pray you, although he had been innocent, that would
hope of life in that case, being in the field in
person against the queen, as general, and after his
taking so hated and evil spoken of by the Commons;
and at his coming into prison, so wondered at as
the like was never heard by any man's time. Who can
judge that he should hope for pardon whose life was
odious to all men? But what will ye more? Like as
his life was wicked and full of dissimulation, so
was his end thereafter. I pray God I view no friend
of mine die so. Should I, who am young and in my
few years, forsake my faith for the love of life?
Nay, God forbid! Much more he should not, whose
fatal course, although he had lived his just number
of years, could not have long continued. But life
was sweet, it appeared. So he might have lived, you
will say, he did not care how; indeed the reason is
good; for he that would have lived in chains to
have had his life, by like would leave no other
means unattempted. But God be merciful to us, for
he saith, whoso denyeth him before men, he will not
know him in his Father's kingdom."--_Queen Jane and
Queen Mary_, p. 24.]

Gates was the second sufferer. He, too, spoke in the same key. He had
been a great reader of Scripture, he said, but he had not read it to
be edified, but to be seditious--to dispute, to interpret it after his
private affection; to him, therefore, the honey had been poison, and
he warned all men how they followed his ill example; God's holy
mysteries were no safe things to toy or play with. Gates, in dying,
had three strokes of an axe;--"Whether," says an eye-witness,[99] "it
was by his own request or no was doubtful"--remarkable words: as if
the everlasting fate of the soul depended on its latest emotion, and
repentance could be intensified by the conscious realisation of death.

[Footnote 99: _Harleian MSS._ 284.]

Last came Sir Thomas Palmer, in whom, to judge by his method of taking
leave of life, there was some kind of nobleness. It was he who led the
cav