d
know of such of our company as they did name unto us, so that we could
never be free from such demands, and at other times they would promise
us that if we would tell them the truth, then should we have favour and
be set at liberty, although we very well knew their fair speeches were
but means to entrap us to the hazard and loss of our lives; howbeit God
so mercifully wrought for us by a secret means that we had that we kept
us still to our first answer, and would still say that we had told the
truth unto them, and knew no more by ourselves nor any other of our
fellows than as we had declared, and that for our sins and offences in
England against God and our Lady, or any of His blessed saints, we were
heartily sorry for the same, and did cry God mercy, and besought the
Inquisitors, for God's sake, considering that we came into those
countries by force of weather, and against our wills, and that never in
all our lives we had either spoken or done anything contrary to their
laws, that therefore they would have mercy on us, yet all this would
not serve, for still from time to time we were called upon to confess,
and about the space of three months, before they proceeded to their
severe Judgment, we were all racked, and some enforced to utter that
against themselves which afterwards cost them their lives.

And thus having gotten from our own mouths matter sufficient for them
to proceed in judgment against us, they caused a large scaffold to be
made in the midst of the market-place in Mexico, right over against the
head church, and fourteen or fifteen days before the day of their
judgment, with the sound of a trumpet, and the noise of their
attabalies, which are a kind of drums, they did assemble the people in
all parts of the city, before whom it was then solemnly proclaimed that
whosoever would upon such a day, repair to the marketplace, they should
hear the sentence of the Holy Inquisition against the English heretic
Lutherans, and also see the same put in execution. Which being done,
and the time approaching of this cruel judgment, the night before they
came to the prison where we were, with certain officers of that holy
hellish house, bringing with them certain fools' coats which they had
prepared for us, being called in their language St. Benitos, which
coats were made of yellow cotton and red crosses upon them, both before
and behind; they were so busied in putting on their coats about us and
in bringing us out int