champions of Transubstantiation. He shared to the full the general contempt for the sort of men on whom the experiment of severity was about to be tried. It is probable that he believed they would all recant: or, if not, that a few examples would terrify the rest. In this he was undeceived as soon as he opened his court.

The prisoners were had in singly; and were demanded whether they would join the Catholic Church, like the rest of the realm, and accept the Queen's pardon and the Cardinal's blessing. Two of them, Bishop Barlow late of Bath and Wells, and Cardmaker, fellow prisoners in the Fleet, made some kind of submission: but not enough to set them free; and were returned the one to his former prison, the other to the Counter. To a third prisoner the question was repeated by Lord Howard in the favourable form, Whether he would be an honest man like his father: and the affirmative response was followed by liberty. Rogers, destined to be the first to die for religion in this reign, appears to have been the first to make resistance to the offered terms. "You have heard of my Lord Cardinal's coming," said Gardiner to him, "and that the Parliament has received his blessing, and pardon of their offences for the schism that we have had in England in refusing the Holy Father of Rome to be head of the Catholic Church. Such a miracle, such a unity has never been seen! How say you? Are you content to knit yourself to the faith of the Catholic Church with us, in that state in which it is now in England?" Rogers answered that he had never dissented from the Catholic Church. "I speak," said Gardiner, "of the state of the Catholic Church as we have it now, having received the Pope to be supreme head." This was a manner of putting the question at issue, which was often repeated afterwards in the examination of others. In reply Rogers, avoiding the word

Pope, said that the Bishop of Rome had no more authority than any other bishop, and that it was the Bishops of the realm who had brought him twenty years before to the denial of the pretended primacy of the Bishop of Rome. He was asked whether he would receive the Queen's pardon; and answered that he would, although he had never offended her. The Bishop of Ely informed him that the Queen held them unworthy of her pardon who would not receive the Pope's supremacy. Gardiner called him a heretic, which he denied hinself to be: and after a confused altercation he was sent back to prison. "Thou wilt never burn in this gear, when it comes to the purpose," said Southwell to him, as he passed forth. "I cannot tell," answered Rogers, "but I trust in my Lord God." *

Bradford's conference with his judges enables us still further to observe the grounds that were taken by the Anglican confessors. He refused to accept a pardon, alleging that he had done nothing to ask for pardon or mercy; that all that he had said or done was agreeable both with God's laws, and the laws of the realm that were at the time. Then came from the Bishop of Durham the dangerous question, "What say you by the ministration of the Communion as now you know it is?" a question which Bradford turned by refusing to answer, if it were asked on the authority of the Bishop of Rome: " on the authority of the Bishop of Rome I have been sworn six times in the course of my life to do nothing." Gardiner represented to him that such oaths were unlawful, and

* Hitherto I have not given exact references to Fox (and the same is true of Burnet and some others) because of the numerous editions, since the reader might have another than the one referred to. But we shall have so much to do with him henceforth, that I will refer to the edition of 1684, folio, 3 vols. (which is the one that Mr. Pocock refers to in his Burnet). Most of the references will be to vol. iii. Here it is iii. 98.

that no man could be bound by an unlawful oath: but Gardiner was referred to his own book De Vera Obedientia for the confutation of that position. Rochester the Controller, that theologian, remarked that if ever there was a man that deserved to be in prison Bradford was that man; and that this he said although he knew not why he was put there: Bourne, that it was pity that he was put there, for that he had done more harm by his seditious letters in prison than he would have done at large: Southwell, that he was arrogant and stubborn to behave himself thus stoutly and dallyingly before the Queen's Council. "The people were deceived in King Edward's time by false doctrine," said Gardiner. "The doctrine taught in King Edward's time was pure religion," said Bradford. "What religion mean you in King Edward's time?" asked Tunstall, "what year of his reign?""The year," answered Bradford, "that he died, and I was a preacher."-"Take this man away, and keep him close, and let him write no more letters," was the decision of Gardiner and the end of the first examination of Bradford, who returned to King's Bench.*

Came Hooper from the Fleet, brought by the strict Warden Babington. The same conditions were put before him to forsake the evil and corrupt doctrine preached in the days of Edward, to return to the unity of the Catholic Church, to acknowledge the Pope to be the supreme head thereof, to accept the Queen's mercy. "I and my brethren," urged Gardiner, "have received the Pope's blessing and the Queen's mercy: the like is ready for you, if you will condescend to the Pope's holiness." Hooper replied, very excessively, that the Pope was not worthy to be accounted a member of Christ's Church, much less the head, inasmuch as his doctrine was contrary to the doctrine of Christ: but that as to her

* Fox, 235.

Majesty's mercy, if he had offended in any point, to him unknown, he would accept it, provided it could be with a safe conscience. "Take him away," was the answer, "the Queen will show no mercy to the Pope's enemies."*

Ferrar, the late Bishop of St. Davids, was reminded of his debts to the Queen, and promised remission, if he would be conformable. "The Queen and Parliament," said Gardiner, "have restored religion to the same state in which it was in the beginning of Henry the Eighth : return to the Catholic Church." Ferrar answered that he had made an oath never to admit that the Bishop of Rome could have any power or jurisdiction within the realm: that in making such an oath to King Edward he had made it to Queen Mary, and could never break it: an argument which involved an important principle. The Bishop of Durham led the way to another dangerous topic. "There is another oath that you have made,” said he significantly. "I never made another oath," answered Ferrar. "You made a vow""That did I not," said Ferrar. "You made a profession: to live without a wife."-"I made a profession to live chaste, not to live without a wife," said Ferrar.†

Rowland Taylor, the parish priest of Hadley in Essex, came from King's Bench, where he shared the chamber of Bradford. To him said Gardiner, "We have all generally received a fall in this realm, from which we are now delivered miraculously. Rise from this fall with us, and with us you may enjoy the Queen's mercy

* Fox, 123. It is Maitland's observation that where we have the narratives of the martyrs themselves in Fox we are on firmer ground than where we have but the narrative of Fox: and the distinction runs through the whole martyrology. In the present cases, Bradford, Rogers, and Taylor have themselves recorded their encounters with Gardiner and the other commissioners. Hooper and Ferrar not.

† Fox, iii. 176. He is certainly wrong in dating Ferrar's examination on February 4.

and favour." Taylor's answer was that so to rise would be the greatest fall that could be received, a fall from Christ to Antichrist: and that the religion of King Edward was according to the voice of Holy Scripture. "In his days," said Taylor, "the whole church service was set forth with great deliberation with the advice of the best learned men in the realm, and authorised by the whole Parliament, and received and published gladly by the whole realm: which Book was never reformed but once and yet by that one reformation it was so fully perfected according to the rules of our Christian religion, that no Christian conscience could be offended by anything contained in that Book reformed." Gardiner inquired of him whether he had ever read his book on the Sacrament: and was answered that he had, and that the book contained many things wide of the truth. Gardiner called him an "ignorant beetlebrow": to which Taylor replied that he was not so very ignorant, having read the Fathers and the canon law, and being professed in the civil law, even as Gardiner was. "My profession is divinity," retorted Gardiner, "and therein I have written divers books."-"One of them," said Taylor, "is De Vera Obedientia: and I would your lordship had been constant to that."-" Another of them," angrily answered Gardiner, "will not be liked by such wretches as you it is against priests' marriages.""I have been married many years," was the reply, "and have had nine children born in matrimony. Your proceedings against marriage of priests are against natural law, civil law, canon law, canons of the Apostles, ancient doctors, and God's laws." Thus with Taylor the conversation passed again to the dangerous subject of the day. At last Gardiner reverted to his first proposition about returning to the Catholic Church. "Wilt thou believe as thy father and mother before thee?" put it Tunstall,