Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/89

 THE JESUIT IXVASIOX. 73 Bryant, a youth of twenty- four, was known July. to be aware of the hiding-place of Parsons. He refused to reveal it, and the Commissioners who had been sent to examine him threatened that ' if he would not tell truth for his duty to God and the Queen, he should be made a foot longer than God had made him.' He defied them, and they kept their word, and the Catholics exultingly reported that by special miracle he had felt no pain. He had laughed upon the rack, and had asked his tormentors if that was all that they could do. Thomas Xorton, one of the examiners, when the story was published conceived that he would be touched in honour if he was believed to have done his work so ill. He admired Bryant's courage. He ' lamented that the Devil should have so possessed him in so naughty a cause.' But ' as to the setting forth of the miracle that he was preserved from feeling of pain/ he said, ' it was most untrue, for no man of them all after his torture made so grievous complaining and shewed so open signs of pain as he.' l Harte's constancy was loudly boasted of, 2 but his suffering was merely imaginary. He was a in reverendi Episcopi Lincolniensis cubiculum inverecunde introducta, quie, omni muliebri pudore abjecto, hunc, senem Tirum senio pcene con- fectum, ad nequitiam et turpem libidinem omnibus modis solieitavit- Prae verecnndia taceo quibus illece- bris ha?c virago usa est quae earn a perpetoa castitatis constantia dedu- ceret; cai senex fortiter resistens dum hanc impudicam belluam fonts expcllere totis viribus operam dcdit, nebulones pessimi qui istam ad- duxerunt reverendissimo seni ver- bera minitabantur. Alia quoque meretris ad Feckenhammum pan arte intromissa fait,' Ibid. Both Feckenham and the Bishop of Lincoln were a hundred miles from London. The priest in the Tower therefore could have learnt these stories only at second-hand. 1 Thomas Xorton to "Walsingham, March 27, 1582 : XSS. Domestic. 2 'Dominus Hartus per tres boras in tonnento eipansus jacebat.' Let-