he himself
having been opposed to it. For this cause, at all events, Thomas
was hanged and quartered in May 1554, and his head set the next
day upon London Bridge. He assured the crowd, in a speech before
his execution, that he died for his country. Wood says he was of
a hot, fiery spirit, that had sucked in damnable principles.
Possibly they were not otherwise than sensible, for if he died on
Wyatt's evidence alone, one cannot feel sure that he died
justly. But had the insurrection only succeeded, it is curious to
think what an amount of misery might have been spared to England,
and how dark a page been lacking from the history of
Christianity!

Thomas's book was republished in 1561: but the first edition,
that of 1549, is, of course, the right one to possess; though its
fate has caused it to be extremely rare.

Coming now to Queen Elizabeth's reign, the comparative rarity of
book-burning is an additional testimony to the wisdom of her
government. But (to say nothing of books that were prohibited or
got their printers or authors into trouble) certain works,
religious, political, and poetical, achieved the distinction of
being publicly burnt, and they are works that curiously
illustrate the manners of the time.

The most important under the first of these heads are the
translations of the works of Hendrick Niclas, of Leyden, Father
of the Family of Love, or House of Charity, which were thought
dangerous enough to be burnt by Royal Proclamation on October
13th, 1579; so that such works as the _Joyful Message of the
Kingdom_, _Peace upon Earth_, _the Prophecy of the Spirit of
Love_, and others, are now exceedingly rare and costly. There
are many extracts from the first of these in Knewstub's
_Confutation "of its monstrous and horrible blasphemies"_ (1579),
wherein I fail to recognise either the blasphemies or their
confutation, nor do I find anything but sense in Niclas's letter
to two daughters of Warwick, whom he seeks to dissuade from
suffering death on a matter of conformity to certain Church
ceremonies. He insists on the life or spirit of Christ as of more
importance than any ceremony. "How well would they do who do now
extol themselves before the simple, and say that they are the
preachers of Christ, if they would first learn to know Christ
before they made themselves ministers of Him!" "Whatever is
served without the Spirit of Christ, it is an abomination to
God." Nevertheless the young persons seem to have