the same diocese now vacant the town of Mayfield was illuminated by the simultaneous sacrifice of four, of whom the names of Hort and Ravensdale survive, the other two have no record of their constancy save the description of their callings, a shoemaker and a currier.* In Lichfield a severe visitation was held by Baines the Bishop and the Chancellor Draycot: many abjurations were made a dozen priests were deprived for marriage or other cause: but the number of thirty-three persons, who were dismissed without penalty, seems large enough to show that discretion or mercy was not absent. The more miserable was the conduct of the ecclesiastics and laymen concerned, in seizing, examining, burning alive in Derby Joan Waste, a girl of twenty years, blind from birth, who went to her death holding her little brother by the hand. In the see and city of Bristol one Sharp, and a youth named Sarten, were consumed to ashes in September: and in the same month in the same diocese at Wotton-super-edge one Horn and an unknown woman yielded their lives in the same

manner.

The enquiries of the various commissioners brought to light many wild opinions, which were not shared by the Anglican confessors. The Anglicans, gospellers, or protestants proper, remained desirous, but not always with intelligence, of distinguishing themselves from these: and a Confession of faith, which, written in King's Bench by John Clement, a layman of humble rank, although speaking only for himself, is said to have been transcribed and dispersed, as expressing the general mind, deserves consideration. Clement would have died at the stake for his faith: but, like Careless, Adheral, and some

* Fox, 636. + Fox, 634. Fox, 636. He gives some particulars of Sarten's death in a further note, p. 855.

others, he perished in prison, and was contemptuously buried in a dunghill behind King's Bench, before the time came when he might have given a more public testimony. With some prolixity and rotundity, but with intense earnestness, he exhorted his friends to reject the tempting arguments that led so many to countenance the Mass by being present at it, and declared the faith in which he stood. "I see," said he, "a wonderful sort of sects swarming everywhere: not only of Papists, but also of Arians, Anabaptists, and all other kinds of heretics, who go about the country under the pretence of the Gospel, deceiving the simple, causing them to divide and separate themselves from the true Church of Christ. Some deny Christ to be God, some deny Him to be man: some deny the Holy Ghost to be God: some deny original sin, some the doctrine of predestination and free election of God in Christ: some the baptism of infants: some all indifferent things to be used at any time of Christian men. Others I see affirming foolish fantasies, as freewill, man's righteousness, and justifying of works: these are the wonderful sort of the Pelagians, now swarming everywhere, who say that all men, having faith or not, regenerate or unregenerate, have power and freewill to choose life and keep the commandments, as the law of God requireth. I renounce them all; Papists, Arians, Pelagians, Anabaptists, and all other heretics and sectaries." He proceeded to declare and confess "that the last book that was given to the Church of England by the authority of King Edward the Sixth and the whole Parliament, containing the manner and form of common prayer and ministration of the blessed Sacraments,' ought to have been received with thankfulness: that the Articles set forth in the last year of Edward were godly and to be accepted and allowed: and upon all the points in controversy he drew out in large his faith in terms

that mostly came from those documents.

Such a de

claration was seasonable, though it is to be regretted that he should have placed the Papists, that is the Romanensians of the Church of England, on the same level with the others, whom the Romanensians equally abhorred, and whom both Romanensians and Protestants, it is lamentable to know, regarded as heretics liable to be punished for their opinions: and it is to be regretted that among such heretics he numbered the Freewillers. But it was not to be expected in the midst of such a conflict that the combatants should see clearly. None of the sects, as Clement called them, had proceeded to separate themselves as yet from the Church of England, or attained an organization external to her: and he seems to have used the word sect not in the sense in which it is now understood, but in the older sense of a distinguishing religious doctrine or tenet.† Of secret assemblies or congregations it is true that there are many traces in the annals of Mary, and in the proclamations or orders of Council, that were issued against them, these are called conventicles: but it is probable that most of them were held for the purpose of hearing the English service read, and perhaps the sacraments administered according to the English rites, not for sectarian or separatist worship.+ At these assemblies, if there was irregularity through the dearth of ordained ministers, so many being dead or in prison, the necessity justified it.

* Some account of Clement is given by Strype, v. 586: his Epistle to the Professors in Surrey, and his Confession of Faith, are in Strype, vi. 434 (Originals, No. LX, LXI.).

+ So it seems to be used in the Articles of Edward: "They also are to be had accursed that presume to say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth." Art. 18. It is so used in one of Bonner's Homilies, I have noticed, by poor Pendleton: and doubtless in other writings of the time.

See, for example, a letter of Council to Lord Darcy to search for those "who use conventicles and readings." Strype, v. 552.

Of all the histories of this terrible tempest the saddest, and in some respects the most inexplicable, is of Sir John Cheke. Mixing himself in affairs, committed to the Reformation, involved in the Dudleian plot, the ornament of English scholarship had stood by the Lady Jane more boldly than his fellow secretaries of the Council, Sir William Cecil and Sir Thomas Smith and while they were allowed to remain in England with little molestation, he after an indictment and a pardon had received a license to go abroad. In several foreign towns he had joined himself with the English exiles; he had passed into Italy, consoled for the poverty into which he sank through the loss of his estates and preferments by the admiration of the learned, and finding in his own learning the means of subsistence. Suddenly it was rumoured, in the middle of the year in which we welter, 1556, that Cheke had been caught near Brussels in the company of Sir Peter Carew, carried to England, and lodged in the Tower.* Even so it was. Even so it was. Tempted from the safety of Strasburg to the danger of Brussels by the invitation of a friend and of his father-in-law, Paget and Mason, under the safe-conduct of King Philip, he was seized, May 15, by the provost-marshal on departing from the city, unhorsed, blindfolded, tied with halters, body, arms and legs, to the side of a cart, driven to the seaboard, shipped to England: and never knew, as he

* "On the same day, by King Philip's order, there were arrested between Mechlin and Antwerp Sir Peter Carew and another Englishman, late tutor of King Edward, and son-in-law to Sir John Mason, &c. This circumstance has surprised everybody here, and greatly pains the English, as some of the persons aforesaid were presented here to King Philip, and obtained his pardon for things heretofore treated against him when he went to consummate his marriage with the Queen: &c. The King had them arrested on suspicion of fresh plots against him and his consort: but the English here being of opinion that these suspicions are unfounded, say openly that this proceeding will cause his Majesty to lose the adherents already gained by him." Badoer to the Doge, Ven. Cal. p. 452: May 17.

said, whither that sudden whirlwind was carrying him, till he found himself deposited in the Tower. The consulted stars had deceived him: for, believing like most wits of the age, in judicial astrology, he had received from the firmament the assurance of safety in his expedition. His disaster was imputed by a contemporary writer to treachery in Paget and Mason: * but an unlikely supposition may be dismissed in favour of a Spanish trick. The suspicion of political intrigue, which caused his capture, was unfounded, and was not pursued: the pretext that he was arrested for exceeding his leave of absence was slender: and in the Tower he was presently beset about religion. He had broken no existing law: it was impossible to proceed against him by the ordinary authority but his opinions had been long before the world, and the Latin translator of Cranmer on the Eucharist was a tempting prey. Two of the Queen's chaplains visited him in the Tower. Feckenham visited him. His resistance must have been more firm than celebrated for in July he was reported to be obstinate.† At length he gave way under the repeated assaults of persuasion and then he requested a conference with Pole. The Cardinal, who had evitated seeing Cranmer,

Ponet, in his Short Treatise of Politic Power, abusively accuses Paget of betraying Cheke. Strype, in his Life of Cheke, quotes Ponet, and seems to believe him.

"Cheke has again demanded a conference with the theologians, after having lately dismissed them, persisting obstinately in his heretical opinions, which, unless he retract them, will cause him likewise to be burned in public." Michiel to the Doge, Lond. July 14. Ven. Cal. 526.

"Doctor Cheke at the last moment asked and obtained permission to speak with Cardinal Pole, and by the goodness of God his most illustrious lordship's words produced such an effect upon him that he recanted entirely, and purposes living catholically, submitting to any penance the Cardinal please, which reduces itself to a brief penitential and confessional discourse in public, as an example for others, in the presence of the courtiers, to whom, having been the King's schoolmaster, he is chiefly known: whereupon free and secure he will be restored to his wife and children,