of the court. They exhibited and were allowed to read a confession of faith, their joint composition, an admirable Anglican document, partly founded on the Catechism of the Prayer Book.* This they required to have answered, and so would have opened a disputation: and, as Bonner began to read the sentence against them, one of them appealed from him to the Lord Cardinal. Bonner stopped: and Doctor Smith offered to answer the confession. But Harpsfield was directed to do this: who took the paper in his hand and spoke, but neither touched nor answered a sentence of it. Condemnation was then pronounced, and they were sent to Newgate. These martyrs, eight in number, illustrated their faith by their suffering in the flames in the various places to which they belonged: but, whether through the effect of the Spaniard Alphonso's sermon or not, longer intervals than usual elapsed between their condemnation and execution. The latter end of March witnessed the final scenes of Tomkins and of Hunter, of Highed and Causton, of Pigot, of Knight, and of Lawrence: who were burned alive in several places in Essex, save the first-named, who suffered in Smithfield. The execution of Hawkes was deferred to June; when he was committed to the hands of Lord Rich, conveyed into Essex with others who by that time had become liable to the same fate, and burned alive at Coxhall.

In another curious case in London the doom prescribed to heresy was conjoined with the punishment of an outrage. A priest who was assisting at midday in

* It begins, "First, we believe and profess in Baptism to forsake the devil and all his works and pomps, and the vanities of this wicked world, with all the sinful lusts of the flesh. 2. We believe all the articles of our Christian faith. 3. We believe that we are bound to keep God's holy will and commandments, and to walk in the same all the days of our life.” What they say on the Sacramental question is very good and clear. Fox, 162.

the church of St. Margaret in Westminster, to administer to the people the bread, under which form alone they received in the Mass, upon Easter Day, the only day on which they were required to communicate, was suddenly wounded by a man who rushed upon him; and his blood was sprinkled on the Host which he carried. The man, whose name was Flower or Branch, an unsettled person, who had been a monk of Ely, without, according to his own admission, consenting in his heart to be a monk; a secular priest who had never esteemed the order of priesthood; and a practiser of medicine who owned himself to be nothing learned; who had married a wife and had children, but mostly left them to themselves in his house in Lambeth; had been at the early celebration in St. Paul's, on the day of his exploit, with the same murderous intent: but found his purpose fail there, and so went down to Westminster, bestowing, as he passed, a gratuity on Bonner's prisoners in the Gatehouse there, and telling them that he should soon be among them. To the Gatehouse he was carried: to Newgate: before Bonner in consistory, by whom the usual efforts were made to save him: and at last he was burned alive in front of the church where he had committed the outrage. Before the fire was applied, his right hand was chopped off in accordance with an Act of Parliament of the last reign about brawling in church: his sufferings were protracted through that shameful lack of fuel which was found in so many of the executions: and when he was knocked down into the fire, the humane violence seems only to have added to his misery. The deed for which he suffered commended not itself to men who were as resolute as he.*

* Fox says that Flower wounded the officiating priest "for that he judged him not to be a Catholic minister, neither his act Catholic and laudable according to God's word." Fox has preserved an interesting conversation which Flower held in Newgate with Smith, another martyr.

On the same day that Flower suffered, April 24, another martyr illustrated in the flames in another diocese a voluntary zeal of which he has left memorials. George Marsh, a young married farmer of Lancashire, had been ordained priest by Ridley, and had been for a year curate to Lawrence Saunders in the parish of Dean. When the troubles began, he rejected the advice and an opportunity of escaping beyond seas, believing himself to have the vocation of a martyr. As his opinions were well known, the Earl of Derby ordered his arrest by letters to some of the laymen of the county: but Marsh prevented it by offering himself for capture and examination before the Earl and his Council, having fortified himself by earnestly repeating the English Litany. The laymen were puzzled by his answers, especially when he denied himself to be a priest, meaning that he was none by the laws now used, being a married man and even when a clerical assessor whom they had, a neighbouring vicar, whose opinion was that the last English Communion "was the most devilish thing that ever was devised," led the way to the dangerous ground, he satisfied them, acknowledging the Presence in the Sacrament, and, as to Transubstantiation, saying that he knew no further, that his knowledge was imperfect.* In

"Then they asked me what my belief was. I answered, I believed in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, according as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament do teach, and according as the four Symbols or Creeds, that is to wit, the Creed commonly called Apostolorum, the Creed of Nice Council, of Athanasius, and of Austin and Ambrose do teach. And after a few words the parson of Grappenhall said, But what is thy belief in the Sacrament of the Altar? I answered, I believed that whosoever according to Christ's institution did receive the holy Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood, did eat and drink Christ's Body and Blood with all the benefits of His Death and Resurrection to their eternal salvation; for Christ, said I, is ever present with His Sacrament. Then asked they me whether the Bread and Wine by virtue of the words pronounced by the priest were changed into the Flesh and Blood of Christ; and that the Sacrament, whether it were received or reserved, was the

a second examination, another neighbouring vicar, who sat with the laymen, considered his answers, which he had written, to be "sufficient for a beginner;" and it was expected that he would conform in a few days. But in the next conference, when the two vicars alone had him, he showed himself less tractable than before, saying that hitherto he had "gone about, as much as in him lay, to rid himself out of their hands;" and they on their part seem to have been determined to fish him to the bottom. They tried him again in the Sacrament, and added a question on the necessity of auricular confession : they tried to get him to subscribe to the articles to which Doctor Crome had subscribed in the reign of Henry: they tried him with articles drawn out of those articles: they gave him the book of Alphonso a Castro the Spanish Friar, De Heresibus, to read : f and, as all expedients failed to shake him, he was lodged in Lancaster Castle. There he caused perplexity by reading daily with a fellow prisoner aloud the English Morning and Evening Prayers, and the English Litany; till the time of the assizes, when he was tried among thieves and malefactors. The Bishop, Cotes, reluctantly took up the case, and he was removed to Chester. Then the usual process followed a month in the house, examinations in the cathedral church, condemnation, the offered pardon, and the cruel death. As for any points illustrating history, character, or controversy (for such points I seek

very Body of Christ. Whereunto I made answer I knew no further than I had shewed already. For my knowledge is imperfect, said I: desiring them not to ask me such hard and unprofitable questions, whereby to bring my body into danger of death, and to seek my blood. Whereat they were not a little offended, saying, they were no bloodsuckers, and intended nothing to me but to make me a good Christian." Fox, iii. 186. * Vol. II. 390 of this work.

+ Alphonsus a Castro, or Castrensis, contra omnes hereses, a large folio, dedicated to King Philip. Above, p. 342.

in what I record of these too numerous affairs), it may be remarked that Marsh, like other martyrs, followed other martyrs in his answers; and that a sort of commonplace of conduct may be discerned in the various examinations of the martyrs. On the authority of Rome, to the question whether the early bishops of Rome were not good men, Marsh answered that they were; and that they claimed no more authority in England than the Bishop of Canterbury claimed in Rome: and that he spake not against the person but the doctrine of the Bishop of Rome. Herein he followed Bradford. The Bishop of Chester laid down that an examination was not a disputation; and refused to enter into arguments with an examinate. This position had been maintained previously by Weston. The Bishop of Chester, who had behaved kindly up to the time of condemnation, told the martyr after sentence that he would then no more pray for him than for a dog: which was not unlike something that a sheriff said to Rogers.

Thomas Watts, a linen-draper of Essex, for we soon come back to Essex, made away his cloth, set his goods in order, and looked daily to be taken. This came to pass on April 26; when he was brought before the notorious justices of that county, Rich, Brown, Tyrrell, and their fellows, at the sessions at Chelmsford on the charge of not coming to church; by whom he was sent to Bonner as a most ignorant heretic not fit to be kept in gaol. He seems to have been connected with an assembly that met secretly, perhaps for the enjoyment of the English service, and perhaps for other purposes: and his indignation had been moved by the opprobrious

* He said something against King Philip: but what it could be Fox could not tell (iii. 222): his memory failed him, or his information was not precise on the point. This is just the sort of matter on which Fox is apt to become suddenly afflicted with loss of memory or information.