y. But from the execution of the
first martyr, John Rogers, it was plain that the people sympathized
with the victims rather than feared their fate. Not content with
warring on the living, Mary even broke the sleep of the dead.[1] The
bodies of Bucer and Fagius were dug up and burned. The body of Peter
Martyr's wife was also exhumed, though, as no evidence of heresy could
be procured, it was thrown on a dunghill to rot.

[Sidenote: Martyrs, October 16, 1555]

The most famous victims were Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer. The first
two were burnt alive together, Latimer at the stake comforting his
friend by assuring him, "This day we shall light such a candle, by
God's grace, in England, as I trust, shall never be put out." A
special procedure was reserved for Cranmer, as primate. Every effort
was made to get him to recant. He at first signed four submissions
recognizing the {323} power of the pope as and if restored by
Parliament. He then signed two real recantations, and finally drew up
a seventh document, repudiating his recantations, re-affirming his
faith in the Protestant doctrine of the sacraments and denouncing the
pope. By holding his right hand in the fire, when he was burned at the
stake, he testified his bitter repentance for its act in signing the
recantations. [Sidenote: March 21, 1556]

The total number of martyrs in Mary's reign fell very little, if at
all, short of 300. The lists of them are precise and circumstantial.
The geographical distribution is interesting, furnishing, as it does,
the only statistical information available in the sixteenth century for
the spread of Protestantism. It graphically illustrates the fact, so
often noticed before, that the strongholds of the new opinions were the
commercial towns of the south and east. If a straight line be drawn
from the Wash to Portsmouth, passing about twenty miles west of London,
it will roughly divide the Protestant from the Catholic portions of
England. Out of 290 martyrdoms known, 247 took place east of this
line, that is, in the city of London and the counties of Essex,
Hertford, Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge. Thirteen are
recorded in the south center, at Winchester and Salisbury, eleven at
the western ports of the Severn, Bristol and Gloucester. There were
three in Wales, all on the coast at St. David's; one in the
south-western peninsula at Exeter, a few in the midlands, and not one
north of Lincolnshire and Cheshi