the cause is Christ's, and I were no good Christian if I refused to fight in my master's quarrel." When brought to the stake at Hadleigh, one of the sheriff's men, probably out of a compassionate motive, struck him on the head with his halberd, and thrust him in the centre of the flames, thus mercifully shortening his sufferings.

Ferrar, the Bishop of St. David's, was burnt in his own diocese on the 30th of March, and Lawrence Saunders, Rector of Allhallows, was burnt at Coventry. On Easter day a monk of the name of Flower or Branch, who had become a Protestant, was so excited against a priest who was administering the sacrament to the people in the Roman fashion in the church of St. Margaret's, Westminster, that he stabbed him; and for this sacrilegious crime had his right hand cut off on the 24th of April, and was afterwards burnt in the Sanctuary, near St. Margaret's churchyard.

The burnings now went on as a matter of course. John Cardmaker, chancellor of the church at Wells, was burnt in London on the 31st of May; John Broadfoot, a most learned and pious man, suffered the same death, in the same place, about a month afterwards. About the same time, Thomas Hawkes, a gentleman of Essex, was burnt at Coggeshall; John Lawrence, a priest, at Colchester; Tomkins, a weaver, at Shoreditch; Piggott, a butcher, at Braintree; Knight, a barber, at Maldon; and Hunter, a silk-weaver's apprentice, at Brentwood. These were followed by a crowd of others in different parts of the kingdom; and the prisons everywhere were crowded with the unfortunate Protestants, who suffered all the horrors which confinement in the appalling prisons of those times—prisons dark, unventilated, undrained, having no provisions for cleanliness and decency inevitably inflicted.

This shocking state of things was interrupted for some time by the sudden and extraordinary outbreak of Alphonso di Castro, the confessor of King Philip, a Spanish friar, who preached before the Court a sermon in which he most vehemently and eloquently inveighed against the wickedness and inhumanity of burning people for their opinions. He declared that the practice was not learned in the Scriptures, but the contrary; for it was decidedly opposed to both the letter and the spirit of the New Testament; that it was the duty of the Government and the clergy to win men to the Gospel by mildness, and not to kill but to instruct the ignorant. A mystery has always hung over this singular demonstration. Some thought Philip, some that Mary, had ordered him to