PATIENCE OF THE PERSECUTED.

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during half a lifetime, several martyrs and confessors of the Faith continued to suffer in humility and patience, waiting for the breaking of a better day, doing God's will, and longing for their promised crown.*

dated, particularly through the rapacity and avarice of the heretical prelates; who, not caring for posterity, and only mindful of their own convenience, had despoiled the building of its best material, selling the lead off the roof, the beams, the iron, and the glass, and thus abandoning the other parts to ruin and decay."- "Life of William Weston," p. 239. London: 1875.

* The Burials' Register contains only four words-" John Watson, doctor, sepultus"; and in this entry "John" is a mistake for "Thomas." There is no stone to mark his grave, nor any memorial whatsoever. As early as the year 1748, the Rev. W. Cole carefully searched for one, but in vain.See Cole's MSS., Brit. Mus., vol. xviii. folio 90.—The present learned Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, courteously informs me that there is no portrait of his illustrious predecessor, either at Riseholme or Lincoln.

CHAPTER II.

THE first prisoner sent to Wisbeach Castle for refusing to adopt the Reforming policy, was John Feckenham, O.S.B., the last Abbot of Westminster. He was a prelate of great learning, of most virtuous life, and of much kindness of heart. During Queen Mary's reign he is reported* to have frequently befriended the Lady Elizabeth ; but when the latter came to the throne, and he found that she contemplated setting up a new religion, and becoming its Supreme Governess, he spoke out with the greatest plainness of language. Notwithstanding this, it is said that at her acces

* See Anthony à Wood's "Athenæ Oxoniensis," vol. i. p. 222; and "State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth," vol. cxxxi. n. 48, and vol. cxliii. n. 17.

DEATH OF ABBOT FECKENHAM.

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sion she felt disposed to offer him the vacant Archbishopric of Canterbury, if he would only take the Oath of Supremacy, and co-operate in making a new national religion; but this he firmly refused to do. Soon after this he had been sent to the Tower; then he was placed in the custody of Horne, Bishop of Winchester; subsequently he was sent back to the Tower by Elizabeth, then to the Marshalsea, and at last to Wisbeach, where he died in the twenty-seventh year of that Queen's reign, having thus been a prisoner for conscience' sake during the long period of more than a quarter of a century.*

Allusion has already been made to the cruelties practised on such prisoners. One of the most daring and impudent acts of the innovators was to provide a minister of the New Religion to preach at, and argue with, those in confinement at Wisbeach; and then make these poor sufferers pay his stipend and find him in food. Bishop Richard Cocks, apparently, was the ingenious gentleman who devised and carried out this brilliant idea; but, though one man may take a

* The sin of which, in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth's Council, this noble Confessor, in conjunction with Heath, Watson, and Tunstall, had been guilty, was maintaining the independence of the spiritualty: nothing else. He refused to give to Cæsar the things of God.

horse to the trough, twenty cannot make it imbibe the water, and so in practical effect this beneficial scheme fell flat, and failed of its purpose, as the following letter so graphically sets forth :

"The Lord Bishop hath appointed a preacher unto the recusants-a man of holy life, learned, and able to give an account of his doctrine strongly. The men restrained, before us both and others have been called divers times and as often required to hear the preacher, and abide the prayer; but they all with one voice generally, and after that every man particularly answering for himself, denied to allow either, saying that as they are not of our Church, so they will neither hear, pray, nor yet confer with any of us of any matters concerning religion." *

Even children at this period were not exempt from persecution. Four Lancashire youths of birth and rank, Worthingtons of Worthington, were seized and sorely tried, with a view of getting them to betray their relatives and friends.†

* George Carleton and Humphrey Michell to the Privy Council." State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth,” vol. cxliii. n. 17.

†The account in the text, much abbreviated, is taken from the second part of the Addenda to Bridgewater's edition of John Gibbons' "Concertatio Ecclesiæ Cath. in

PERSECUTION OF THE WORTHINGTONS.

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A pursuivant, accompanied by the under-sheriff of the county and twenty javelin-men, seized them at the house of their friend, Esquire Sankey of Great Sankey near Warrington, on February 12th, 1584. They were at once examined as to the whereabouts of their uncle, Father Thomas Worthington, a priest whose life had been marked by devotion and self-denial. They were asked when they had last seen him, when they had attended Mass, and where; but little information was obtained from them. The two eldest, therefore, (neither then sixteen years of age,) were taken before the Bishop of Chester and the Earl of Derby, but without any result. On their second examination the two younger were likewise brought up with their brothers. One of the former was not yet twelve years of age. The unusual nature of the proceedings attracted a crowd interested and attentive. It appears that on the appointed examination day the guards had intentionally kept the children without any food at all until the evening, when they were plied with wine, so as to half stupify them, and render them possibly more

Anglia," &c. Trèves: 1594. See also, "State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth," vol. cxc. n. 25, dated "June 12, 1586" "Prisoners in the Gate House"; and Strype's "Annals," vol. iii. p. 420.