ruary, 1556-7.

Was heresy

Englishmen, for two full years, ending with Feb. And what was accomplished by this tyrannical cruelty, and these wholesale murders? Was heresy as a belief in the gospel was then called — suppressed? Was the number of believers even diminished? Nothing of the kind. The queen had to learn, to her deep chagrin, after all this slaughtering of the innocents, that the number of "heretics" rather increased than diminished under her maternal discipline. Complaints were made, too, that the inferior magistrates throughout the kingdom had become slack in searching out the heretics; and that, in the cities particularly, they were even protected and encouraged, the people generally having become utterly disgusted with the queen's bloody sway. But all this, instead of satisfying the court that protestantism could never be burnt out of the heart of the English nation, any more than popery could be burnt in as it would have done any but a priestguided government-only stirred up their catholic majesties and their obedient councillors to devise other and more stringent measures to suppress the truth and to establish popery. Letters were written to different towns, directing the people to choose more catholic mayors, and even designating the persons to be chosen. A scheme was also concocted for the establishment of a grand central inquisitorial court, in London, with inferior courts in other sections of the country, for the suppression and complete eradication of " heresy " and kindred

crimes. On the 8th of February, 1556-7, a royal commission was issued "to the right reverend father in God, Edmond [Bonner] bishop of London," the bishop of Ely, lords Windsor and North, Bourne, one of the secretaries of state, and several other officers of the court, knights, and doctors of the law, etc., in all twenty-two, "trusty and well-beloved" papists, any three of whom were authorized, appointed, and assigned to be the queen's commissioners, " to inquire, as well by the oaths of twelve good and lawful men, as by witnesses, and all other means and politic ways you can devise, of all and sundry heresies, heretical opinions, Lollardies, heretical and seditious books, concealments, contempts, conspiracies, and of all false rumors, tales, seditions, and clamorous words. and sayings, raised, published, bruited, invented, or set forth against us, or either of us, or against the quiet governance and rule of our people and subjects, by books, letters, tales, or otherwise, in any county, city, borough, or other place or places within this our realm of England, and elsewhere in any place or places beyond the sea," etc.* And

* Burnet, vol. 11. pt. II. bk. II. p. 697; and bk. 11. Records, No. 32. "Heretical books" were the special terror of Mary's councillors, and in addition to various other methods adopted to this end, several royal proclamations were made against them, and the most active measures adopted to prevent their circulation. Thus, on the 13th of June, 1555, appeared a proclamation against Luther's books, and those of the chief foreign Reformers, and against most of the English Reformers', as Coverdale's, Tyndale's, Cranmer's, Frith's, Roy's, and even Hall's Chronicles. - Fox, vol. 111. p. 225.

all justices of the peace, mayors, sheriffs, bailiffs, constables, and all other officers, ministers, and faithful subjects, were commanded to help these commissioners, at their command.

Here certainly are powers, ample as can well be conceived, conferred on any three of the trusty persons named, to proceed, in any way they might judge best, to suppress and punish anything they chose to pronounce heretical, or injurious to the reigning powers in Church and State. If this commission was not the very Spanish Inquisition, it was certainly, in spirit, very near to that cherished popish institution. To aid this grand central court, inferior tribunals were constituted in different parts of the country, armed with needful power to carry on the hateful work of persecution and death for conscience' sake.

The effect of all these arrangements was a greatly quickened activity in the work of slaughter during the year 1557. Three men and two women

As early as about the fifth of October, 1554, Fox reports that "within one fortnight there were little less than threescore, as well householders as servants and prentices, apprehended and taken, and committed to sundry prisons, for having and selling of certain books which were sent into England by the preachers that fled into Germany and other countries."— Vol. 111. p. 86. Most of these condemned books were such as any Christian man might lawfully and properly read and circulate; a few were more objectionable ; for the persecuted protestants sometimes gave vent to their pentup feelings in denunciatory, if not treasonable, language, as in the Treatise on Politic Power, and Blasts against the Government of Women, and Wherein Superior Powers may be lawfully Resisted. Fox, 111. 326; Collier, vi. 176.

were burnt at Smithfield, April 12th; three were burned at Southwark, May 3d; three more were burnt at Bristol on the 7th; two men and five women were burnt at Maidstone, June 18th, and on the next day, three men and four women were burnt at Canterbury" fourteen being thus, in two days, destroyed by Thornton and Harpsfield." On the 22d of the same month, six men and four women were burnt at Lewes, in Sussex. One of these ten Lewes martyrs was Richard Woodman, of whom Fox gives a very extended account. He was an iron-maker by trade, of the parish of Warbleton, in Sussex. He was twice arrested. On his first arrest, in June, 1553, he lay in the King's Bench prison nearly a year and a half, and then was put into Bonner's coal-hole for a month before he was even examined. On the 18th of December, 1555, he was discharged, with four other prisoners, after having undergone twenty-six examinations. He had been at liberty but a little while before he was sought after again, but escaped, and after lying in the woods six or seven weeks, went abroad; but being unhappy there, he came home again, and was betrayed by his own father and brother; and so was sent up to London, to Bishop Bonner, a second time. There he remained in the coal-house eight weeks lacking one day, and underwent six more examinations. His second arrest was in 1557. At length he was condemned to death; but before his death he wrote out accounts of his several examinations, and a letter to a Chris

tian friend. In this letter he says, among other like things: "I do earnestly believe that God, which hath begun this good work in me, will perform it to the end, as he hath given me grace, and will alway, to bear his easie yoke and light burden; the which I have always found, I praise my Lord God; for when I have been in prison, wearing one while bolts, another while shackles, other while lying on the bare ground, sometimes sitting in the stocks, sometime bound with cords, that all my body hath been swollen, much like to be overcome for the pain that hath been in my flesh, sometime fain to lye without in the woods and fields, wandering to and fro, few I say that durst keep my company, for fear of the rulers; sometime brought before the justices, sheriffs, lords, doctors, and bishops; sometime called dog, sometime devil, heretick, whoremonger, traitor, thief, deceiver, with divers such like; yea, and even they that did eat of my bread, that should have been most my friends by nature, have betrayed me. Yet, for all this, I praise my Lord God that hath separated me from my mother's womb, all this that hath happened unto me hath been easie, light, and most delectable and joyful of any treasure that ever I possessed. For I praise God they are not able to prove one jot or tittle of their sayings true."

Such is a glimpse of what these poor martyrs underwent before they were given to the flames; and such was the spirit with which hundreds in England, who could say with the apostle, "I die