ple, sick to their very souls at the
abominable spectacles which were thrust before them, sank into a
sullen despondency.

[Footnote 644: Foxe: Burnet.]

[Footnote 645: Strype's _Memorials_, vol. vi. p.
120.]

The musters for Derbyshire were set down at fifteen hundred. Lord
Shrewsbury raised four hundred from among his own dependents on his
estates. The magistrates declared that, owing to dearth, want, and
waste of means in the war of the last year, the "poor little county"
could provide but one hundred more.

The musters in Devonshire broke up and went to their homes. The
musters in Lincolnshire mutinied. The ringleaders in both counties
were immediately hanged;[646] yet the loyalty was none the greater.
The exiled divines in Germany, believing that the people were at last
ripe for insurrection, called on them to rise and put down the tyranny
which was crushing them. Goodman published a tract on the obedience of
subjects, and John Knox blew his "First Blast against the Monstrous
Regimen of Women." The queen, as if the ordinary laws of the country
had no existence, sent out a proclamation that any one who was found
to have these books in his or her possession, or who, finding such
books, did not instantly burn them, should be executed as a rebel by
martial law.[647] "Affectionate as I be to my country and countrymen,"
said Sir Thomas Smith, "I was ashamed of both; they went about their
matters as men amazed, that wist not where to begin or end. And what
marvel was it? Here was nothing but firing, heading, hanging,
quartering and burning, taxing and levying. A few priests in white
rochets ruled all, who with setting up of six-foot roods and
rebuilding of roodlofts, thought to make all sure."

[Footnote 646: _Privy Council Register, MS. Mary._]

[Footnote 647: Royal Proclamation, June 6, 1558:
Strype's _Memorials_, vol. vi.; Foxe, vol. xiii.]

With the summer, fever and ague set in like a pestilence, {p.310}
"God did so punish the realm," said Sir Thomas Smith again, "with
quartan agues, and with such other long and new sicknesses, that in
the last two years of the reign of Queen Mary, so many of her subjects
was made away, what with the execution of sword and fire, what by
sicknesses, that the third part of the men of England were
consumed."[648] In the spring, the queen, misled by the same symptoms