brought to the stake in the market-place in
Carmarthen.[460]

[Footnote 460: Foxe, vol. vii.]

Rawlins White, an aged Cardiff fisherman, followed Ferrars. In the
course of April, George Marsh, a curate, was burnt at Chester; and on
the 20th of April, a man named William Flower, who had been once a
monk of Ely, was burnt in Palace-yard, at Westminster. Flower had
provoked his own fate. He appeared on Easter day in St. Margaret's
Church, while mass was being said; and provoked, as he persuaded
himself, by the Holy Spirit, he flew upon the officiating priest, and
stabbed him with a dagger in the hand; when to the horror of pious
Catholics, the blood spurted into the chalice, and was mixed with the
consecrated elements.

Sixteen persons had now been put to death, and there was again a pause
for the sharp surgery to produce its effects.

While Mary was destroying the enemies of the church, Julius the Third
had died at the end of March, and Reginald Pole was again a candidate
for the vacant chair. The courts of Paris and Brussels alike promised
him their support, but alike gave their support to another. They
flattered his virtues, but they permitted Marcellus Cervino, the
Cardinal of St. Cross, to be elected unanimously; and the English
legate was told that he must be contented with the event which God had
been pleased to send.[461] An opportunity, however, seemed to offer
itself to him of accomplishing a service to Europe.

[Footnote 461: Noailles to the King of France,
April 5 and April 17. Montmorency to Noailles,
April 21. Noailles to Montmorency, April 30:
_Ambassades_, vol. iv.]

{p.207} For thirty-five years the two great Catholic powers had been
wrestling with but brief interruption. The advantage to either had
been as trifling as the causes of their quarrel were insignificant.
Their revenues were anticipated, their credit was exhausted, yet year
after year languid armies struggled into collision. Across the Alps in
Italy, and along the frontiers of Burgundy and the Low Countries,
towns and villages, and homesteads were annually sacked, and peasants
and their families destroyed--for what it were vain to ask, except it
was for some poor shadow of imagined honour. Two mighty princes
believed themselves justified in the sight of Heaven in squandering
their subjects' treasure and their subjects' blood, because the pride