he had promised to allow him forty; and that grant he said he would perform. Upon which Dr. Weston, a man infamously conspicuous as one of the most active and willing agents in the Marian persecution, exclaimed, "Why, he hath spoken four hundred already!" Ridley confessed he had, but not upon that matter; and White then, . . . for now, not courtesy alone, but even the appearance of decent humanity, was laid aside,... bade him take his license, but keep to the number prescribed, which, he said, he would count upon his fingers; before Ridley had finished a sentence, the Romanists, who were sitting by, cried, that his number was out; and thus he was silenced. White took God to witness, that he was sorry for him. "I believe it well, my Lord," replied Ridley, "forasmuch as it will one day be burdenous to your soul!" Sentence was then pronounced; after which, they excommunicated, and delivered him to the secular power. Latimer was next called in, and had as little liberty of speech allowed him. He appealed to the next General Council which should be truly called in God's name. White told him, it would be a long season before such a convocation as he meant would be called; and he was committed, in like manner, to the Mayor's custody, till the time of execution.

The ceremony of degradation was performed upon Ridley, at the Mayor's house, by the Bishop of Gloucester, with the ViceChancellor, and the other Romanists, who now occupied all offices in the University. They threatened to gag him, when he declared that, as long as he had breath, he would speak against their abominable doings; and when they would have made him hold the Chalice and the Wafer-cake, he said he would not take them, but would let them fall: so that one of the attendants held them in his hand. This mockery being ended, Ridley would have discoursed with Brooks concerning it; but he was told, that being an excommunicated man, it was not lawful to converse with him. Brooks, however, promised to promote a supplication to the Queen, which the Martyr read. It related to some tenants of the See of London, who had renewed their leases, while he was Bishop, upon fair terms, in customary form ; but who were in danger of ruin, because Bonner would not allow of the renewal. He prayed that their leases might be held good, as conscience and equity required; or if this might not be,

that out of the property which he had left at Fulham, they might be repaid such part of the fines as he had received; half his plate, he thought, might suffice for this. And he petitioned for his sister, whose husband Bonner had deprived of the provision which he had made for her and her family. The Archbishop of York, he said, who had lived with him more than a year, knew the circumstances, and would certify the Queen, that he petitioned for nothing but what was just and right.

When Ridley came to his sister's name in this supplication, his voice faltered, and for a little while, tears prevented him from proceeding. Recovering himself, he said, "This is nature that moveth me; but I have now done." The Bishop of Gloucester promised in conscience to further his request; but so far was Bonner from acknowledging the beneficence which Ridley had shown to his mother and sister, that, not content with depriving the martyred Bishop's brother-in-law of his means of subsistence, he threatened, in his brutal language, to make twelve Godfathers go upon him; and would have brought him to the stake, if Heath, in return for the kindness he had experienced from Ridley, had not interposed, and saved him.

On the following day, they were led to the place of execution, which was in a ditch opposite Balliol College. Lord Williams, of Thame, had been appointed to see it done, with a sufficient retinue, lest any tumult might be made in the hope of rescuing them. They embraced each other, knelt, each beside his stake, in prayer, and then conversed together, while the Lord Williams, and the other persons in authority, removed themselves out of the sun. These accursed sacrifices were always introduced by a sermon. A certain Dr. Smith preached, taking for his text, "If I give my body to be burnt, and have not charity, it availeth me nothing;" from whence he drew conclusions, as uncharitable as ever were detorted from Scripture. Ridley desired leave to answer the sermon: he was told, that if he would recant his opinions, he should have his life, . . . otherwise he must suffer for his deserts; and the Vice-Chancellor, with some bailiffs as brutal as himself, stopped his mouth with their hands, after he had said, "So long as the breath is in my body, I will never deny my Lord Christ and his known truth. God's will be done in me!" Latimer said, he could answer the sermon well enough, if he

might; and contented himself with exclaiming, "Well, there is nothing hid, but it shall be opened!" a saying from the Gospel which he frequently used. Ridley distributed such trifles as he had about him, to those who were near; and many pressed about him, to obtain something as a relic. They then undressed for the stake; and Latimer, when he had put off his prison-dress, remained in a shroud, which he had put on, instead of a shirt, for that day's office. Till then, his appearance had been that of a poor withered bent old man; but now, as if he had put off the burden of infirmity and age, "he stood bolt upright, as comely a father as one might lightly behold."

Then Ridley uttered this prayer: "Oh, Heavenly Father, I give unto thee most hearty thanks, for that thou hast called me to be a professor of thee, even unto death. I beseech thee, Lord God, take mercy upon this realm of England, and deliver the same from all her enemies!" After he had been chained to the stake, his brother-in-law, who, during the whole time of his imprisonment, had remained in Oxford, to serve him in whatever he could, tied a bag of gunpowder round his neck. Ridley being told what it was, said, he received it as being sent of God; and asking, if he had some for Latimer also, bade him give it in time, lest it should be too late. Meantime, he spake to Lord Williams, and entreated him to use his influence with the Queen, in behalf of his sister and the poor tenants; this, he said, being the only thing, he blessed God, which troubled his conscience. When the fire was brought, Latimer said, ".Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out!" The venerable old man received the flame as if embracing it, and having, as it were, bathed his hands in the fire, and stroked his face with them, died presently, apparently without pain. Ridley endured a longer martyrdom; till the gunpowder exploded, and then he fell at Latimer's feet. As the bodies were consumed, the quantity of blood which gushed from Latimer's heart astonished the beholders. It was observed the more, because he had continually prayed, during his imprisonment, that as God had appointed him to be a preacher of his word, so also he would give him grace to stand to his doctrine until death, and shed his heart's blood for the same. His other

prayers in prison were, that God of his mercy would restore his Gospel to this country once again, and that he would preserve the Lady Elizabeth, whom, in his prayers, says Fox, he was wont accustomably to name, and even with tears desired God to make her a comfort to this comfortless realm of England!

That prayer, Gardiner would have frustrated, if he could; he used to say it was in vain to strike the branches while the root was suffered to remain; and proceeding upon that principle, he left no means untried for destroying the Lady Elizabeth. It was even said, that he had once despatched a writ for her execution. But the Queen, if she had little sense of natural humanity, had some consideration for public opinion; and Philip also favoured the Lady Elizabeth... The Queen's was a precarious life, and, in case of her decease, a dispensation would gladly be granted for his marriage with her successor. Yet these remote and uncertain hopes might perhaps not have availed much longer, to save a life which was of such importance to the Protestant cause, if Gardiner had not now been summoned to his account. Fox has well characterized him as "toward his superiors flattering and fair spoken; to his inferiors fierce; against his equals stout and envious; . . . neither true Protestant, nor right Papist; neither constant in his error, nor yet stedfast in the truth; neither friend to the Pope, and yet a perfect enemy to Christ; false in King Henry's time, a dissembler in King Edward's, double-perjured and a murderer in Queen Mary's." When in his last illness the Bishop of Chichester spoke to him of free justification through the merits of our Saviour, he exclaimed, "What, my Lord, will you open that gap? To me, and such as are in my case, you may speak it; but open this window to the people, and farewell all together!" Some of his last words were, "I have sinned with Peter, but I have not wept with Peter." The Romanists say that he died in sentiments of great repentance; . no man had more to repent of, nor has any man left a name more deservedly odious in English history.

It is certain that he had a fore-feeling of this; and that finding how little persecution availed, or rather that it strengthened the cause which it was intended to crush, he shrunk from the forward part which he had so long taken, and left Bonner to take upon Fuller, b. viii. p. 17.

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himself more of the business and of the execrations which attended it. He had tried it upon a scale which would have satisfied even a Spanish Inquisitor. He had regarded neither learning nor ignorance, age nor youth, nor sex, nor condition. The details which have here been given, relate only to men conspicuous either in character or station; persons who were masters of the controversy, and pledged to the cause, who knew the importance of their example, and who had their intellectual strength, and the principle of honour, to aid the sense of religious duty. But the persecutors were not contented with these victims; they sent artificers and husbandmen, women and boys, to the stake. Father Persons, who had thoroughly imbibed the inhumanity of his Church, calls them a contemptible and pitiful rabblement, ... obscure and unlearned fellows, fond and obstinate women, . . . abject and infamous. He praises the patience, longanimity, diligence, and charity, of the Bishops in seeking to reclaim them; and compassionates' the persecutors for having been "forced to punish so great a number of such a base quality, for such opinions as neither themselves could well understand, nor have any surer ground thereof than their own foolish apprehensions.' But "what would our Saviour," he says, "have said of such pastors, if they had suffered such noisome wilful beasts to have lived freely among their flock, without restraint or punishment?" ... "Artificers, craftsmen, spinsters, and like people," he says, came to answer for themselves before their Bishops, though never so ignorant or opposite among themselves, . . . yet every one would die for his opinions; . . . no reason to the contrary, no persuasion, no argument, no inducements, no threats, no fair means, no foul, would serve, nor the present terror of fire itself;

and the more the pastors entreated with them by any of the foresaid means, the worse they were. And will you doubt to call this wilful pertinacity, in the highest degree?"

The compassion which Father Persons expresses for the persecutors, is worthy of a writer low-minded enough to assert, and perhaps to believe, that the married clergy (specifying Rogers, Saunders, Taylor, and Hooper) "were drawn into heresy first and principally by the sensual bait of getting themselves women under the name of wives;". . . slanderous enough to affirm

1 Three Conversions, vol. iii. p. 391.