which had deceived her before, had again fancied herself _enceinte_.
She made her will in the avowed expectation that she was about to
undergo the perils of childbearing. She wrote for her husband to come
to her. She sent the fleet into the Channel, and laid relays of horses
along the roads to London from Dover and from Harwich, that he might
choose at which port to land.

[Footnote 648: Oration on the Queen's Marriage:
Strype's _Life of Sir Thomas Smith_.]

Philip so far humoured the fancy, which he must have known to be
delusive, that he sent the Count de Feria to congratulate her. Her
letter, he said, contained the best news which he had heard since the
loss of Calais. But the bubble broke soon. Mary had parted from her
husband on the 5th of the preceding July, and her suspense, therefore,
was not long protracted. It is scarcely necessary to say in what
direction her second disappointment vented itself.

Cranmer alone hitherto had suffered after recantation; to others,
pardon had continued to be offered to the last moment. But this poor
mercy was now extinguished. A man in Hampshire, named Bembridge,
exclaimed at the point of execution that he would submit; a form was
produced on the spot, which Bembridge signed, and the sheriff, Sir
Richard Pexall, reprieved him by his own authority. But a letter of
council came instantly to Pexall, that "the queen's majesty could not
but find it very strange" that he had saved from punishment a man
condemned for heresy: the execution was to proceed out of hand; and
"if the prisoner continued in the Catholic faith, as he pretended,"
"some discreet and learned man might be present with him in his death,
for the aiding of him to die God's servant."[649] Bembridge was
accordingly burnt, and the sheriff, for the lenity which he had dare
to show, was committed to the Fleet. Whole detachments of men and
women were again slaughtered in London; and the queen, exasperated at
the determination with which the populace cheered the sufferers with
their sympathy, sent out a proclamation forbidding her subjects to
approach, touch, speak to, or comfort heretics on {p.311} their way
to execution, under pain of death. Shortly after, a congregation of
Protestants were detected at a prayer-meeting in a field near the
city; thirteen were taken as prisoners before Bonner, and seven were
burnt at Smithfield together on the 28th of June. The people replied
to the q