who disliked
the queen's laws, and he and other heretics would broil for it before
all was over.

The boy's friends thought it prudent that he should fly to some place
where he was not known; but, as soon as he was gone, a Catholic
magistrate in the neighbourhood required his father to produce him, on
peril of being arrested in his place; and, after a struggle of
affection, in which the father offered to shield his son at his own
hazard, young Hunter returned and surrendered.

The magistrate sent him to the Bishop of London, who kept him in
prison three quarters of a year. When the persecution commenced, he
was called up for examination.

Bonner, though a bigot and a ruffian, had, at times, a coarse
good-nature in him, and often, in moments of pity, thrust an easy
recantation upon a hesitating prisoner. He tried with emphatic anxiety
to save this young apprentice. "If thou wilt recant," he said to him,
"I will make thee a freeman in the city, and give thee forty pounds in
money to set up thy occupation withal; or I will make thee steward of
mine house, and set thee in office, for I like thee well."

Hunter thanked him for his kindness; but it could not be, he said; he
must stand to the truth: he could not lie, or pretend to believe what
he did not believe. Bonner said, and probably with sincere conviction,
that if he persisted he would be damned for ever. Hunter said, that
God judged more righteously, and justified those whom man unjustly
condemned.

He was therefore to die with the rest; and on Saturday, the {p.203}
23rd of March, he was sent to suffer at his native village. Monday
being the feast of the Annunciation, the execution was postponed till
Tuesday. The intervening time he was allowed to spend with his friends
"in the parlour of the Swan Inn." His father prayed that he might
continue to the end in the way that he had begun. His mother said, she
was happy to bear a child who could find in his heart to lose his life
for Christ's sake. "Mother," he answered, "for my little pain which I
shall suffer, which is but a short braid, Christ hath promised me a
crown of joy. May you not be glad of that, mother?"

Amidst such words the days passed. Tuesday morning the sheriff's son
came and embraced him, "bade him not be afraid," and "could speak no
more for weeping." When the sheriff came himself for him, he took his
brother's arm and walked calmly to the place of execution, "at the
town's end, where the butts st