s being adverse to the idolatrous
doctrine of the papacy, he was condemned on the following day, and
suffered January 31.

Agnes Snoth, widow, of Smarden Parish, was several times summoned before
the Catholic Pharisees, and rejecting absolution, indulgences,
transubstantiation, and auricular confession, she was adjudged worthy to
suffer death, and endured martyrdom, January 31, with Anne Wright and
Joan Sole, who were placed in similar circumstances, and perished at the
same time, with equal resignation. Joan Catmer, the last of this
heavenly company, of the parish Hithe, was the wife of the martyr George
Catmer.

Seldom in any country, for political controversy, have four women been
led to execution, whose lives were irreproachable, and whom the pity of
savages would have spared. We cannot but remark here that, when the
Protestant power first gained the ascendency over the Catholic
superstition, and some degree of force in the laws was necessary to
enforce uniformity, whence some bigoted people suffered privation in
their person or goods, we read of few burnings, savage cruelties, or
poor women brought to the stake, but it is the nature of error to resort
to force instead of argument, and to silence truth by taking away
existence, of which the Redeemer himself is an instance. The above five
persons were burnt at two stakes in one fire, singing hosannahs to the
glorified Saviour, till the breath of life was extinct. Sir John Norton,
who was present, wept bitterly at their unmerited sufferings.

_Archbishop Cranmer._

Dr. Thomas Cranmer was descended from an ancient family, and was born at
the village of Arselacton, in the county of Northampton. After the usual
school education he was sent to Cambridge, and was chosen fellow of
Jesus College. Here he married a gentleman's daughter, by which he
forfeited his fellowship, and became a reader in Buckingham college,
placing his wife at the Dolphin inn, the landlady of which was a
relation of hers, whence arose the idle report that he was an ostler.
His lady shortly after dying in childbed, to his credit he was re-chosen
a fellow of the college before mentioned. In a few years after, he was
promoted to be Divinity Lecturer, and appointed one of the examiners
over those who were ripe to become Bachelors or Doctors in Divinity. It
was his principle to judge of their qualifications by the knowledge they
possessed of the Scriptures, rather than of the ancient fathers, and
h