d greed faded away as
they passed unwavering to their doom. Such a story as that of Rowland
Taylor, the Vicar of Hadleigh, tells us more of the work which was now
begun, and of the effect it was likely to produce, than pages of
historic dissertation. Taylor, who as a man of mark had been one of the
first victims chosen for execution, was arrested in London, and
condemned to suffer in his own parish. His wife, "suspecting that her
husband should that night be carried away," had waited through the
darkness with her children in the porch of St. Botolph's beside Aldgate.
"Now when the sheriff his company came against St. Botolph's Church
Elizabeth cried, saying, 'O my dear father! Mother! mother! here is my
father led away!' Then cried his wife, 'Rowland, Rowland, where art
thou?'--for it was a very dark morning, that the one could not see the
other. Dr. Taylor answered, 'I am here, dear wife,' and stayed. The
sheriff's men would have led him forth, but the sheriff said, 'Stay a
little, masters, I pray you, and let him speak to his wife.' Then came
she to him, and he took his daughter Mary in his arms, and he and his
wife and Elizabeth knelt down and said the Lord's prayer. At which sight
the sheriff wept apace, and so did divers others of the company. After
they had prayed he rose up and kissed his wife and shook her by the
hand, and said, 'Farewell, my dear wife, be of good comfort, for I am
quiet in my conscience! God shall still be a father to my children.'...
Then said his wife, 'God be with thee, dear Rowland! I will, with God's
grace, meet thee at Hadleigh.'

"All the way Dr. Taylor was merry and cheerful as one that accounted
himself going to a most pleasant banquet or bridal.... Coming within two
miles of Hadleigh he desired to light off his horse, which done he
leaped and set a frisk or twain as men commonly do for dancing. 'Why,
master Doctor,' quoth the Sheriff, 'how do you now?' He answered, 'Well,
God be praised, Master Sheriff, never better; for now I know I am almost
at home. I lack not past two stiles to go over, and I am even at my
Father's house!'... The streets of Hadleigh were beset on both sides
with men and women of the town and country who waited to see him; whom
when they beheld so led to death, with weeping eyes and lamentable
voices, they cried, 'Ah, good Lord! there goeth our good shepherd from
us!'" The journey was at last over. "'What place is this,' he asked,
'and what meaneth it that so much