continuel fureur de ne
pouvoir jouir de la presence de son mary ny de
l'amour de son peuple, et dans une fort grande peur
d'estre offensee de sa propre vie par aulcungs des
siens.--Noailles to the King of France, May 7:
_Ambassades_, vol. v.]

[Footnote 570: Same to Montmorency, April 21:
Ibid.]

The general suffering was aggravated by a likelihood of famine. The
harvest of 1555 had failed, and bread, with all other articles of
food, was daily rising. The conspiracy exasperated the persecution,
which was degenerating into wholesale atrocity. On the 23rd of April,
six men were burnt at Smithfield; on the 28th, six more were burnt at
Colchester; on the 15th of May, an old lame man and a blind man were
burnt at Stratford-le-Bow. In the same month three women suffered at
Smithfield, and a blind boy was burnt at Gloucester. In Guernsey, a
mother and her two daughters were brought to the stake. One of the
latter, a married woman with child, was delivered in the midst of her
torments, and the infant just rescued was tossed back into the
flames.[571] Reason, humanity, even common prudence, were cast to the
winds. On the 27th of June, thirteen unfortunates, eleven men and two
women, were destroyed together at Stratford-le-Bow, in the presence
{p.270} of twenty thousand people.[572] A schoolmaster, in Norfolk,
in July read an inflammatory proclamation in a church. He and three
others were instantly hanged. Ferocity in the government and
lawlessness in the people went hand in hand. Along the river bank
stood rows of gibbets, with bodies of pirates swinging from them in
the wind. In the autumn, sixty men were sentenced to be hanged
together, for what crime is unknown, at Oxford;[573] and as a symbol
at head-quarters of the system of the administration, four corpses of
thieves hung as a spectacle of terror before the very gates of St.
James's Palace.[574]

[Footnote 571: Foxe. This hideous story was
challenged by Harding, the controversialist, in the
next reign. He was unfortunate in calling attention
to it, for the case was inquired into, and the
account was found too certainly true.]

[Footnote 572: Machyn's _Diary_.]

[Footnote 573: Machyn.]