ease certain bishops he was under obligation to for assisting him to
depose Richard the Second and usurp his throne. But that the practice of
committing heretics to the flame prevailed in England long after Popery
ceased to be the dominant religion is notorious. If heretics were thus
sacrificed by Henry the Fourth to please Popish Bishops, they were also
sacrificed by Elizabeth with a view to the satisfaction of Protestant
Bishops. Cranmer literally compelled her brother, the amiable Edward, to
send a half crazed woman named Joan Boacher to the stake. Elizabeth
herself caused two Dutch Anabaptists to be burnt in Smithfield, though
it is but just to admit that, unlike her sullen sister, she preferred
rather to hang than to burn heretics. Lord Brougham has recently done
mankind another valuable piece of service by painting the portrait of
that Protestant princess in colours at once so lively and faithful that
none, save the lovers of vulgar fanaticism and murderous hypocrisy, will
gaze on it without horror. [81:1]

'Mary, honoured with the title of "bloody," appears to me a far more
estimable character than her ripping-up sister Elizabeth, who, when
Mary, on her death-bed, asked her for a real avowal of her religion,
"prayed God" that the earth might open and swallow her up if she was not
a true Roman Catholic.' She made the same declaration to the Duke of
Ferria, the Spanish Ambassador, who was so deceived that he wrote to
Philip, stating no change in religious matters would take place on her
accession, and soon afterwards began ripping up the bellies of
Catholics. That was quite the fashionable punishment in this and the
succeeding reign. I have the account, with names, dates, and reference
of no less than 101 more Catholics who were burnt, hung, ripped up, &c.,
by Elizabeth, and on to Charles the Second's end, than there were
Protestants in Mary's, and all the reigns which preceded her, letting
lying Fox count all he has got. Elizabeth, too, was by law a bastard,
and is to this day; and so soon did her intentions appear of changing
the religion, that all the bishops but one refused to crown her; and
when this was done, it was by the Catholic ritual. However the
Act-of-Parliament religion was set up again; the prayer book of Cranmer
was set up again, after sundry alterations: it was altered too, in
Edward's reign, yet when first made, it was duly declared to come from
the 'Holy Ghost;' so it was after its second polishin