Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/122

 i&6 &EIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 63. ' your Queen and mine, to whom I wish a long quiet reign and all prosperity.' The cart was then drawn away. The executioner was about to cut him down alive according to the form of the judgment, but some one in authority bade him A drop of blood spirted on the clothes of a youth named ^Eenry Walpole, to whom it came as a divine command. Walpole, converted on the spot, became a Jesuit, and soon after met the same fate on the same spot. Sherwin's turn came next, and then young Bryant's, and their innocent faces called out general emotion. .Knowles made an earnest effort to save them. ' We Vnow,' he said, ' that you are no contrivers and doers of treason ; you are traitors by construction.' Could they but have admitted that Pope or no Pope they were Elizabeth's temporal subjects, they might have preached Catholicism till they were in their dotage, but it could not be. Sherwin explained Campian's prayers for the Queen, by praying for her conversion. Then they too had to die, and a few days later all the rest had to die who had been tried and sentenced with them. Through the Catholic population of England there rose one long cry of exulting admiration. An arm of Campiaii was stolen as a relic from the place where it had been hung. 1 Parsons secured the halter, and died with it about his neck thirty years after at Valladolid. The Pope had the passion of the martyrs painted 011 the 1 Simpson. Mendoza, December 4, 1581, says a fiuger oiily : MSS, Simancas.
 * hold till the man was dead.' He was then quartered.