experienced mercy, so they were in turn without mercy.
But to the English Catholics, who believed as Fisher believed, but who
had not dared to suffer as Fisher suffered, his death and the death of
the rest acted as a glimpse of the Judgment Day. Their safety became
their shame and terror; and in the radiant example before them of true
faithfulness, they saw their own falsehood and their own disgrace. So it
was with Father Forest, who had taught his penitents in confession that
they might perjure themselves, and who now sought a cruel death in
voluntary expiation; so it was with Whiting, the Abbot of Glastonbury;
so with others whose names should be more familiar to us than they are;
and here in Woburn we are to see the feeble but genuine penitence of
Abbot Hobbes. He was still unequal to immediate martyrdom, but he did
what he knew might drag his death upon him if disclosed to the
Government, and surrounded by spies he could have had no hope of
concealment.

'At the time,' deposed Robert Salford, 'that the monks of the
Charterhouse, with other traitors, did suffer death, the abbot did call
us into the Chapter-house, and said these words:--"Brethren, this is a
perilous time; such a scourge was never heard since Christ's passion. Ye
hear how good men suffer the death. Brethren, this is undoubted for our
offences. Ye read, so long as the children of Israel kept the
commandments of God, so long their enemies had no power over them, but
God took vengeance of their enemies. But when they broke God's
commandments, then they were subdued by their enemies, and so be we.
Therefore let us be sorry for our offences. Undoubted He will take
vengeance of our enemies; I mean those heretics that causeth so many
good men to suffer thus. Alas, it is a piteous case that so much
Christian blood should be shed. Therefore, good brethren, for the
reverence of God, every one of you devoutly pray, and say this Psalm,
'Oh God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple
have they defiled, and made Jerusalem a heap of stones. The dead bodies
of thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls of the air, and
the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the field. Their blood have
they shed like water on every side of Jerusalem, and there was no man to
bury them. We are become an open scorn unto our enemies, a very scorn
and derision unto them that are round about us. Oh, remember not our old
sins, but have mercy upon us, and tha