t him, he bathed his
hands in it, and stroked his face. The powder exploded, and he became
instantly senseless.

His companion was less fortunate. The sticks had been piled too
thickly over the gorse that was under them; the fire smouldered round
his legs, and the sensation of suffering was unusually protracted. "I
cannot burn," he called; "Lord have mercy on me; let the fire come to
me; I cannot burn." His brother-in-law, with awkward kindness, threw
on more wood, which only kept down the flame. At last some one lifted
the pile with "a bill," and let in the air; the red tongues of fire
shot up fiercely, Ridley wrested himself into the middle of them, and
the powder did its work.

The horrible sight worked upon the beholders as it has worked since,
and will work for ever, while the English nation survives--being,
notwithstanding, as in justice to those who caused these accursed
cruelties, must never be forgotten--a legitimate fruit of the
superstition, that, in the eyes of the Maker of the world, an error of
belief is the greatest of crimes; that while for all other sins there
is forgiveness, a mistake in the intellectual intricacies of
speculative opinion will be punished not with the brief agony of a
painful death, but with tortures to which there shall be no end.

But martyrdom was often but a relief from more barbarous atrocities.
In the sad winter months which were approaching, the poor men and
women, who, untried and uncondemned, were crowded into the bishops'
prisons, experienced such miseries as the very dogs could scarcely
suffer and survive. They were beaten, they were starved, they were
flung into dark, fetid dens, where rotting straw was their bed, their
feet were fettered in the stocks, and their clothes were their only
covering, while the wretches who died in their misery were flung out
into the fields where none might bury them.[506]

[Footnote 506: Foxe, vols. vii. viii., _passim_,
especially vol. vii. p. 605. Philpot's Petition,
Ibid. p. 682; and an account of the Prisons at
Canterbury, vol. viii. p. 255. At Canterbury,
_after_ Pole became archbishop, his archdeacon,
Harpsfeld, had fifteen prisoners confined together,
of whom five were starved to death; the other ten
were burnt. But before they suffered, and while one
of those who