inful books, the Tracts and Testaments, ranged round
it in baskets, waiting for the execution of sentence.

Such was the scene into the midst of which the six prisoners entered. A
second platform stood in a conspicuous place in front of the cardinal's
throne, where they could be seen and heard by the crowd; and there upon
their knees, with their fagots on their shoulders, they begged pardon of
God and the Holy Catholic Church for their high crimes and offences. When
the confession was finished Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached a sermon:
and the sermon over, Barnes turned to the people, declaring that "he was
more charitably handled than he deserved, his heresies were so heinous and
detestable."

There was no other religious service: mass had perhaps been said previous
to the admission into the church of heretics lying under censure; and the
knight marshal led the prisoners down from the stage to the fire underneath
the crucifix. They were taken within the rails, and three times led round
the blazing pile, casting in their fagots as they passed. The contents of
the baskets were heaped upon the fagots, and the holocaust was complete.
This time, an unbloody sacrifice was deemed sufficient. The church was
satisfied with penance, and Fisher pronounced the prisoners absolved, and
received back into communion.[500]

So ended this strange exhibition, designed to work great results on the
consciences of the spectators. It may be supposed, however, that men whom
the tragedies of Smithfield failed to terrify, were not likely to be
affected deeply by melodrame and blazing paper.

A story follows of far deeper human interest, a story in which the
persecution is mirrored with its true lights and shadows, unexaggerated by
rhetoric; and which, in its minute simplicity, brings us face to face with
that old world, where men like ourselves lived, and worked, and suffered,
three centuries ago.

Two years before the time at which we have now arrived, Wolsey, in
pursuance of his scheme of converting the endowments of the religious
houses to purposes of education, had obtained permission from the pope to
suppress a number of the smaller monasteries. He had added largely to the
means thus placed at his disposal from his own resources, and had founded
the great college at Oxford, which is now called Christchurch.[501]
Desiring his magnificent institution to be as perfect as art could make it,
he had sought his professors in Rome, in the