octor Taylor of Hadley,
William Hunter, and Stephen Harwood, ferreting out all suspected of
heresy, and confining them in the foulest jails,--burning even little
children. Mary even takes measures to introduce the Inquisition and
restore the monasteries. Everywhere are scaffolds and burnings. In three
years nearly three hundred people were burned alive, often with green
wood,--a small number compared with those who were executed and
assassinated in France, about this time, by Catherine de' Medicis, the
Guises, and Charles IX.

In those dreadful persecutions which began with the accession of Mary,
it was impossible that Cranmer should escape. In spite of his dignity,
rank, age, and services, he could hope for no favor or indulgence from
that morose woman in whose sapless bosom no compassion for the
Protestants ever found admission, and still less from those cruel,
mercenary, bigoted prelates whom she selected for her ministers. It was
not customary in that age for the Roman Church to spare heretics,
whether high or low. Would it forgive him who had overturned the
consecrated altars, displaced the ritual of a thousand years, and
revolted from the authority of the supreme head of the Christian world?
Would Mary suffer him to pass unpunished who had displaced her mother
from the nuptial bed, and pronounced her own birth to be stained with an
ignominious blot, and who had exalted a rival to the throne? And
Gardiner and Bonner, too, those bigoted prelates and ministers who would
have sent to the flames an unoffending woman if she denied the authority
of the Pope, were not the men to suffer him to escape who had not only
overturned the papal power in England, but had deprived them of their
sees and sent them to the Tower. No matter how decent the forms of law
or respectful the agents of the crown, Cranmer had not the shadow of a
hope; and hence he was certainly weak, to say the least, to trust to any
deceitful promises made to him. What his enemies were bent upon was his
recantation, as preliminary to his execution; and he should have been
firm, both for his cause, and because his martyrdom was sure. In an evil
hour he listened to the voice of the seducer. Both life and dignities
were promised if he would recant. "Confounded, heart-broken, old," the
love of life and the fear of death were stronger for a time than the
power of conscience or dignity of character. Six several times was he
induced to recant the doctrines he had pr