the appearance of zeal with the reality of easiness. The result was more happy for his country than advantageous to his fame. To him in part at least it is to be imputed that proceedings were taken by very few of the bishops in their dioceses, since he left it to their discretion to carry out his recommendations or not: but his own diocese (when he came to it), under the hands of inferior officials, whom he was not strong enough to control, became one of the hottest in the kingdom: and he has been assailed as author or abettor of the whole persecution by historians who have not observed the indecisive phrases and timid arts by which he sought to avert its dreadful and troublesome approach. The wonder is that to no one it occurred that with the kingdom reconciled through its representative estates, and the people acquiescent in the alteration of religion, further proceedings were unnecessary. Pole strove at least to defer them, but other counsels were in the ascendant: and at the moment when he promulgated his ambiguous decrees, another prisoner for religion, Thomas Hopkins, Sheriff of Coventry, was added to those that were in the Fleet.*

In the meantime the condemned men, in their several prisons, were preparing for their doom. Their struggles were not yet at an end: for, while the time of execution was left unfixed, great efforts were made for their recovery. Private conferences were held with them: † the painful

paper in English called "Articles of such things as be to be put in execution," which Burnet gives from the Norwich archives. This would not be of Pole's sending. Burnet remarks on the easiness of the conditions laid down by Pole: and in particular that nothing was alleged by him against English Orders in denial of their validity, though “all canonical irregularities were to be taken off" or dispensed. Pt. III. v. (vol. iii. 414, Pocock). It may be added that when these mandates came from Pole the burnings had already begun.

* Burnet, iii. 414 (Pocock).

+ So we gather from Hooper and it can scarcely be doubted that it was the same as others. He says that the Bishop of London was so assid

came soon.

ceremony of degradation, which followed, in offering a further opportunity of recanting was a further trial and even at the fire itself a pardon on condition of repentance was laid alluringly before their eyes. Of Rogers the turn He on Monday the fourth of February received in Newgate early in the morning the sudden mandate to arise and make ready to execution. He roused himself from a deep sleep with cheerful alacrity and homely jest. To the Bishop of London, who presently arrived to perform the degradation, he renewed in vain his pathetic request to be allowed to see a wife whom a Romanensian ecclesiastic could not acknowledge: declining the exhortation of the sheriff to leave his opinions and be reconciled, he quitted for ever the cell in which he had concealed, to be found by posterity, the narrative of his examinations and his warnings to England.*

The distressing spectacle of his wife and eleven

uous that his visits gave rise to a report of recantation. "Such is the report abroad (as I am credibly informed) that I, John Hooper, a condemned man for the cause of Christ, now after sentence of death (being in Newgate prisoner, looking daily for execution) should recant and abjure that heretofore I have preached. And this talk riseth of this, that the Bishop of London and his chaplains resort unto me. Doubtless if our brethren were as godly as I could wish them to be, they would think that in case I did refuse to talk with them, they might have just occasion to say that I were unlearned and durst not speak with learned men: or else proud, and disdainful to speak with them. Therefore to avoid just suspicion of both, I have and do daily speak with them when they come, not doubting but they will report that I am neither proud nor unlearned. And I would wish all men to do as I do in this point. For I fear not their arguments, neither is death terrible to me." From Newgate, 2 February. Later Writings, 621.

It was

* The book was found by his son in a corner of his cell. printed by Fox: there is a MS of it in the Lansdowne collection, vol. 389. Mr. Chester, in his Life of Rogers, says that Fox omitted and altered much of it, and complains bitterly of this. He says further, that after the words "and thus departed I saw him last," though Rogers' narrative goes on without a break, six pages of it are omitted in Fox's later editions, though they were in his first edition, and only appear in a short abstract. Mr. Chester has restored the passage, p. 319-326 of his book. It is

children, whom he encountered on the road from Newgate to Smithfield, shook not the resolution which their tender acclamations sought to encourage. At the place of execution he rejected the pardon that was offered, briefly exhorting the people to adhere to the faith for which he suffered and in the presence of Southwell and Rochester the privy councillors, and of an enormous concourse of people, the protomartyr of the persecution of Mary yielded himself to the flames, supporting his torments with unbroken patience.

The degradation of Hooper, the fellow prisoner of Rogers, not from the episcopate but the priesthood, and of Saunders and of Taylor who lay in the Bread Street Counter, was effected by the hands of the Bishop of London on the same day, February 4. In this ceremony they were first clothed in the priestly vestments and ornaments, which were then stripped from them one by one, their fingers, thumbs, and crowns were scraped, where they had been anointed with oil; and they received a stroke on the breast from the staff of the bishop. The demeanour of Taylor, who refused to put on the vestments, and was forced into them, and who threatened to strike the Bishop, if he were struck by him, was admired. By the connivance of their keepers they were permitted to see, Saunders his infant son, Taylor his wife and children: and the difference was remarked between the Bishops' prisons and the Queen's prisons in lenity

important in some respects. The example teaches how Fox dealt with his originals.

* "Cejourd'huy a esté faicte la confirmation de l'alliance entre le pape et ce royaulme, par ung sacrifice publicq et solempnel d'ung docteur predicant nommè Rogerus, lequel a esté bruslé tout vif pour estre Lutherian, mais il est mort persistant in son opinion. A quoy la plus grande part de ce peuple a prins tel plaisir, qu'ils n'ont eu crainete de lui faire plusieurs acclamations pour comforter son couraige, et mesmes ses enfans y ont assisté, le consolant de telle façon, qui'il sembloist qu'on le menast au nopces." Noailles to the Constable, 4 Feb. Ambassades, iv. 173.

of keepers.* To spread the impression, it was resolved. that they should suffer in the places whereto they belonged, in accordance with ecclesiastical usage in cases of penance and recantation: and on the next morning Hooper was sent to Gloucester, to Coventry Saunders; Taylor to Hadley in Suffolk on the day following: in which places Saunders was burned alive on February 8; Taylor and Hooper on February 9. Many incidents, pathetic, homely, or humorous, befel them in their journeys; and are preserved in narratives that seem to have been furnished by their companions, their guards, or the spectators resident where they died.† Saunders was met

"This difference was ever found between the keepers of the Bishops' Prisons and the keepers of the King's prisons: that the Bishops' keepers were ever cruel, blasphemous and tyrannous, like their masters: but the keepers of the King's prisons shewed, for the most part, as much favour as they possibly might." Fox, 143. Mr. Froude emphatically quotes this (vi. 320) but it is only a general remark, which nothing that had yet happened justified: and nothing had happened as yet in which the Bishops' prisons were concerned. If Taylor saw his wife and children in the Clink or Counter, one of the Queen's prisons, the like privilege was denied to Rogers, in Newgate, another of the Queen's prisons.

+ The sources out of which Fox composed the most valuable portion of his Acts and Monuments are, some of them, the narratives written by some of the martyrs themselves, such as those of Rogers, Bradford, Hawkes, of their examinations and conferences: to which he added in many cases the articles, interrogations, commissions, sentences, and such documents from registers. Others were supplied; by persons who wrote down their recollections of what they witnessed: as for instance the examination of Bishop Ferrar before Gardiner (p. 176): of which Fox put down "so much as remained and came to our hands," without saying whence: nor does he usually say whence. Such narratives as these are full of touches that show the eye-witness. Others seem to have been derived from relatives or persons interested: Fox, for instance, seems to have questioned the father and brother of William Hunter, though he does not tell us so. The long narrative about Taylor may have been given by Mrs. Taylor partly, partly by people at Hadley. That about Hooper may have come in part from some one of the six guards who escorted him: some of it, the main part, was certainly from a resident in Gloucester. These collections, the vast field of traditions, traits, and allusions, have lain almost fallow ever since. Appalled at a region that contains the charred remains of near three hundred burnings, the historians have skirted it with a

on the road by the poet Grimoald with persuasions to which he returned a grave rebuke: at Coventry, where he suffered outside the city in the park, he kissed the stake with the words, "I hold no heresies, but the doctrine of God"; and so fell asleep. Taylor, a model of the English country parson, a burly frame, a heart full of courage, a head full of learning, died in his parish amid the laments of his people, with an alacrity that rose to mirth and jocularity. His sufferings, which were prolonged, were aggravated by the cruelty of several laymen, who smote him or hurled faggots at him: he endured the fury of the flames without speech or motion, till the blow of a halbert put an end to his life. Bishop Hooper, after winning the hearts of the six guardsmen who escorted him by his gentleness, and of his old enemy Sir Anthony Kingston by his godly exhortations, arrived at Gloucester and passed to the custody of the sheriffs. Of them he desired but one thing, which he was not to obtain, “a quick fire, shortly to make end." On the morning after his arrival, the Commissioners for his execution, Lord Chandos, Kingston, and others, appeared at his lodgings with a company of armed men. "You needed not to make such a business to bring me," said the bishop, "I am no traitor, I would have gone alone to the stake.” The commission, which they held, described him as “a vain-glorious person who delighted in his tongue,' "* and forbad that he should speak to the people: he could therefore make but a brief protestation, as he walked

salutation, or traversed it with hurried step, picking up a few specimens of the soil. The laborious Collier begs his reader not to expect a martyrology. Heylin makes the same resolution. Burnet does more than they, but is far from attempting the formidable task. Strype does more than Burnet, and gives some cases particularly. Fuller sweeps rapidly through the several dioceses. None of the more modern historians have availed themselves of the materials laid ready to their hands by Fox.

* Burnet, Coll. Pt. III. Bk. v. No. XXXVI.