THE CHRISTIAN GUARDIAN,

AND

CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

MARCH, 1844.

MEMORIALS OF THE ENGLISH MARTYRS.-No. III.

Hadleigh.

Part the First.

DR. ROWLAND TAYLER. *SIR RICHARD YEOMAN.

'MAY we all, my brethren, each in his place, be kept faithful to our duty in this trying time. An arduous one at best it is. But it ought to be somewhat lightened, by our being forewarned of its difficulties. And we now know what is before us. A struggle for I do trust we are united in a determination to struggle in this cause-a struggle with those who avow, that it is their purpose, at all hazards, and at all costs to unprotestantize the National Church; and who so far as they have already receded, acknowledge and proclaim that they are bound, and that they are resolved to recede more and more from the principles of the English Reformation.' +

I could not lay down the book in which I had read these words, without thanking God from my heart for this plain, bold, exhortation, from the learned Bishop of Ossory. This is indeed a trying time in which we live, it is a sifting time, and they who are built upon a quicksand, will neither be able to teach others aright, or to stand firm themselves. Never did the Church of England more need pastors deeply learned in God's word, than at the present day; pastors whose faith is firmly planted on the rock. Not only is the Bishop of Rome, and the heretical Church of Rome, seeking to overturn our National Church; but the ecclesiastical agitators' as they candidly style themselves, within the pale of our own Church, are doing all in their power to confuse and

*The name of the Martyr is spelt Tayler on the old stone placed on the spot where he was burnt, and dated, 1555. Bishop of Ossory's Charge, 2nd Edition, p. 211.

1844.

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unsettle the pure and scriptural principles of the English Reformation. 'I do hope,' continues the Bishop of Ossory, that these men will find, that they have under-rated the attachment of the clergy, and of the people of England too, to the principles against which they have declared open war; that the astonishing success which has intoxicated them, and beguiled them into this salutary manifesto, has been the result of ignorance-most incomprehensible, and inexcusable, but still real, ignorance-of their designs, and that now they have unequivocally declared themselves, their success will come to an end.'

When the faith once delivered to the saints, which is the vital principle of our Church is assailed, we shall surely do well to contend earnestly for that faith. It is not the morbid sensitiveness of a little mind, but the godly jealousy of a large and enlightened mind, which forbids all tampering with the truth, and says with Luther, "Charity beareth all things, Faith nothing."

I laid down the Charge of the Bishop of Ossory to take up my pen, that I might give some account of Hadleigh, the next spot to which I would carry my reader with me, in my Memorials of our English Martyrs.' It is with no common feeling of interest that I retrace my steps to Hadleigh, the sphere to which I was first called to labour in the Ministry of the Church of England. Hadleigh, being a Peculiar in the Diocese of Canterbury, though in the County of Suffolk,-I was examined for Holy Orders in the Lollard's tower at Lambeth Palace, and as I set out for my curacy from Cambridge, where I had been ordained on Letters Dimissory, I entered Hadleigh for the first time from Lavenham,* by the same way that Rowland Tayler came, when he last entered his parish, and passed along through the streets then lined with his weeping parishioners to Aldham Common, where he was burnt to death at the stake.

From the low sloping hills, which rise on almost every side of the old town at Hadleigh, I saw the steeple of the venerable Church rising among the trees, and soon after I looked down upon the winding river, and the green meadows, and the bridge, and the ancient houses of the town. It was at the bridge foot, that a poor man was waiting with his five small children, who when he saw Dr. Tayler come riding over the bridge, he and his children fell down upon their knees, and held up their hands, and cried with a loud voice, and said, 'O dear father, and good shepherd Dr. Tayler! God help and succour thee, as thou hast many a time, succoured me and my poor children.' 'Such witness,'

adds Foxe, had the servant of God, of his virtuous and charitable alms given in his lifetime: for God would now that the poor should testify of his good deeds, to his singular comfort, to the example of others, and confusion of his persecutors and tyrannous adversaries. For the Sheriff and others that led him to death, were wonderfully astonied at this, and the Sheriff rebuked the poor man for so crying.'

It is recorded, that Suffolk was the first county in England, in which the scriptural principles of the Reformation took deep root. It is well known, that on the active persecution of the followers of Wickliffe, many of the itinerant preachers of the true and holy doctrines which

* At Lavenham, Dr. Tayler was kept for two days by the Sheriff of Suffolk, who waited there till he was joined by a great number of gentlemen and justices upon great horses, who were all appointed to aid the Sheriff.