whom little is known: and Thomas Tomkins, weaver, William Hunter, prentice, William Pigot, butcher, Stephen Knight, barber, Thomas Hawkes, gentleman, illustrated by their constancy the cause of national liberty rather than theologic erudition. Most of them had made themselves known in Bonner's diocese, and had come into his custody months before this time; and had been treated by him with an alternation of kindness and severity in the hope of bringing them round. Tomkins, a weaver of Shoreditch, had been in the Bishop's keeping for six months at least at Fulham, where he sent him to make hay in his fields in July with the rest of his household, which he superintended in person: and used great persuasion with him, treating him well in general, but once losing temper and beating him about the face. To Tomkins belongs the story of the hand and the candle: an infliction of which the earliest version exhibits the voluntary character, and exculpates the celebrated exactor.* Hunter, a runaway apprentice of nineteen, had

*

* Un bourgeois estant interrougé per ledict évesque de Londres se suffriroit bien le feug, respondist qu'il en fist l'expérience et aiant fait apporter une chandelle allumée, il meit la main dessus sans la retirer ny se mouvoir. Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle, iv. 404. Renard to the Emperor. Here Tomkins calls for the candle and holds his hand in it. To Mr. Froude belongs the credit of first calling attention to this account, which disposes of the horrible story of Fox, that the Bishop seized the martyr's hand and held it in the flame till the sinews cracked, and even Harpsfield begged mercy. This story is illustrated by a striking woodcut, in which Bonner has his name written on his figure, that there may be no misdirection of indignation. The incident took place in Fulham hall. Bonner seems to have lost his temper once or twice with his argumentative inmate. Fox says, "he kept the said Tomkins with him in prison half a year: during which he was so rigorous with him, that he beat him bitterly about the face, whereby his face was swelled: whereupon the Bishop caused his beard to be shaven, and gave the barber twelve pence." "The very cause was that Bonner had plucked off a piece of his beard before." This really means that Bonner kept Tomkins in his house at his own cost for six months in hopes of saving him: committed assault and battery on him once and perhaps twice: was sorry for it: and gave the barber a shilling to mend him.

It may be added that Parsons the Jesuit says that the reason may

been in Bonner's custody three-quarters of a year, having been delivered to him by a justice of Essex. He had been treated with some severity, put in the stocks in Bonner's house, and sent to "the convict prison," and "irons laid upon him as many as he could bear," by the Bishop's orders.* And yet it appears that the Bishop tried reasoning and persuasion with the youth: offered to excuse him any public penance, and to accept a word of penitence spoken between themselves alone; or that, even without that, it would be enough if he would go home, go to church, be shriven, and remain a good Catholic: and, when all overtures were refused, provided so well for him in prison, with the help of some of the Court, that he acknowledged that there he had "money, meat, clothes, wood and coal, and all things necessary." The lad's father indeed, who first got him into trouble, and by whom his touching story seems to have been communicated to the historian of martyrs, said, "I was afraid of nothing but that my son should have been killed in the prison by hunger and cold, the Bishop was so hard to him": but the lad himself said that the only time when he lacked anything was one month, during which his board was to be furnished by his father. The lad's brother, who seems also to have been consulted by the historian of martyrs, had not a word to say against the Bishop, but bitterly reflected on Brown, the layman who sent him to the Bishop, and who persecuted

be why Bonner cut Tomkins's beard off, that he " suspected perhaps by his obstinate answers that some evil spirit lay in that beard, as sometimes hath fallen out in like men." Three Conversions, pt. iii. 391. There is another story, of a later date, of a blind man's hand burned by Bonner but it only rests on the word of a former servant of Bonner's, Fox, iii. 698.

in

From Fox's phrase one might suppose that he was to have been pressed, or submitted to the peine forte et dure. Probably he was put fetters, and the Bishop's orders may have meant, no more than he could bear.

him to the end with unrelenting sternness.* Hawkes, once a gentleman in Lord Oxford's household, was sent by Lord Oxford from Essex to Bonner, because he would not have his child baptized with the Latin rites, but according to the English office. The bloody bishop held conversation after conversation with him, endeavouring every way to win him, even proposing that he should consent to let his child be baptized in his absence and without knowing when it was done: but all was in vain. Hawkes, who has himself related at great length his adventures and conferences, refused all conditions, would not so much as render his host the civility of a salutation, turned his back when Bonner invited him to Evensong in his chapel, rejected with contempt a summons to Mass which the servants gave him in the absence of their master, and treated with disdain the doctors who were desired to argue with him. He was a man of comely presence, of great stature, of stout courage, of no learning, and of some humour. He abode with Bonner, who seems to have liked and admired him, at Fulham during the month of June in the year before that which was to be distinguished by his death; and in the following July was sent by his discomfited entertainer to prison in the Gatehouse of Westminster. There he was well treated, the Bishop himself coming once at least to see him, and renewing his persuasions.† On this last occasion the

* Justice Brown had been stirred up, along with his brother justices, by the letters of the Council, which were issued immediately after the Queen's proclamation about religion, of August 18, 1553. Maitland's Essays, 427. Maitland has examined Hunter's case, and exposed, among other things, the injustice of Hume towards Bonner.

+ It is important to observe that Hawkes, whatever he was, was not an Anabaptist, Antipædobaptist, or Baptist. The most humorous thing in his autobiography is that. when he was in Westminster Gatehouse, one Miles Haggard, attracted by the fame of his case, came to see him. The following conversation ensued. Haggard. Where prove you that infants were baptized? Hawkes. 'Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the

you

Bishop lost his temper, and gave the martyr a push or thrust in the breast, with the terrible threat he would be even with him and all such proud knaves in Essex. "For your cursings, railings, and blasphemies," replied the martyr, "I care not: the moths and worms shall eat like cloth." On which the infuriated persecutor cried, "I will be even with you when time shall come": and was replied with, "You may in your malice destroy a man, but you cannot do so much as make a finger," with more. Pigot and Knight also were not unknown to Bonner: * but of their intercourse with him nothing is recorded. Of the former history of Lawrence the priest little is known. These six prisoners Bonner had before him sitting in consistory in St. Paul's with Dean Feckenham, Harpsfield the archdeacon of London, Morwen, Morton the parson of Fulham, Swadel, More, Bekenson, and Clive, clerks, some of the Privy Council, and the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, on February 8, and 9, the day of the martyrdom of Hooper and Taylor. The proceedings were Ex Officio, or ecclesiastical: that is, no witnesses

name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' Sir, here is none excepted. Haggard. What, shall we go to teach children ? Hawkes. The word doth trouble you: it might be left out full well. 'Tis too much for you to teach. Is not your name Miles Haggard? Haggard. So I am called. Hawkes. Be you not a hosier, and dwell in Pudding Lane? Haggard. Yes, that I am, and there do I dwell. Hawkes. It should seem so for ye can better skill to eat a pudding, and to make a hose, than in Scripture either to answer or oppose." This rhythmic taunt caused anger to be manifested. Then," adds Hawkes, "I desired that some man would take some pain to walk the Gentleman, he did so fret for anger." Fox, 218. This Haggard was however a Romanensian.

66

*This appears from Hawke's first conversation with Bonner, when he

asked him if he knew Knight and Pigot. Fox, 212.

+ He had been a Black friar: he was not married, but about to be.

His legs are said to have been hurt with the irons in prison.

The ix day of February was raigned at Pauls afore my lord mayor and the sheriffs, and the bishop of London and divers doctors, and of the council, vi heretics of Essex and Suffolk, to be brent in divers places." Machyn, 82.-Fox, 149, 211, 219. Maitland, 512.

were called, but articles were ministered to the accused, to which they made answer in writing. They add little to history. The interrogations turned for the most part on the great subject of the Sacrament, the answers were such as might be expected: but it may be remarked that Bonner, in shaping his questions, laid stress on the position that the accused made themselves wiser than their parents, and broke the promise made for them in baptism by their godfathers. He also tried to startle them by exhibiting other articles of a negative form, setting forth their opinions with great gravity: as, that they believed that in the Sacrament of the altar the very true and natural Body of Christ was not: but to his disappointment they put their names thereto without hesitation.* To these six victims may be added Highed and Causton, two worshipful gentlemen of the fruitful county of Essex, who were tried in consistory in St. Paul's a fortnight later, February 27 and cast after several sessions. They had been previously delated to Bonner for their opinions by the same justice, Brown, it was believed, who reported William Hunter: and had been committed to the officers of Colchester for safe keeping. To Colchester had Bonner gone with Feckenham and others: and laboured by promises and threats with great diligence and all fair means to reduce them to his unity: and finding it in vain, he had carried them both with him to London, where they were committed to prison, but seem not to have been separated from one another. When their case came on, the proceedings were marked by anxiety on Bonner's part to conciliate them, and by the indulgence

* Except Mr. Hawkes, who told the Bishop, "Ye get not my hand to anything of your making or devising." Fox, 219. The Bishop began with him, and tried these negative articles with him before his arraignment, not at it. If Bonner was blamable, it was in not keeping his prisoners exactly to the matter for which they were delated in each instance, but trying to find their opinions on other matters; above all on the Sacrament.