r entered the lists as
a support to Cranmner: Tonstal took up the argument after Gardiner:
Stokesley brought fresh aid to Tonstal; six bishops more appeared
successively in the field after Stokesley. And the disputation, if it
deserve the name, was prolonged for five hours; till Lambert, fatigued,
confounded, browbeaten, and abashed, was at last reduced to silence. The
king, then returning to the charge, asked him whether he were convinced;
and he proposed, as a concluding argument, this interesting question:
Whether he were resolved to live or to die? Lambert, who possessed
that courage which consists in obstinacy, replied, that he cast himself
wholly on his majesty's clemency: the king told him that he would be no
protector of heretics; and, therefore, if that were his final answer,
he must expect to be committed to the flames Cromwell, as vicegerent,
pronounced the sentence against him.[*] [14]

Lambert, whose vanity had probably incited him the more to persevere on
account of the greatness of this public appearance, was not daunted
by the terrors of the punishment to which he was condemned. His
executioners took care to make the sufferings of a man who had
personally opposed the king as cruel as possible: he was burned at a
slow fire; his legs and thighs were consumed to the stumps; and when
there appeared no end of his torments, some of the guards, more merciful
than the rest, lifted him on their halberts and threw him into the
flames, where he was consumed. While they were employed in this friendly
office, he cried aloud several times, "None but Christ, none but
Christ!" and these words were in his mouth when he expired.[**]

Some few days before this execution, four Dutch Anabaptists, three men
and a woman, had fagots tied to their backs at Paul's Cross, and were
burned in that manner. Andaman and a woman of the same sect and country
were burned in Smithfield.[***]

* See note N, at the end of the volume.

** Fox's Acts and Monuments, p. 427. Burnet.

*** Stow, p. 556.

{1539.} It was the unhappy fate of the English during this age, that,
when they labored under any grievance, they had not the satisfaction of
expecting redress from parliament on the contrary, they had reason to
dread each meeting of that assembly, and were then sure of having
tyranny converted into law, and aggravated, perhaps, with some
circumstance which the arbitrary prince and his ministers had not
hitherto devised, or d