[Footnote 574: Ibid.]

On the 20th of August, twenty-three men and women were brought to
London from Colchester, tied in a string with ropes to furnish another
holocaust. A thousand people cheered them through the streets as they
entered the city; and the symptoms of disorder were so significant and
threatening, that Bonner wrote to Pole for instructions how he should
proceed. The government was alarmed; "the council, not without good
consideration," decided that it would be dangerous to go on with the
executions; and Pole, checking Bonner's zeal, allowed the prisoners to
escape for the time, under an easy form of submission which they could
conscientiously make. They were dismissed to their homes, only,
however, for several of them to be slaughtered afterwards, under fresh
pretexts, in detail;[575] and Pole took an occasion, as will be
presently seen, of reprimanding the citizens of London for their
unnatural sympathy with God's enemies. That he had no objection to
these large massacres, when they could be ventured safely, he showed
himself in the following year, when fourteen heretics, of both sexes,
were burnt in two days at Canterbury and Maidstone.[576]

[Footnote 575: See their stories: Foxe, vol. viii.]

[Footnote 576: Foxe, vol. viii.]

Why, it may well be asked, did not the lords and gentlemen of England
rise and trample down the perpetrators of these devilish enormities?
It is a grave question, to which, nevertheless, some tolerable answer
is possible.

On the 21st of January, 1557, the English ambassador in Paris wrote in
cypher to Sir William Petre, of "a matter" which he desired should not
be communicated to the queen, "lest it should disquiet her." A refugee
had informed him, "that there was a great conspiracy in hand against
the queen, which without doubt would deprive her of her estate." He
had asked for names, but these his informant would not give, saying
merely, "the best of England were in it," and "such a {p.271} number
agreed thereupon, that it was impossible but that it would take
effect." There was no chance of discovery; "the matter had been in
hand for a year or thereabouts," yet no one "had uttered a word of
it;" should it become known, the conspirators were so strong that the
catastrophe would only be precipitated. They would have moved already,
"but for one man who had stayed them for a while."

Entreaties for more explicitness were fruitless. "B