A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  manhood soon returned to him, and he refused to save his life by

  making any more false confessions. He was quartered and

  distributed in the usual brutal way, and from fifty to a hundred of

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  his followers were hanged. The rest were led out, with halters

  round their necks, to be pardoned, and to make a parade of crying

  out, 'God save Queen Mary!'

  In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed herself to be a

  woman of courage and spirit. She disdained to retreat to any place

  of safety, and went down to the Guildhall, sceptre in hand, and

  made a gallant speech to the Lord Mayor and citizens. But on the

  day after Wyat's defeat, she did the most cruel act, even of her

  cruel reign, in signing the warrant for the execution of Lady Jane

  Grey.

  They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed religion;

  but she steadily refused. On the morning when she was to die, she

  saw from her window the bleeding and headless body of her husband

  brought back in a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill where he had

  laid down his life. But, as she had declined to see him before his

  execution, lest she should be overpowered and not make a good end,

  so, she even now showed a constancy and calmness that will never be

  forgotten. She came up to the scaffold with a firm step and a

  quiet face, and addressed the bystanders in a steady voice. They

  were not numerous; for she was too young, too innocent and fair, to

  be murdered before the people on Tower Hill, as her husband had

  just been; so, the place of her execution was within the Tower

  itself. She said that she had done an unlawful act in taking what

  was Queen Mary's right; but that she had done so with no bad

  intent, and that she died a humble Christian. She begged the

  executioner to despatch her quickly, and she asked him, 'Will you

  take my head off before I lay me down?' He answered, 'No, Madam,'

  and then she was very quiet while they bandaged her eyes. Being

  blinded, and unable to see the block on which she was to lay her

  young head, she was seen to feel about for it with her hands, and

  was heard to say, confused, 'O what shall I do! Where is it?'

  Then they guided her to the right place, and the executioner struck

  off her head. You know too well, now, what dreadful deeds the

  executioner did in England, through many, many years, and how his

  axe descended on the hateful block through the necks of some of the

  bravest, wisest, and best in the land. But it never struck so

  cruel and so vile a blow as this.

  The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little pitied.

  Queen Mary's next object was to lay hold of Elizabeth, and this was

  pursued with great eagerness. Five hundred men were sent to her

  retired house at Ashridge, by Berkhampstead, with orders to bring

  her up, alive or dead. They got there at ten at night, when she

  was sick in bed. But, their leaders followed her lady into her

  bedchamber, whence she was brought out betimes next morning, and

  put into a litter to be conveyed to London. She was so weak and

  ill, that she was five days on the road; still, she was so resolved

  to be seen by the people that she had the curtains of the litter

  opened; and so, very pale and sickly, passed through the streets.

  She wrote to her sister, saying she was innocent of any crime, and

  asking why she was made a prisoner; but she got no answer, and was

  ordered to the Tower. They took her in by the Traitor's Gate, to

  which she objected, but in vain. One of the lords who conveyed her

  offered to cover her with his cloak, as it was raining, but she put

  it away from her, proudly and scornfully, and passed into the

  Tower, and sat down in a court-yard on a stone. They besought her

  to come in out of the wet; but she answered that it was better

  sitting there, than in a worse place. At length she went to her

  apartment, where she was kept a prisoner, though not so close a

  prisoner as at Woodstock, whither she was afterwards removed, and

  where she is said to have one day envied a milkmaid whom she heard

  singing in the sunshine as she went through the green fields.

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  Gardiner, than whom there were not many worse men among the fierce

  and sullen priests, cared little to keep secret his stern desire

  for her death: being used to say that it was of little service to

  shake off the leaves, and lop the branches of the tree of heresy,

  if its root, the hope of heretics, were left. He failed, however,

  in his benevolent design. Elizabeth was, at length, released; and

  Hatfield House was assigned to her as a residence, under the care

  of one SIR THOMAS POPE.

  It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a main cause of

  this change in Elizabeth's fortunes. He was not an amiable man,

  being, on the contrary, proud, overbearing, and gloomy; but he and

  the Spanish lords who came over with him, assuredly did

  discountenance the idea of doing any violence to the Princess. It

  may have been mere prudence, but we will hope it was manhood and

  honour. The Queen had been expecting her husband with great

  impatience, and at length he came, to her great joy, though he

  never cared much for her. They were married by Gardiner, at

  Winchester, and there was more holiday-making among the people; but

  they had their old distrust of this Spanish marriage, in which even

  the Parliament shared. Though the members of that Parliament were

  far from honest, and were strongly suspected to have been bought

  with Spanish money, they would pass no bill to enable the Queen to

  set aside the Princess Elizabeth and appoint her own successor.

  Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in the darker

  one of bringing the Princess to the scaffold, he went on at a great

  pace in the revival of the unreformed religion. A new Parliament

  was packed, in which there were no Protestants. Preparations were

  made to receive Cardinal Pole in England as the Pope's messenger,

  bringing his holy declaration that all the nobility who had

  acquired Church property, should keep it - which was done to enlist

  their selfish interest on the Pope's side. Then a great scene was

  enacted, which was the triumph of the Queen's plans. Cardinal Pole

  arrived in great splendour and dignity, and was received with great

  pomp. The Parliament joined in a petition expressive of their

  sorrow at the change in the national religion, and praying him to

  receive the country again into the Popish Church. With the Queen

  sitting on her throne, and the King on one side of her, and the

  Cardinal on the other, and the Parliament present, Gardiner read

  the petition aloud. The Cardinal then made a great speech, and was

  so obliging as to say that all was forgotten and forgiven, and that

  the kingdom was solemnly made Roman Catholic again.

  Everything was now ready for the lighting of the terrible bonfires.

  The Queen having declared to the Council, in wri
ting, that she

  would wish none of her subjects to be burnt without some of the

  Council being present, and that she would particularly wish there

  to be good sermons at all burnings, the Council knew pretty well

  what was to be done next. So, after the Cardinal had blessed all

  the bishops as a preface to the burnings, the Chancellor Gardiner

  opened a High Court at Saint Mary Overy, on the Southwark side of

  London Bridge, for the trial of heretics. Here, two of the late

  Protestant clergymen, HOOPER, Bishop of Gloucester, and ROGERS, a

  Prebendary of St. Paul's, were brought to be tried. Hooper was

  tried first for being married, though a priest, and for not

  believing in the mass. He admitted both of these accusations, and

  said that the mass was a wicked imposition. Then they tried

  Rogers, who said the same. Next morning the two were brought up to

  be sentenced; and then Rogers said that his poor wife, being a

  German woman and a stranger in the land, he hoped might be allowed

  to come to speak to him before he died. To this the inhuman

  Gardiner replied, that she was not his wife. 'Yea, but she is, my

  lord,' said Rogers, 'and she hath been my wife these eighteen

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  years.' His request was still refused, and they were both sent to

  Newgate; all those who stood in the streets to sell things, being

  ordered to put out their lights that the people might not see them.

  But, the people stood at their doors with candles in their hands,

  and prayed for them as they went by. Soon afterwards, Rogers was

  taken out of jail to be burnt in Smithfield; and, in the crowd as

  he went along, he saw his poor wife and his ten children, of whom

  the youngest was a little baby. And so he was burnt to death.

  The next day, Hooper, who was to be burnt at Gloucester, was

  brought out to take his last journey, and was made to wear a hood

  over his face that he might not be known by the people. But, they

  did know him for all that, down in his own part of the country;

  and, when he came near Gloucester, they lined the road, making

  prayers and lamentations. His guards took him to a lodging, where

  he slept soundly all night. At nine o'clock next morning, he was

  brought forth leaning on a staff; for he had taken cold in prison,

  and was infirm. The iron stake, and the iron chain which was to

  bind him to it, were fixed up near a great elm-tree in a pleasant

  open place before the cathedral, where, on peaceful Sundays, he had

  been accustomed to preach and to pray, when he was bishop of

  Gloucester. This tree, which had no leaves then, it being

  February, was filled with people; and the priests of Gloucester

  College were looking complacently on from a window, and there was a

  great concourse of spectators in every spot from which a glimpse of

  the dreadful sight could be beheld. When the old man kneeled down

  on the small platform at the foot of the stake, and prayed aloud,

  the nearest people were observed to be so attentive to his prayers

  that they were ordered to stand farther back; for it did not suit

  the Romish Church to have those Protestant words heard. His

  prayers concluded, he went up to the stake and was stripped to his

  shirt, and chained ready for the fire. One of his guards had such

  compassion on him that, to shorten his agonies, he tied some

  packets of gunpowder about him. Then they heaped up wood and straw

  and reeds, and set them all alight. But, unhappily, the wood was

  green and damp, and there was a wind blowing that blew what flame

  there was, away. Thus, through three-quarters of an hour, the good

  old man was scorched and roasted and smoked, as the fire rose and

  sank; and all that time they saw him, as he burned, moving his lips

  in prayer, and beating his breast with one hand, even after the

  other was burnt away and had fallen off.

  Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, were taken to Oxford to dispute with

  a commission of priests and doctors about the mass. They were

  shamefully treated; and it is recorded that the Oxford scholars

  hissed and howled and groaned, and misconducted themselves in an

  anything but a scholarly way. The prisoners were taken back to

  jail, and afterwards tried in St. Mary's Church. They were all

  found guilty. On the sixteenth of the month of October, Ridley and

  Latimer were brought out, to make another of the dreadful bonfires.

  The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant men was in

  the City ditch, near Baliol College. On coming to the dreadful

  spot, they kissed the stakes, and then embraced each other. And

  then a learned doctor got up into a pulpit which was placed there,

  and preached a sermon from the text, 'Though I give my body to be

  burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.' When you

  think of the charity of burning men alive, you may imagine that

  this learned doctor had a rather brazen face. Ridley would have

  answered his sermon when it came to an end, but was not allowed.

  When Latimer was stripped, it appeared that he had dressed himself

  under his other clothes, in a new shroud; and, as he stood in it

  before all the people, it was noted of him, and long remembered,

  that, whereas he had been stooping and feeble but a few minutes

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  before, he now stood upright and handsome, in the knowledge that he

  was dying for a just and a great cause. Ridley's brother-in-law

  was there with bags of gunpowder; and when they were both chained

  up, he tied them round their bodies. Then, a light was thrown upon

  the pile to fire it. 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley,' said

  Latimer, at that awful moment, '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.' And then he was seen to make motions with

  his hands as if he were washing them in the flames, and to stroke

  his aged face with them, and was heard to cry, 'Father of Heaven,

  receive my soul!' He died quickly, but the fire, after having

  burned the legs of Ridley, sunk. There he lingered, chained to the

  iron post, and crying, 'O! I cannot burn! O! for Christ's sake

  let the fire come unto me!' And still, when his brother-in-law had

  heaped on more wood, he was heard through the blinding smoke, still

  dismally crying, 'O! I cannot burn, I cannot burn!' At last, the

  gunpowder caught fire, and ended his miseries.

  Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his tremendous

  account before God, for the cruelties he had so much assisted in

  committing.

  Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was brought out

  again in February, for more examining and trying, by Bonner, Bishop

  of London: another man of blood, who had succeeded to Gardiner's

  work, even in his lifetime, when Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmer

  was now degraded as a priest, and left for death; but, if the Queen

  hated any one on earth, she hated him, and it was resolved that he

  should be ruined and disgraced to the ut
most. There is no doubt

  that the Queen and her husband personally urged on these deeds,

  because they wrote to the Council, urging them to be active in the

  kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known not to be a

  firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful people,

  and inducing him to recant to the unreformed religion. Deans and

  friars visited him, played at bowls with him, showed him various

  attentions, talked persuasively with him, gave him money for his

  prison comforts, and induced him to sign, I fear, as many as six

  recantations. But when, after all, he was taken out to be burnt,

  he was nobly true to his better self, and made a glorious end.

  After prayers and a sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher of the day (who

  had been one of the artful priests about Cranmer in prison),

  required him to make a public confession of his faith before the

  people. This, Cole did, expecting that he would declare himself a

  Roman Catholic. 'I will make a profession of my faith,' said

  Cranmer, 'and with a good will too.'

  Then, he arose before them all, and took from the sleeve of his

  robe a written prayer and read it aloud. That done, he kneeled and

  said the Lord's Prayer, all the people joining; and then he arose

  again and told them that he believed in the Bible, and that in what

  he had lately written, he had written what was not the truth, and

  that, because his right hand had signed those papers, he would burn

  his right hand first when he came to the fire. As for the Pope, he

  did refuse him and denounce him as the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon

  the pious Dr. Cole cried out to the guards to stop that heretic's

  mouth and take him away.

  So they took him away, and chained him to the stake, where he

  hastily took off his own clothes to make ready for the flames. And

  he stood before the people with a bald head and a white and flowing

  beard. He was so firm now when the worst was come, that he again

  declared against his recantation, and was so impressive and so

  undismayed, that a certain lord, who was one of the directors of

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  the execution, called out to the men to make haste! When the fire

  was lighted, Cranmer, true to his latest word, stretched out his

  right hand, and crying out, 'This hand hath offended!' held it

  among the flames, until it blazed and burned away. His heart was