CH. 6. witnessed by the people. A.D. 1532. There are stories which show that, in some instances, familiarity The feel had produced the usual effect; that the martyrwhich dom of saints was at times of no more moment these spec ings with witnessed by the people. tacles were to an English crowd than the execution of ordifelons-that it was a mere spectacle to the nary idle, the hardened, and the curious. On the other hand, it is certain that the behaviour of the sufferers was the argument which at last converted the nation; and an effect which in the end was so powerful with the multitude, must have been visible long before in the braver and better natures. The increasing number of prosecutions in London shows, also, that the leaven was spreading. There were five executions in Smithfield between 1529 and 1533, besides those in the provinces. The prisons were crowded with offenders who had abjured and were undergoing sentence; and the list of those who were 'troubled' in various ways is so extensive, as to leave no doubt of the sympathy which, in London at least, must have been felt by many, very many, of the spectators of the martyrs' deaths. We are left, in this important point, mainly to conjecture; and if we were better furnished with evidence, the language of ordinary narrative would fail to convey any real notion of perplexed and various emotions. We have glimpses, however, into the inner world of men, here and there of strange interest; and we must regret that they are so few. Suicide of a boy at Cambridge. A poor boy at Cambridge, John Randall, of Christ's College, a relation of Foxe the martyro A.D. 1532. logist, destroyed himself in these years in religious CH. 6. desperation; he was found in his study hanging by his girdle, before an open Bible, with his dead arm and finger stretched pitifully towards a passage on predestination.* town clerk also de stroys him strange stances. A story even more remarkable is connected Pavier, the with Bainham's execution. Among the lay offi- of London, cials present at the stake, was 'one Pavier,' town clerk of London. This Pavier was a Catholic self, under fanatic, and as the flames were about to be circumkindled he burst out into violent and abusive language. The fire blazed up, and the dying sufferer, as the red flickering tongues licked the flesh from off his bones, turned to him and said, 'May God forgive thee, and shew more mercy than thou, angry reviler, shewest to me.' The scene was soon over; the town clerk went home. A week after, one morning when his wife had gone to mass, he sent all his servants out of his house on one pretext or another, a single girl only being left, and he withdrew to a garret at the top of the house, which he used as an oratory. A large crucifix was on the wall, and the girl having some question to ask, went to the room, and found him standing before it bitterly weeping.' He told her to take his sword, which was rusty, and clean it. She went away, and left him; when she returned, a little time after, he was hanging from a beam, dead. He was a singular person. Edward Hall, the historian, knew him, and had heard him say, that if the * FoxE, vol. iv. p. 694. A.D. 1532. CH. 6. king put forth the New Testament in English, he would not live to bear it.'* And yet he could not bear to see a heretic die. What was it? Had the meaning of that awful figure hanging on the torturing cross suddenly revealed itself? Had some inner voice asked him whether, in the prayer for his persecutors with which Christ had parted out of life, there might be some affinity with words which had lately sounded in his own ears? God, into whose hands he threw himself, self-condemned in his wretchedness, only knows the agony of that hour. Let the secret rest where it lies, and let us be thankful for ourselves that we live in a changed world. Thus, however, the struggle went forward; a forlorn hope of saints led the way up the breach, and paved with their bodies a broad road into the new era; and the nation the meanwhile was unconsciously waiting till the works of the enemy were won, and they could walk safely in and take The two possession. While men like Bilney and Bainham were teaching with words and writings, there were stout English hearts labouring also on the practical side of the same conflict, instilling the same lessons, and meeting for themselves the same consequences. Speculative superstition was to be met with speculative denial. Practical idolatry required a rougher method of disenchant orders of martyrs. The wor ment. Every monastery, every parish church, had in relics, in those days its special relics, its special images, its ship of its origin and in its abuse. *HALL, p. 806; and see FOXE, vol. iv. p. 705. special something, to attract the interest of the CH. 6. people. The reverence for the remains of noble A.D. 1532. and pious men, the dresses which they had worn, or the bodies in which their spirits had lived, was in itself a natural and pious emotion. It had been petrified into a dogma; and like every other imaginative feeling which is submitted to that process, it had become a falsehood, a mere superstition, a substitute for piety, not a stimulus to it, and a perpetual occasion of fraud. The people brought offerings to the shrines where it was supposed that the relics were of greatest potency. The clergy, to secure the offerings, invented the relics, and invented the stories of the wonders which had been worked by them. The great exposure of these things took place at the visitation of the religious houses. In the meantime, Bishop Shaxton's unsavoury inventory Bishop of what passed under the name of relics in the diocese of Salisbury, will furnish an adequate notion of these objects of popular veneration. There be set forth and commended unto the ignorant people,' he said, 'as I myself of certain which be already come to my hands, have perfect knowledge, stinking boots, mucky combes, ragged rochettes, rotten girdles, pyl'd purses, great bullocks' horns, locks of hair, and filthy rags, gobbetts of wood, under the name of parcels of the holy cross, and such pelfry beyond estimation.' Besides matters of this kind, there were images 6 * * Instructions given by the Bishop of Salisbury: BURNET'S Collectanea, p. 493. Shaxton's inventory. A.D. 1532. The won der-work ing roods. Boxley. CH. 6. of the Virgin or of the Saints; above all, roods or crucifixes of especial potency, the virtues of which had begun to grow uncertain, however, to sceptical protestants; and from doubt to denial, and from denial to passionate hatred, there were The rood of but a few brief steps. The most famous of the roods was that of Boxley in Kent, which used to smile and bow, or frown and shake its head, as its worshippers were generous or closehanded. The fortunes and misfortunes of this image I shall by and bye have to relate. There was another, The rood however, at Dovercourt, in Suffolk, of scarcely inferior fame. This image was of such power, it was said, that the door of the church in which it stood was open at all hours to all comers, and no human hand could close it. Dovercourt therefore became a place of great and lucrative pilgrimage, much resorted to by the neighbours on all occasions of difficulty. of Dovercourt. Its powers are sub mitted to trial, Now it happened that within the circuit of a few miles there lived four young men, to whom the virtues of the rood had become greatly questionable. If it could work miracles, it must be capable, so they thought, of protecting its own substance; and they agreed to apply a practical test which would determine the extent of its abilities. Accordingly (about the time of Bainham's first imprisonment), Robert King of Dedham, Robert Debenham of Eastbergholt, Nicholas Marsh of Dedham, and Robert Gardiner of Dedham, their consciences being burdened to see the honour of Almighty God so blasphemed by such an idol,' started off on a wondrous goodly |