We earnestly pray that the
annals of no country, catholic or pagan, may ever be stained with such a
repetition of human sacrifices to papal power, and that the detestation
in which the character of Mary is holden, may be a beacon to succeeding
monarchs to avoid the rocks of fanaticism!

_God's Punishments upon some of the Persecutors of his People in Mary's
Reign._

After that arch-persecutor, Gardiner, was dead, others followed, of whom
Dr. Morgan, bishop of St. David's, who succeeded bishop Farrar, is to be
noticed. Not long after he was installed in his bishopric, he was
stricken by the visitation of God; his food passed through the throat,
but rose again with great violence. In this manner, almost literally
starved to death, he terminated his existence.

Bishop Thornton, suffragan of Dover, was an indefatigable persecutor of
the true church. One day after he had exercised his cruel tyranny upon a
number of pious persons at Canterbury, he came from the chapter-house to
Borne, where as he stood on a Sunday looking at his men playing at
bowls, he fell down in a fit of the palsy, and did not long survive.

After the latter succeeded another bishop or suffragan, ordained by
Gardiner, who not long after he had been raised to the see of Dover,
fell down a pair of stairs in the cardinal's chamber at Greenwich, and
broke his neck. He had just received the cardinal's blessing--he could
receive nothing worse.

John Cooper, of Watsam, Suffolk, suffered by perjury; he was from
private pique persecuted by one Fenning, who suborned two others to
swear that they heard Cooper say, "If God did not take away queen Mary,
the devil would." Cooper denied all such words, but Cooper was a
protestant and a heretic, and therefore he was hung, drawn and
quartered, his property confiscated, and his wife and nine children
reduced to beggary. The following harvest, however, Grimwood of Hitcham,
one of the witnesses before mentioned, was visited for his villany:
while at work, stacking up corn, his bowels suddenly burst out, and
before relief could be obtained he died. Thus was deliberate perjury
rewarded by sudden death!

In the case of the martyr Mr. Bradford, the severity of Mr. Sheriff
Woodroffe has been noticed--he rejoiced at the death of the saints, and
at Mr. Rogers' execution, he broke the carman's head, because he stopped
the cart to let the martyr's children take a last farewell of him.
Scarcely had Mr. Woodroffe's sheriffalt