and a man suffer death on the gallows for giving her bread, is without
foundation. She died about 1533 or 1534, when she was upwards of eighty
years of age. It is asserted that she strewed flowers at the funeral of
Henry VII.

A curious act of penance was performed in Hull, in the year 1534, by the
Vicar of North Cave. He appears to have made a study of the works of the
Reformers who had settled in Antwerp, and sent over their books to
England. In a sermon preached in the Holy Trinity Church, Hull, he
advocated their teaching, and for this he was tried for heresy and
convicted. He recanted, and, as an act of penance, one Sunday walked
round the church barefooted, with only his shirt on, and carrying a
large faggot in his hand to represent the punishment he deserved. On the
next market-day, in a similar manner, he walked round the market-place
of the town.

In the year 1602, a man named Cuthbert Pearson Foster, residing in the
parish of St. Nicholas, Durham, was brought before the Ecclesiastical
Court, charged with "playing at nine-holes upon the Sabbath day in time
of divine service," and was condemned to stand once in the parish church
during service, clad in a white sheet. In the following year, the four
churchwardens--Rowland Swinburn, William Harp, Richard Surtees, and
Cuthbert Dixon, men esteemed in Durham, and holding good
positions--were found guilty and admonished for a serious breach of
duty, "for not searching who was absent from the church on the Sabbath
and festive days, for it is credibly reported that drinking, banqueting,
and playing at cards, and other lawless games, are used in their parish
in alehouses, and they never made search thereof."

Of persons in the humble ranks of life who have performed public penance
in white sheets in churches, for unchastity, there are numerous entries
in parish registers. For immorality, prior to marriage, man and wife
were sometimes obliged to do penance. The Rev. Dr. J. Charles Cox found
particulars of a case of this kind recorded in the Wooley MSS., in the
British Museum, where a married couple, in the reign of James I.,
performed penance in Wirksworth Church.

In parish registers are records like the following, drawn from the Roxby
(Lincolnshire) parish register: "Memorandum.--Michael Kirby and Dixon,
Wid. had 2 Bastard Children, one in 1725, ye other in 1727, for which
they did publick pennance in our P'ish Church." "Michael Kirby and Anne
Dixon, both together d