university, heads of houses, mayor, aldermen,
and sheriff. The prisoners were brought to the bar. The same questions
were asked, the same answers were returned, and sentence was
pronounced upon them, as heretics obstinate and incurable.

Execution did not immediately follow. The convictions for which they
were about to die had been adopted by both of them comparatively late
in life. The legate would not relinquish the hope of bringing them
back into the superstition in which they had been born, and had lived
so long; and Soto, a Spanish friar, who was teaching divinity at
Oxford in the place of Peter Martyr, was set to work on them.

But one of them would not see him, and on the other he could make no
impression. Those whom God had cast away, thought Pole, were not to be
saved by man;[503] and the 16th of October was fixed upon as the day
on which they were to suffer. Ridley had been removed from Bocardo,
and was under the custody of the mayor, a man named Irish, whose wife
was a bigoted and fanatical Catholic. On the evening of the 15th there
was a supper at the mayor's house, where some members of Ridley's
family were permitted to be present. He talked cheerfully of his
approaching "marriage;" his brother-in-law promised to be in
attendance, and, if possible, to bring with him his wife, Ridley's
sister. Even the hard eyes of Mrs. Irish were softened to tears, as
she listened and thought of what was coming. The brother-in-law
offered to sit up through the night, but Ridley said there was no
occasion; he "minded to go to bed, and sleep as quietly as ever he did
in his life." In the morning he wrote a letter to the queen. As Bishop
of London he had granted {p.232} renewals of certain leases, on
which he had received fines. Bonner had refused to recognise them, and
he entreated the queen, for Christ's sake, either that the leases
should be allowed, or that some portion of his own confiscated
property might be applied to the repayment of the tenants.[504] The
letter was long; by the time it was finished, the sheriff's officers
were probably in readiness.

[Footnote 503: A Rev. P. Soto accepi litteras
Oxonio datas quibus me certiorem facit quid cum
duobus illis haereticis egerit qui jam erant
damnati, quorum alter ne loqui quidem cum eo
voluit: cum altero est locutus sed nihil profecit,
ut facile intelligatur