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not his procuring or searching that they should be commanded to appear before him in this matter of heresy; but partly their demerit, and partly the commandment enforced him to call and send for them."* Thus he would have sheltered himself with posterity for allowing any commandment to draw him beyond his own line of things for these cases belonged not to him, but to Gardiner. With them, in the same form and matter, was examined a carpenter, Iveson, who was burnt at Godstone in Surrey.†

The most fruitful day of the life of Edmund Tyrrel, the vigilant justice of Essex, was when, June 10 of this year, after contriving to witness the contiguous burnings of two martyrs at Raleigh and at Rochford (as it has been seen), he on his way home caught two others. "As I came homeward I met with two men: even as I saw them I suspected them, and then I did examine them and search them: and I did find about them certain letters: also a certain writing in paper, what their faith was." John Denley and John Newman were the captives on one of whom was found a confession of faith containing one or two expressions from the English service, on the other a confession expository of the Apostles' Creed. The Commissioners, to whom Tyrrel sent them, prevailing nothing with them, sent them to Bonner: who saw them in his house at first, adding to them one Patrick Packingham, of whom nothing is known, whom he had in hand; examined them several times, and at length condemned them. A circle of

*Fox, 319 Strype, v. 259: Machyn, 92.

+ Fox, 320.

Fox thinks that one of the Queen's Commissioners was Sir Robert Southwell, 322. Denley was burnt at Uxbridge, August 8. Machyn, 91. Packingham at Uxbridge, August 28. Strype, 260. Newman at Saffron Walden, August 31.

§ Newman was first apprehended at Maidstone, and tried by Thornden and the Commissioners in Kent. Fox gives some of his answers which

seven other martyrs illustrated still further in London the zeal of laymen and the determination of the Bishop. Elizabeth Warne, the widow of that upholsterer who was burned in Smithfield in May, was one of that congregation that had been apprehended in Bow Churchyard in January,* and had lain in the Counter and Newgate, until the Commissioners sent her to Bonner in the summer. She was burned in Stratford-le-Bow. George Tankerfield, a cook living near the Temple, had been a Romanensian under Edward the Sixth, but changed his opinions on account of the cruelties now committed, and soon became suspected. He was caught by one Beard, a yeoman, whom the justices employed as a spy, according to their instructions; † committed to Newgate in February, brought before Bonner, and burned at St. Albans in August. Of him it is related that the hour before he suffered he asked for a pint of Malmsey and a loaf that he might eat and drink in remembrance of Christ's death and passion, solemnly saying, "I do not this to derogate authority from any man, nor in contempt of them which are the ministers, but only because I cannot have it ministered according to Thy Word." Robert Smith, a gentleman formerly of Sir Thomas Smith's house, who had been deprived on the coming of Mary of a clerkship at Eton: who practised painting for amusement, and wrote hymns, had been sent by the Council to Newgate: thence when he came before Bonner, Bonner certainly never met a tarter martyr. To the taunts and checks, which he gloried in giving him, the Bishop returned a

came late into his hands. It is difficult to see how he could be caught by Tyrrel in Essex, unless he had been set free in Kent.

See last chapter.

+ See Strype's Cran. Bk. III. ch. xvii. There is much about Beard in Underhill's Narrative.

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jocularity and undignified familiarity, but laboured in his way to save him. He kept him out of consistory as long as he could, examining him privately: he set his doctors at him he did all else that he could consistently with his notions of what was his duty toward what he deemed heresy and he gave sentence with a sort of dismal indignation: "Now, I pray thee, call me Bloody Bishop : and say I seek thy blood."—" Although neither I nor any of the congregation do report the truth of your fact," Smith implacably returned, "yet shall these stones cry out, rather than it shall be hidden." He was burned at Uxbridge, August 8.* Of his fellow-prisoners Harwood, Fust, and Hale, little is known who suffered about the same time at Stratford-le-Bow, Ware, and Barnet. Halet was sent to Bonner by Sir Nicholas Hare and other commissioners.

In the diocese of Norwich the Earl of Sussex, who was resident, received several informations against clergymen and others; that King Edward's service remained in some places: that in one parish in particular the ceremonies of Easter had been neglected by the curate : that the Bishop's officers were not so diligent as they

*It is possible to get some notion of Bonner, his testiness, his oddity, his oaths, which were not very virulent, from Smith's narrative. Smith rebuked him for his oaths, on which he allowed that he was "no saint," but that Smith of course was perfect. He was engaged in examining others, who came in and out during Smith's examination: and he had nicknames for some of them. Smith he addressed as "Mr. Controller": Tankerfield was "Mr. Speaker." Smith accused him of burning Tomkins' hand: so that version got abroad pretty early. Some of Smith's verses are good. Some interesting particulars of prison life in Newgate, where the confessors were well treated, may be found in his letters. Fox, iii. 330.

+ There is a striking woodcut in Fox of Hale in the flames pointing at Bonner, who has his name written on his figure, and saying, “Beware of this idolater." But the cut contradicts the text: it was when he was condemned that Hale called Bonner an idolater and an antichrist, not at his burning. Bonner was not present at burnings.

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should have been. This the Earl signified to the Bishop: who made inquiry, and found things not so bad.* But some notable martyrdoms fell in Hopton's jurisdiction: and the historian of martyrs seems to prefer him, and his chancellor Dunnings, before Bonner himself for want of mercy. They had not their match for straitness and cruel handling of the bodies of the saints among all the rest besides." And yet Thomas Rose, the preacher who had been apprehended at the beginning of the year in Bow Churchyard,† found no lack of kindness at their hands, being sent to them by the Council in May, and examined so gently that he was drawn into a recantation; and gladly let go. He wrote his own account of what befell him, denying that he ever recanted, and showing himself not grateful: but he says nothing of cruelty. His case befell at Norwich: at Ipswich the gaol seems to have been very severe through chains and want of food: and many yielded there whom a milder treatment might perhaps have carried to the stake. But Robert Samuel, a deprived clergyman, who would not leave his wife, having been delated by a justice named Foster, endured with constancy the upright post, the chain that almost lifted him off his feet, and the barbarous allowance of

* "Touching the curate of old Bokenham, it may please you to understand that I did send immediately for the said curate, the churchwardens, and the questman there, and upon their appearance with 12 or 13 of the most substantial men of the parish, upon due examination I could perceive none other thing, but all things to be well and decently ordered and provided for at this holy time of Easter, contrary to the information given to your good lordship. And if there had been anything amiss, they should have been punished according to their demerits." Hopton to Sussex, Norwich, 3 May, 1555. Ellis, Orig. Lett. vol. ii. 1st series 188. See also Strype's Cranmer, Bk. III. ch. 17.

+ See beginning of last chapter.

Fox gives the order for carrying Rose to the Bishop of Norwich, iii. 203 and Rose's own narrative, 783. It is worth reading. He acknowledges kindness from Lord Sussex and Sir William Woodhouse: but is rather bitter against the Bishop and his Chancellor.

three mouthfuls of bread and water a day (which recalls the usage of the Carthusians under Henry the Eighth *) : withstood the Bishop; and went to the fire, August 31. His curious dream of the three ladders reaching to the heavens appeared to be fulfilled when two of his acquaintance, Anne Patten and Jane Trenchfield, wives of a brewer and shoemaker of Ipswich, were seized the day after his martyrdom, and at the beginning of the next year underwent the like fate.† William Allen, a labouring man of Walsingham, having been imprisoned, and afterwards brought before the same bishop, was reduced to ashes by the action of fire because "he would not follow the cross," meaning that he would not go on Procession nor return to the Romish Church, but to the Catholic Church. Before the same bishop, about the same time, an old man, who had been put in prison by the Justices, by name Richard Coo, put the examination, which he underwent, in writing, lest light should be taken for darkness. The Bishop told him that he had charge of his soul. "Then," asked Coo, "if you go to the devil for your sins, what becomes of me?" The rest of the conversation could not be of equal splendour: but still in the course of it the Bishop was reduced to say, not for fear of death," when, having said that England had been governed for twenty-two years by infidel kings like Nebuchadnezzar, he was demanded why then had he been dumb, and never spoke or barked all that time.§ Coo was burned alive at Yeaford in September: and to him be added Thomas Cob, butcher, who was examined at the same time by Dunnings the Chancellor, and at Thetford burned alive.

* Vol. I. p. 507 of this work.

"I durst

† Fox, iii. 334. Samuel's Confession of Faith is worth reading. Fox, 349. Beginning of September.

§ Fox, 350.

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